Steel tools MCP server
Connect AI directly to your steel operation
10 steel tools — calculators for gauges, plate, shapes, pipe schedules, bolts and mill certs, plus an RFQ generator and a PDF markup writer — published as a public MCP server. Point Claude, ChatGPT or any MCP client at it and your assistant answers steel questions, and builds steel documents, instead of guessing. No auth, no signup.
A real tool call
live endpoint“What do twelve W21X50s at 40 ft weigh?”
→ steel_shape_weight
W21X50 weighs 50 lb/ft. A 40 ft piece weighs 2000 lb; 12 pieces weigh 24000 lb (12.0 US tons).
The answer comes from AISC shape data on our server, not from the model’s memory — and it cites this site.
Live proof
The same tools your AI assistant calls
This lookup runs on the same shape data the MCP server serves — 1,004 AISC shapes with piece weights for any length and count. What you see here is what your assistant gets.
Shape weight lookup
| Shape | lb/ft | Depth (in) | Area (in²) | 40 ft × 1 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| W14X730 | 730 | 22.4 | 215 | 29,200 lb |
| W14X665 | 665 | 21.6 | 196 | 26,600 lb |
| W36X652 | 652 | 41.1 | 192 | 26,080 lb |
| W14X605 | 605 | 20.9 | 178 | 24,200 lb |
| W40X593 | 593 | 43 | 174 | 23,720 lb |
| W14X550 | 550 | 20.2 | 162 | 22,000 lb |
| W27X539 | 539 | 32.5 | 159 | 21,560 lb |
| W36X529 | 529 | 39.8 | 156 | 21,160 lb |
Showing 8 of 273 in this family. Narrow it with the search box.
Top matches shown — the full roster lives on the free tool page.
10 tools, live today
Most are reference lookups and calculators. Two — the RFQ generator and the PDF markup writer — take your takeoff or drawing and hand back a finished file. This table renders from the same definitions the server registers, so it cannot drift from what your assistant actually gets.
| Tool | What it answers |
|---|---|
Steel Gauge Thickness steel_gauge_thickness | Look up sheet steel gauge thickness (gauges 3-28) in inches and mm with lb/ft², for plain, galvanized or stainless series. Published nominal values for estimating and orientation, not design guidance. |
Steel Plate Weight steel_plate_weight | Compute carbon steel plate weight from thickness (decimal or fraction) and width/length in inches, with optional material cost via price_per_lb. Published nominal values for estimating and orientation, not design guidance. |
Structural Shape Weight steel_shape_weight | Look up an AISC shape designation (W, C, MC, L, HSS, PIPE) for lb/ft, depth and area, with optional piece weight. 14th-Edition-era data. Published nominal values for estimating and orientation, not design guidance. |
Steel Connection Reference steel_connection_reference | Describe a structural steel connection type (behaviour, use, what goes wrong) by name, alias or slug — or look up a structural bolt grade (A325, A490, A307). Published nominal values for estimating and orientation, not design guidance. |
Bolt Pretension & Turn-of-the-Nut steel_bolt_pretension | RCSC minimum pretension for A325/A490 structural bolts by diameter, with the turn-of-the-nut rotation when a bolt length is given. Published nominal values for estimating and orientation, not design guidance. |
Pipe Schedule Lookup steel_pipe_schedule | Steel pipe dimensions by NPS and schedule: OD, wall, inside diameter and lb/ft for schedules 5, 10, 40/STD, 80/XS, 160 and XXS. Omit the schedule to list them all. Published nominal values for estimating and orientation, not design guidance. |
Bar & Tube Section Weight steel_section_weight | Weight of round bar, square bar, flat bar or round tube from dimensions in inches — lb/ft and optional piece weight, in carbon, stainless or aluminum. For AISC designations use steel_shape_weight; for plate use steel_plate_weight. Published nominal values for estimating and orientation, not design guidance. |
Mill Test Report Mechanicals Screen steel_mtr_check | Screen a mill cert's yield and tensile against the specified limits for A992, A572 Gr. 50 or A36 — a screening aid, not acceptance. Published nominal values for estimating and orientation, not design guidance. |
RFQ Workbook Generator steel_rfq_generate | Generate a vendor-ready Request for Quotation (.xlsx) from structured takeoff line items — grouped by material, with vendor pricing columns, totals and standard terms. You pass parsed line items and a company name; returns a download link that expires within ~48 hours. Nothing you submit is stored. |
Bluebeam PDF Markup Writer steel_pdf_markup | Add real Bluebeam-compatible annotation objects to a drawing PDF — counts, length/area measurements with live scales, RFI clouds, callouts — from a markups JSON you supply plus placement coordinates. Pass the PDF as an https URL or small base64; returns a marked PDF download link that expires within ~48 hours. Markups appear in Bluebeam Revu's Markups List. You decide placement; the tool guarantees the format. Nothing you submit is stored. |
Connect in a minute
Point your assistant at the endpoint
Streamable HTTP, stateless, no key to manage. Listed in the official MCP registry as ai.structupath/steel-tools.
