# seed-mcp

MCP server over the public catalogs of major US row-crop seed
vendors — **variety identity** (what each hybrid IS) plus **yield-trial data** (how they actually perform in real cooperator fields). Sibling project to
[`crop-chem-docs`](https://git.jpaul.io/justin/crop-chem-docs)
(pesticide labels), feeding the same Drawbar farm-advisor AI.

**Deployed 2026-05-25** on trashpanda as a sibling sidecar to
`chem-mcp`; the Drawbar advisor calls it via the `seed:` prefix.

## What's in the corpus

**~9,300 indexed records** (one chunk each) across two complementary surfaces:

### Variety identity — 2,398 records

| Source | Count | Vendor | Brand |
|---|---|---|---|
| `bayer_seeds` | 931 | Bayer | DEKALB / Channel (corn) / Asgrow (soy) / WestBred (wheat) / Deltapine |
| `latham` | 264 | Latham Hi-Tech Seeds | Latham (corn / soy) — **independent family brand, Alexander IA** |
| `stine` | 217 | Stine Seed Company | Stine (corn / soy) — **largest US independent, Adel IA** |
| `lg_seeds` | 170 | AgReliant | LG Seeds (corn / soy / sorghum) |
| `golden_harvest` | 139 | Syngenta | Golden Harvest (corn / soy) |
| `robseeco` | 130 | RobSeeCo | Rob-See-Co / Innotech (corn / soy) — **independent, Elkhorn NE; from the seed-guide PDF** |
| `nk` | 122 | Syngenta | NK (corn / soy) |
| `proharvest` | 119 | ProHarvest Seeds | ProHarvest / Apex (corn / soy / wheat) — **independent Corn Belt brand** |
| `agrigold` | 111 | AgReliant | AgriGold (corn / soy) |
| `first_choice` | 78 | 1st Choice Seeds | 1st Choice (corn / soy / wheat) — **employee-owned independent, Rushville IN** |
| `burrus` | 64 | Burrus Seed | Burrus / Power Plus / DONMARIO (corn / soy) — **independent family, Arenzville IL** |
| `ebberts_seeds` | 29 | Ebbert's Seeds | Ebbert's (corn / soy / wheat) — independent E. Corn Belt breeder |
| `agripro` | 24 | Syngenta | AgriPro (wheat — HRW / HRS / HWS / SWW) |

### Yield-trial data — 6,910 documents

| Source | Count | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| `gh_plot_reports` | 4,299 | Golden Harvest plot reports 2024+2025. **Cross-vendor head-to-head** — DEKALB / NK / GH / Pioneer / Channel all appear in the same trial rankings. |
| `lg_plot_reports` | 1,307 | LG Seeds (AgReliant) cross-vendor plots, top-5 per site, 2024+2025. |
| `agrigold_plot_reports` | 1,006 | AgriGold (AgReliant) cross-vendor plots, full ranking + rich plot management, 2024+2025. |
| `proharvest_plots` | 161 | ProHarvest Seeds per-cooperator harvest reports (corn / soy, 2024+2025). Many are **cross-vendor** (ProHarvest / Apex vs Pioneer / DEKALB / Becks / Channel / Wyffels). Structured rank/yield/%H2O/test-wt where the PDF fits the template; off-template third-party reports kept verbatim. |
| `ohio_ocpt_trials` | 69 | **University-extension** trial (OSU/CFAES) — corn + soy per-site, 2024+2025. Independent third-party; ranks CHANNEL / DEKALB / NK / Golden Harvest / LG / AgriGold / Beck's etc. side-by-side. |
| `illinois_vt_trials` | 30 | **University-extension** trial (U of Illinois VT) — corn + soy + **wheat**, 2024+2025. Pioneer / NK + many regionals; rich per-site agronomic metadata. |
| `iowa_icpt_trials` | 24 | **University-extension** trial (Iowa State / ICPT) — corn + soy by district, 2024+2025. Pioneer / DEKALB / Asgrow / NK / Golden Harvest. |
| `agripro_trials` | 14 | Regional wheat trial PDF summaries (PNW, Western Plains, Northern Plains, etc.) |

> The three `*_trials` university sources are **independent third-party** performance data — land-grant programs that test every entered brand (incl. majors we can't catalog directly, like **Pioneer / DEKALB / Brevant**) side-by-side with replication + LSD stats. The publisher is the university; the seed brands live in each row's `brand`.

### Not in the corpus (documented in `docs_mcp/lessons.md`)

- **Pioneer / Corteva (all brands)** — ToS bans automation. This now covers the whole Corteva family — Pioneer, Brevant, **Hoegemeyer** (the consolidation brand absorbing Seed Consultants / Dairyland / Nu-Tech / Terral), and the upcoming Vylor spinoff — all share the same corteva.com ToU. Curated fallback lesson points the farmer at a local dealer; legitimate Corteva-data paths are an official license (openinnovation@corteva.com) or university-extension trial data.
- **NK yield-results** — fiddly ASMX/SOAP endpoint, needs a dedicated reverse-engineer session.
- **Bayer per-variety trial data** — not publicly indexed (DEKALB / Asgrow trial data flows through Channel reps). Partially covered by the GH plot reports' cross-vendor results.

