Rescuegroups MCP server

@pipeworx/rescuegroups

Adoptable animals listed by rescues and shelters on RescueGroups.org, and the organizations themselves — name, breed, age, sex, size, temperament flags, photos, adoption fee, and the rescue's contact details, adoption process and areas served. Searchable by species, postal-code radius, breed and trait.

Part of Pipeworx — an MCP gateway connecting AI agents to 1576+ live data sources.

Tools

the main search. Answers "adoptable beagles within 50 miles of 15206", "cats good with kids in Pittsburgh", "dogs needing a foster". Returns the animal's full attribute set with breeds, pictures, species and listing organization resolved inline.

• rescuegroupsadoptable(species?, postalcode?, lat?, lon?, miles?, kilometers?, breed?, sex?, agegroup?, sizegroup?, name?, goodwithkids?, goodwithdogs?, goodwithcats?, views?, orgid?, includeadopted?, sort?, limit?, page?, apiKey) —

picture, colour, pattern, status and the listing org.

• rescuegroupsanimal(animalid, _apiKey) — one animal in full, with every

rescues and shelters. Answers "shelters within 25 miles of me", "who is RescueGroups org 1234".

• rescuegroupsorganizations(postalcode?, lat?, lon?, miles?, kilometers?, name?, state?, city?, type?, orgid?, sort?, limit?, page?, _apiKey) —

is what rescuegroups_adoptable's species argument expects.

• rescuegroupsspecies(limit?, page?, apiKey) — the species vocabulary, which

for building an exact breed filter.

• rescuegroupsbreeds(species?, limit?, page?, apiKey) — breeds per species,

Auth

BYO-key only. Pipeworx holds no RescueGroups key and this pack never reads a platform one — _apiKey is required in every tool's input schema, so the gateway's disclosure surface tells a caller before the call, not after a refusal.

Request a free public key at . It is a short form (name, email, organisation, site URL, which species and whether you want a national search). It is open to individual developers — "not incorporated" is an accepted incorporation status, and the API docs state plainly that you do not need a RescueGroups account, only a public key. Staff review the form and email the key back, so it is not instant self-serve; the refusal message says so rather than promising a key in one click.

Note for anyone reading docs/paid-upgrade-watchlist.md: its entry filing

RescueGroups under "signup not obtainable by a normal dev — requires being an

animal rescue with a vet, shelter, euthanasia policy" describes the *partner

onboarding* at /partner-requirements-and-expectations/, which is how a

rescue gets its animals listed. The public API key form is a different,

open one. That entry has been corrected.

Data source

over HTTPS. Full reference (unauthenticated, readable without a key):

• — RescueGroups.org v5 public API, JSON:API

Things the next person would otherwise rediscover the hard way

An invalid key is a silent zero, not an error. Probed live 2026-09-05:

GET /v5/public/animals/search/available/dogs/?limit=1     (no Authorization)
  -> 401 application/vnd.api+json
     {"errors":[{"status":401,"source":{"header":"Authorization"},
       "title":"Missing authorization header",
       "detail":"Missing authorization header - apikey authentication required"}]}

GET /v5/public/animals/search/available/dogs/?limit=1     (Authorization: <junk>)
  -> 200 OK, Content-Length: 0, Content-Type: text/plain;charset=UTF-8

Shortened. The full README is on GitHub.