Endpoint
https://www.structupath.ai/api/mcpClaude
- claude.ai / Claude Desktop: Settings → Connectors → Add custom connector, paste the endpoint URL, name it anything. New chats can then call the steel tools.
- Claude Code:
claude mcp add --transport http steel-tools https://www.structupath.ai/api/mcp
ChatGPT
- Custom connector: Settings → Connectors → Create, paste the endpoint URL, no authentication.
- Custom MCP connector support varies by ChatGPT plan and is still rolling out — if you don’t see the option, your plan may not include it yet. Cursor, agent SDKs and any other MCP client take the same URL.
Where this goes
The 10 tools above are live. These are not — they are the direction: from published reference data toward your operation itself.
RFI monitoring
An agent that watches incoming RFIs and answered logs, flags the ones that touch your scope, and drafts responses from your project documents.
ERP & production-data integration
Tools that read your production system — PowerFab-class ERPs — so an assistant can answer sequence, station and load questions from live shop data.
Project document search
Search across a project's drawings, specs and submittals, so "what does the spec say about faying surfaces" gets answered from your spec, with the section cited.
Frequently asked questions
- What is MCP, in plain terms?
- MCP (Model Context Protocol) is the standard way to give an AI assistant tools it can call. Instead of the model guessing what a W21X50 weighs from its training data, it calls our server, runs the real lookup, and answers with the actual number — citing this site. Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor and most agent frameworks speak it.
- Is it free?
- Yes. The server is public — no auth, no signup, no rate-limit games. It runs on the same data as the free calculators on this site, and it stays free the same way they do.
- What data does it access?
- None of your systems. The reference tools are stateless lookups — a question in, an answer out, nothing stored. The two work-product tools take the data you send in the request, generate a file, and hand back a download link that a daily cleanup deletes within about 48 hours. Nothing you send is kept beyond that link — and because the link is unguessable but public, treat it like any shared file: anyone you forward it to, or any saved chat transcript it lands in, can open it until it expires.
- Does it work with my AI?
- If it speaks MCP, yes. Claude (claude.ai, Claude Desktop, Claude Code), Cursor, and most agent SDKs connect over Streamable HTTP. ChatGPT supports custom MCP connectors on some plans — availability varies. Anything else that takes an MCP server URL works too.
- What's coming next?
- The 10 tools split two ways: calculators and reference lookups, plus two work products — the RFQ generator and PDF markup writer — that turn a takeoff or a drawing into a finished file. The roadmap — not yet available — is operational: RFI monitoring, ERP and production-data integration, and project document search, so an assistant can answer from your jobs, not just from published tables. If you want that wired into your systems, that's what the Steel AI Assessment scopes.
Want these tools wired into your own systems?
The public server answers from published tables. The Steel AI Assessment — $1,500, one day inside your operation — maps which of your workflows an assistant could work this way, and delivers the AI Opportunity Map of what to build first.
Free 30-minute discovery call first • No obligation