Open data and API

Manx Wire publishes Isle of Man news and island information. The same information is available as a free, read-only data endpoint, so other apps and services can answer questions about the island and send readers back to the full story. There is nothing to sign up for: no account, no key and no sign-in.

The endpoint

https://manxwire.im/mcp

It uses the MCP standard over HTTPS (Streamable HTTP): you send JSON-RPC 2.0 messages with POST.
It is read-only. It can only look things up; it cannot change anything, and it keeps no sessions and stores nothing about you.
Every answer carries source (who published the data), licence, asOf (when the data is from) and url (the page on Manx Wire to read more).
Answers are short and bounded: at most twenty items, and for some data only a summary with a link.
Warnings are never taken from a saved copy: flood and gale warnings are read from the official sources at the moment you ask, and the answer gives the time it was read or says it could not check.
A machine-readable description is at /.well-known/mcp/server-card.json.

Add it to your app

Assistants and apps that support the Model Context Protocol (MCP) can connect to a remote server by its address. In yours:

Open the settings where connectors (sometimes called remote servers or integrations) are added.
Choose to add a custom connector.
Name it “Manx Wire” and paste https://manxwire.im/mcp as its address.
Save. No sign-in is asked for.

Then ask in plain words: “What is the next ferry to Heysham?”, “What is on in Peel this weekend?”, “When is high water at Douglas?”, “How did my MHK vote this month?”. To try it by hand, run npx @modelcontextprotocol/inspector, choose Streamable HTTP and paste the address, or use curl:

curl -s https://manxwire.im/mcp \
  -H 'content-type: application/json' \
  -H 'accept: application/json, text/event-stream' \
  -d '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":1,"method":"tools/call","params":{"name":"latest_news","arguments":{"limit":3}}}'

What you can ask for

Tool	What it returns	Source
`search_island`	Stories, events and useful pages across the site, with short descriptions and links	Manx Wire
`latest_news`	The newest stories, optionally for one section	Manx Wire
`get_article`	One story as plain text, with its sources and canonical address	Manx Wire
`ferries_now`	The next Steam Packet sailings and their status	Steam Packet sailing board
`flights_now`	The next arrivals and departures at Ronaldsway	Isle of Man Airport
`weather_and_tides`	Town forecasts, the day’s summary, and the next high and low waters at a harbour	MET Norway (CC BY 4.0); tide predictions (CC BY 4.0)
`next_buses`	Scheduled next departures at a stop, or from the ends of a route	Bus Vannin timetables
`events`	What is on between two dates, by category or town	Organisers’ listings
`tynwald_members`	The twelve House of Keys constituencies and their members	Isle of Man Government, Tynwald
`tynwald_votes`	Recent divisions, results and how a member voted	Tynwald Votes and Proceedings
`property_sales`	Registered sales and median prices as figures, with no addresses	Isle of Man Land Registry (Open Government Licence)
`economy_figures`	Jobs, inflation, house prices, the minimum wage and other official statistics	Statistics Isle of Man (Open Government Licence)
`markets`	A short summary of how island-linked shares moved	Delayed market data (summary only)
`essentials`	Emergency numbers and links to everyday services	Manx Wire
`business_directory_search`	Island businesses by name, trade or town	Public business catalogues
`whats_on_box_office`	The Gaiety, Villa Marina and Broadway Cinema programme: dates, prices, age guidance and booking links	Villa Gaiety box office
`rivers_and_tides`	The latest river, rain and tide gauge readings, each with its time	Department of Infrastructure gauges
`flood_and_gale_warnings`	Flood warnings and the gale warning, read live from the official sources; it says when it could not check	FloodWatch; Ronaldsway Met Office shipping forecast
`fisheries`	Scallop quotas and landings so far, fish landed into Manx ports, and Port Erin sea level	DEFA Fisheries, Marine Management Organisation (Open Government Licence)
`bus_travel_updates`	Bus Vannin’s current diversions and closures, optionally for one route	Bus Vannin
`pharmacy_rota`	The Sunday and bank holiday pharmacy rota by area	Isle of Man Government (Open Government Licence)

The endpoint also offers a few documents (about, terms, the list of datasets and their licences) and one ready-made “island briefing” request. More datasets will be added over time.

Licence and attribution

Free to use. There is no charge and no key.
Attribution is required. Name Manx Wire and the source given in each answer, and link back to the page in its url.
Our own reporting may be quoted briefly with a link back. Please do not republish whole stories.
Open data (Open Government Licence, Creative Commons Attribution) keeps its licence. The licence and the credit it asks for are in each answer.
Other public facts (sailings, flights, bus times, Tynwald records, event listings, the business directory) are given as short answers with a link, to help someone find out; they are not for copying in bulk. Market data is a summary only.
Fair use. Keep to a few requests a minute and cache what you can. Requests from an address that sends too many are turned away for a minute.
Heavy or commercial use? Please write to us first: [email protected], or use the contact form.
Travel information is for guidance. Sailings, flights and bus times can change; people should check with the operator before they travel. Tide times are predictions and are not for navigation.

Some things are never offered here: anything that is not already published on Manx Wire, and anything that names private individuals. If you find something that should not be there, please tell us.