gr-scraper-mcp

MCP server that tracks live board game inventory on thegamerules.com. On each run it scrapes the full catalogue, diffs it against the last stored snapshot, and reports what was added and what was removed. Deployed on Render, backed by Upstash Redis, with a Telegram bot interface.

How it works

1. Puppeteer launches a headless Chromium browser and visits the product listing pages
2. Images, fonts, stylesheets, and tracking scripts are blocked to speed up rendering
3. The scraper waits for .name elements to appear, then collects all game titles
4. The live list is compared against the snapshot stored in Redis
5. Added and removed games are returned, and the snapshot is updated

MCP tool

Tool	Description
check_game_changes	Scrape live games, diff against stored snapshot, update storage. Returns added, removed, total, stored_before.

Telegram bot

Command	Action
/check	Trigger a scrape and reply with what changed
/status	Show stored game count without scraping
Any other message	Treated as a /check request

If TELEGRAM_CHAT_ID is set, the bot also pushes a notification whenever the MCP tool is called from Claude.

Environment variables

Variable	Required	Description
UPSTASH_REDIS_REST_URL	✅	Upstash Redis REST endpoint
UPSTASH_REDIS_REST_TOKEN	✅	Upstash Redis REST token
TELEGRAM_BOT_TOKEN	✅	Token from @BotFather
TELEGRAM_CHAT_ID	Optional	Chat ID for push notifications

Setup

See DEPLOY.md for full step-by-step deployment instructions.

Local development

cp .env.example .env   # fill in your credentials
npm install
npm start              # requires Chromium at /usr/bin/chromium
                       # or set PUPPETEER_EXECUTABLE_PATH

Stack

• Runtime: Node.js 20
• MCP: @modelcontextprotocol/sdk over HTTP (Streamable HTTP transport)
• Browser: Puppeteer Core + system Chromium
• Storage: Upstash Redis
• Bot: node-telegram-bot-api (webhook mode)
• Deployment: Render (Docker, web service)