Skip to content

Whole Foods (MCP)

Carting Whole Foods through an MCP server. Search, product details, add, remove, view, clear. Cart only — purchasing is the user's.

What it can and cannot do

There is no order-history access. The MCP has only search, product-details, and cart tools. There is no "previous orders" tool, resource, or prompt. So "similar to what we've ordered before" is resolved from a curated usuals list, not by scraping the account.

That's the design. A curated list holds exactly the repeat items and filters out the one-offs, which is better than order history for re-ordering. ASINs are the stable key — store the ASIN, not "the cheddar".

Cart workflow

  1. Search with a simple 1–2 word query. Long multi-word queries dilute results.
  2. Pick the right product, note its ASIN. Use product details if you must disambiguate by brand, size, price, or ingredients.
  3. Add by ASIN.
  4. View the cart to confirm it landed.
  5. If adds fail, log in and save the session, then retry.

can_add_to_cart: false is not broken

Search works logged-out, but cart actions need a logged-in, store-selected session. A false here is an auth state, not a bug. Run the login tool, complete it in the visible window, save the session, and retry.

Weight-based produce and meat work through add-to-cart, it pulls the product page for fresh add-to-cart data. A 400 means the item is genuinely unavailable at the selected store.

The usuals pattern

When the request is "add X like before" or "the usual X":

  1. Look the item up in the usuals list by category and descriptor.
  2. If found, add its ASIN directly — deterministic, same item, no drift.
  3. If not found, search, pick the best match, add it, then append it to the usuals list so next time it's deterministic.
  4. If ambiguous, show the top two or three with price and size and let the user pick. Don't silently guess.

Prices drift, so usuals prices are a baseline for disambiguation, not a guarantee. The live add-to-cart and view-cart are the source of truth.

See also

  • Mealie — the recipe-derived grocery list that feeds the same weekly order