Statutory travel allowances on the rate tables the tax authorities publish, and the trips you priced with them. It prices one business trip against a bundled rate table and shows the arithmetic that produced the number: the allowance per day, the partial-day fraction the scheme's own ladder gave, every deduction for a meal somebody else paid for, and the total in the scheme's own currency. Three schemes ship with it, the Polish delegation regulation at home and per country, the HMRC benchmark scale rates for travel inside the UK, and the US GSA CONUS standard M&IE with the lodging cap. Start and end are instants rather than wall clocks, so a trip across a clock change is 23 or 25 hours, and the Polish 24-hour period and the US calendar day give different and equally correct answers to the same trip. Trips can be saved under a name with a TRIP-YYYY-NNNN id, listed with a total per currency, reported per scheme and per month, and handed to the expense tracker as ready-made expense_add arguments. The tables are files inside the package rather than a feed, so the same trip priced twice gives the same answer, and every rate carries its authority, instrument, source URL and effective date.
perdiem_rates, perdiem_calc, trip_list and perdiem_report are reads and safe to auto-approve; keep trip_record behind a click, since it is the one tool that writes and the one that spends one of the month's five free trips and burns a TRIP id that is never reused.
| You say | Tool |
|---|---|
| What is the per diem for 58 hours in Krakow, leaving Tuesday at 8am, with breakfast provided on the first day and two hotel nights? | perdiem_calc |
| Price the same trip under the HMRC benchmark rates instead. | perdiem_calc |
| Save that as the Krakow audit trip and show me what I have claimed this quarter. | trip_record |
A destination that is not in the bundled table is refused by name rather than priced at a neighbour's rate. Measured through a real client on 2026-09-05: asked for a Polish per diem for Oman, the model called perdiem_calc, got back the server's own refusal (Poland domestic plus 34 countries abroad are bundled, so a missing country means not verified here rather than no rate exists), called perdiem_rates to check the coverage for itself, and then said plainly that it would not guess a number. An earlier build of this server answered that same trip with Romania's EUR 42.00 diet, because "romania".includes("oman") is true; the fallback is a prefix match now. In the same session a 58-hour Krakow trip came back at PLN 258.75, PLN 123.75 of diets plus PLN 135.00 of lodging ryczalt, with the arguments assembled from the prose unprompted.
The file is mcp.json, and the key inside it is mcpServers.
| Scope | Path |
|---|---|
| Cline CLI | ~/.cline/mcp.json |
| The editor extension | opened from the Cline panel, not by path; the documentation deliberately calls it the MCP settings JSON used by the extension |
If you also run Claude Desktop, the shortest path there is one click: per-diem.mcpb
from the bundle catalog opens as an extension, with no JSON and no terminal.
Cline reads its own config, so here it is:
The config block:
{
"mcpServers": {
"per-diem": {
"command": "node",
"args": ["/absolute/path/to/mcp-servers/servers/per-diem/dist/index.js"],
"disabled": false,
"autoApprove": []
}
}
}The node command above wants a built file. From a clone, once:
git clone https://github.com/theluckystrike/mcp-servers.git
cd mcp-servers && npm install
npm run build -w packages/mcp-license -w servers/per-diemThat writes servers/per-diem/dist/index.js, and its absolute path is the one argument
the config needs.
The npm packages are not published yet, so the form below returns a 404 today. It is here because it is what the entry becomes the day the publish lands, with nothing else changed:
{
"mcpServers": {
"per-diem": {
"command": "npx",
"args": ["-y", "@theluckystrike/mcp-per-diem"]
}
}
}No full-app restart. The MCP settings actions include restarting an unresponsive server if its tools do not appear.
Nothing is published to npm yet, so the working install paths are the ones above: the .mcpb bundle from the bundle catalog, a clone and build, or the hosted URL.
The same server runs at https://mcp.zovo.one/mcp/per-diem over MCP streamable HTTP, no install. Mint a free token with curl https://mcp.zovo.one/mcp/token, or use a Pro key. It has no filesystem, so a file comes back as a one-hour download link.
Write the transport in. Omitting type falls back to the legacy sse transport, which will not talk to this endpoint:
{
"mcpServers": {
"per-diem": {
"type": "streamableHttp",
"url": "https://mcp.zovo.one/mcp/per-diem",
"headers": { "Authorization": "Bearer <token>" }
}
}
}Cline is the one client here with an unsafe transport default. `type` selects it, and omitting `type` falls back to the legacy sse transport, so a streamable HTTP endpoint needs it written in or you will debug a server that is fine. Local entries carry "disabled" and an "autoApprove" array.
Free: Rate lookups and calculations are unlimited on every tier, on all three schemes: the tables are public regulation, and metering the reading of a regulation would be charging for the tax authority's work rather than for this server's. 5 trips saved a calendar month, counted by start date, and unlimited trip lists. Pro is $19 once, verified offline.
The CLI reads ~/.cline/mcp.json. For the extension, do not hunt for a path: MCP Servers icon, Configure tab, Configure MCP Servers. cline mcp opens a wizard, and cline config mcp --json is the non-interactive form.
Set the transport explicitly. Omitting type falls back to the legacy sse transport, so streamable HTTP needs "type": "streamableHttp" written in.
Approve the read-only ones and leave the writing ones behind a click: each entry carries an autoApprove array and a disabled flag.
MCP Per Diem in detail · The same server in Windsurf and Claude.ai and Claude Desktop connectors · Every server in Cline · Guides · Cline docs · Buy Pro
Per diem and travel allowances from chat, on the rate tables the tax authorities publish