Developer builds MCP server with Claude Code to automate Minnesota land search

Project overview

A developer with InfoSec and automation engineering experience built an MCP (Model Context Protocol) server using Claude Code to automate the search for rural Minnesota land. The goal was to find 40+ acres under $150K across 21 counties while applying 10 specific criteria: flood zone status, hospital proximity, mining distance, fiber internet availability, buildability, and other factors.

Technical implementation

The developer used Claude Code to write most of the Python code while steering the architecture and catching bad outputs. The system consists of:

• Python/FastMCP server with 7 tools
• SQLite database for persistence and deduplication
• Zillow and LandWatch scraping using httpx and BeautifulSoup
• n8n workflow for scheduled daily runs
• Docker containerization
• Compatibility with Claude or any MCP-compatible client

Results and insights

The first run processed 49 raw listings and filtered them down to 29 unique parcels that met the criteria. One notable find was a $44,900, 40-acre listing in Crow Wing County that the developer noted still needs investigation.

The developer emphasized that an MCP server isn't static code — it gets smarter as the model using it gets smarter. This architectural decision, though stumbled into initially, proved to be the right approach.

Developer approach

The developer has been using AI seriously for about two months when starting this project and describes themselves as "not a vibe coder" — they wanted to understand what they were building rather than just generating code without comprehension.