CheerLights MCP Server

A modern Model Context Protocol (MCP) server that provides comprehensive access to the CheerLights API. CheerLights is a global IoT project that synchronizes colors across thousands of connected lights worldwide, creating a real-time shared experience.

🌈 Features

Tools (Actions)

• Current Color: Get the most recent CheerLights color from the global network
• Color History: Retrieve recent color changes with configurable count (1-100)
• Color Statistics: Analyze color usage patterns and popularity over time
• Color Search: Find specific colors in the historical data
• Hex Color Codes: Get hex codes and RGB values for CheerLights colors

Resources (Context)

• Current Color Resource: Real-time current color as a readable resource
• History Resource: Formatted color history for context injection
• Supported Colors: Complete list of valid CheerLights colors with hex codes

Prompts (Templates)

• Trend Analysis: Generate prompts for analyzing CheerLights color trends
• Color Reports: Create detailed reports about specific colors

🚀 Quick Start

Using uv (Recommended)

# Clone the repository
git clone https://github.com/cheerlights/cheerlights-mcp.git
cd cheerlights-mcp

# Install with uv
uv sync

# Run the server
uv run cheerlights-mcp

Using pip

# Clone and install
git clone https://github.com/cheerlights/cheerlights-mcp.git
cd cheerlights-mcp
pip install -e .

# Run the server
python -m cheerlights_mcp.server

📦 Installation

For Development

# Install with development dependencies
uv sync --dev

# Install pre-commit hooks
uv run pre-commit install

From PyPI (when published)

pip install cheerlights-mcp

🔧 Usage

With Claude Desktop

Add to your Claude Desktop configuration:

Windows: %APPDATA%\Claude\claude_desktop_config.json

macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json

{
    "mcpServers": {
        "cheerlights": {
            "command": "uv",
            "args": ["run", "cheerlights-mcp"],
            "cwd": "/path/to/cheerlights-mcp"
        }
    }
}

Direct Execution

# Standard I/O (default)
python -m cheerlights_mcp.server

# With specific transport
python -m cheerlights_mcp.server stdio
python -m cheerlights_mcp.server sse
python -m cheerlights_mcp.server streamable-http

Programmatic Usage

from cheerlights_mcp import create_server

# Create and run server
server = create_server("My CheerLights Server")
server.run()

🛠️ API Reference

Tools

get_current_cheerlights_color()

Returns structured ColorData with:

• color: Current color name
• timestamp: When it was set
• entry_id: Unique identifier
• created_at: Parsed datetime (optional)

get_cheerlights_history(count: int = 5)

Returns ColorHistory with recent changes (1-100 entries).

analyze_color_statistics(sample_size: int = 50)

Returns ColorStatistics with:

• Color frequency counts
• Most/least popular colors
• Analysis period information
• Unique color count

search_colors(color: str, limit: int = 20)

Returns ColorSearchResult with matching entries.

get_hex_color_code(color_name: str)

Returns HexColor with hex code and RGB values.

Resources

• cheerlights://current - Current color status
• cheerlights://history/{count} - Recent color history
• cheerlights://colors/supported - All supported colors

Example Queries for Claude

• "What's the current CheerLights color and when was it last changed?"
• "Show me the last 20 CheerLights color changes"
• "Analyze the color usage statistics for the last 100 changes"
• "Search for all recent times the color was 'blue'"
• "What's the hex code for the CheerLights 'warmwhite' color?"
• "Create a report on CheerLights color trends"

🧪 Testing

# Run all tests
uv run pytest

# Run with coverage
uv run pytest --cov=cheerlights_mcp

# Run specific test files
uv run pytest tests/test_tools.py -v

🏗️ Architecture

cheerlights-mcp/
├── src/cheerlights_mcp/
│   ├── api/              # ThingSpeak API client
│   ├── models/           # Pydantic data models
│   ├── tools/            # MCP tool implementations
│   ├── utils/            # Utilities (color mapping, statistics)
│   └── server.py         # Main FastMCP server
├── tests/                # Comprehensive test suite
└── examples/             # Usage examples

Key Components

• ThingSpeakClient: Async HTTP client for CheerLights API
• Pydantic Models: Type-safe data validation and serialization
• Structured Output: Full support for MCP structured responses
• Comprehensive Error Handling: Graceful degradation and logging
• Statistics Engine: Color usage analysis and trend calculation

🎨 Supported Colors

CheerLights supports these standard colors:

• Primary: red, green, blue
• Secondary: cyan, magenta, yellow
• Extended: orange, pink, purple, white, warmwhite, oldlace
• Utility: black

Each color includes hex codes and RGB values for precise representation.

📊 Example Data

Current Color Response

{
  "color": "red",
  "timestamp": "2024-01-15 14:30:22 UTC",
  "entry_id": "12345",
  "created_at": "2024-01-15T14:30:22Z"
}

Statistics Response

{
  "color_counts": {"red": 15, "blue": 12, "green": 8},
  "most_popular": "red",
  "least_popular": "green", 
  "total_changes": 35,
  "unique_colors": 3,
  "analysis_period": "2 hours"
}

Development Setup

# Clone and setup
git clone https://github.com/cheerlights/cheerlights-mcp.git
cd cheerlights-mcp
uv sync --dev

# Install pre-commit hooks
uv run pre-commit install

# Run tests
uv run pytest -v

📝 Changelog

Version 2.0.0

• Complete rewrite using modern MCP Python SDK
• Structured Output support for all tools
• Enhanced API client with proper error handling
• Comprehensive test suite with >90% coverage
• Type safety with Pydantic models throughout
• New tools: statistics, search, hex color codes
• Resources and prompts for richer integration
• Modern packaging with uv and pyproject.toml

Version 1.0.0

• Initial FastMCP implementation
• Basic current color and history tools
• Simple ThingSpeak integration

📄 License

This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE file for details.

🔗 Links

• CheerLights Project: cheerlights.com
• MCP Documentation: modelcontextprotocol.io
• ThingSpeak API: thingspeak.com
• Original Tutorial: Creating MCP Servers

🎄 About CheerLights

CheerLights is a global Internet of Things project that synchronizes colored lights all around the world to create a synchronized light display. The project was created by Hans Scharler and has connected thousands of lights across the globe since 2011. When someone changes the color on the CheerLights Discord Server, all participating lights change to that color in near real-time.

This MCP server provides AI assistants with rich access to CheerLights data, enabling analysis of global lighting trends, color popularity, and temporal patterns in this unique IoT dataset.