## MCP tools (6)

| Tool | Purpose |
|---|---|
| `search_docs` | Variety IDENTITY — what a hybrid IS (disease ratings, traits, maturity). Hybrid dense+BM25 + cross-encoder rerank + variety-code prefilter. |
| `search_trials` | Variety PERFORMANCE — head-to-head yield trial results. Filterable by crop, state, year, product. |
| `get_page` | Full canonical record for one variety + structured ratings header sourced from the sidecar JSON. |
| `lookup_variety` | Raw sidecar JSON for one variety — **fact-check tool**; call before quoting any specific rating value. |
| `list_versions` | Discover facets (sources, vendors, brands, crops) currently indexed. |
| `crop_seed_api_lessons` | Curated knowledge: Pioneer fallback policy, scale-direction differences across vendors, trait glossary, SCN race coverage notes. |

`search_docs` defaults to `data_type="variety"`; `search_trials` uses `data_type="trial"` — single Chroma collection, metadata-filtered.

## Retrieval — eval-validated

From `eval/results/baseline.md` (21 golden queries, k=5):

| Retriever | Pass | Recall | P@1 | MRR | Avg ms |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| **hybrid+rerank** | **21/21** | **100%** | **90%** | **0.905** | 2064 |
| bm25 | 20/21 | 95% | 81% | 0.833 | 5 |
| hybrid (no rerank) | 15/21 | 71% | 62% | 0.619 | 73 |
| dense | 14/21 | 67% | 38% | 0.440 | 79 |

**Deploy config**: `HYBRID_SEARCH=true` + `RERANK_URL=http://llama-rerank:8080`.

Some surprises worth knowing:

1. **Dense embedding alone is the weakest config**. Variety codes (DKC62-08RIB), gene names (Rps3a), and trait codes (XF) have no semantic neighbors — nomic-embed-text returns noise on them.
2. **Hybrid alone is WORSE than BM25 alone.** RRF dilutes BM25's strong ranking with dense noise. Don't ship without rerank.
3. **BM25-alone (95% recall, 5 ms) is an excellent fallback** when the rerank sidecar is unavailable. The variety-code prefilter in `search_docs` does heavy lifting.
4. **Anti-hallucination queries pass on every retriever** — Pioneer fallback + not-in-corpus product checks hold across all configs.

## Quick start

```bash
git clone https://git.jpaul.io/justin/seed-mcp.git
cd seed-mcp
python -m venv venv && source venv/bin/activate
pip install -r requirements.txt

# Sample-scrape just to verify wiring:
python -m scrape.runner --source bayer_seeds --limit 3

# Full refresh (all 6 sources; expect ~25 min for gh_plot_reports
# with 4 concurrent workers):
python -m scrape.runner --all --force

# Rebuild Chroma + BM25 from the corpus:
OLLAMA_URL=http://192.168.0.125:11434 PRODUCT_NAME=crop_seed \
  python -m rag.index --rebuild

# Run the eval harness:
RERANK_URL=http://localhost:18080 python -m eval.run_eval \
  --queries eval/queries.jsonl --k 5 \
  --output eval/results/baseline.md

# Local MCP server (stdio for Claude Desktop dev):
PRODUCT_NAME=crop_seed python -m docs_mcp.server --transport stdio

# Local HTTP server (matches production transport):
PRODUCT_NAME=crop_seed python -m docs_mcp.server \
  --transport streamable-http --port 8000
```

## Repo layout

```
.
├── CLAUDE.md                      # Canonical agent guide. Read first.
├── PLAN.md                        # Template's 13-phase build guide.
├── README.md
├── requirements.txt
├── Dockerfile
├── sources.json                   # Source catalog (one entry per scraper)
├── deploy/docker-compose.yml      # Drop-in compose snippet for Drawbar
├── .gitea/workflows/
│   ├── refresh.yml                # Monthly cron: scrape + index + image push
│   └── image-only.yml             # On-demand code-only ship cycle
├── scrape/
│   ├── runner.py                  # `python -m scrape.runner --source <id>`
│   ├── changelog.py               # Reused from template
│   └── sources/
│       ├── bayer_seeds.py         # ~475 varieties across 3 brands
│       ├── golden_harvest.py      # ~139 varieties (post-discontinued filter)
│       ├── nk.py                  # 122 varieties (corn + soy)
│       ├── agripro.py             # 24 wheat varieties
│       ├── gh_plot_reports.py     # 4,299 cross-vendor yield trials
│       ├── agripro_trials.py      # 14 regional trial PDFs
│       └── becks_pfr.py           # stub — Sanity GROQ research corpus
├── rag/
│   ├── embeddings.py              # nomic-embed-text via Ollama
│   ├── chunk.py                   # one-chunk-per-variety + trial chunker
│   ├── index.py                   # Chroma + BM25 builder
│   └── bm25.py                    # FTS5 lexical index w/ seed-domain facets
├── docs_mcp/
│   ├── server.py                  # FastMCP — 6 tools, hybrid+rerank
│   ├── lessons.md                 # Curated knowledge layer (Pioneer fallback)
│   └── usage.py                   # TimedCall + JSONL telemetry
├── eval/
│   ├── queries.jsonl              # 21 golden queries
│   ├── retrievers.py              # dense / bm25 / hybrid / hybrid+rerank
│   ├── run_eval.py                # MRR / Recall@k / Precision@1
│   └── results/baseline.md        # Current deploy-config eval numbers
└── corpus/                        # Committed scrape output (CI-refreshed)
    ├── bayer_seeds/
    ├── golden_harvest/
    ├── nk/
    ├── agripro/
    ├── gh_plot_reports/
    └── agripro_trials/
```

## Infrastructure

- **Registry**: pushes to `192.168.0.2:1234` (LAN, no CF body cap); deploys pull `git.jpaul.io/justin/seed-mcp:latest` (public, CF tunnel). Also tagged `:<sha12>` for rollback pinning and `:corpus-YYYY.MM.DD` for snapshot pinning.
- **Embedder pool (CI)**: 3 GPU-pinned Ollama endpoints, weighted toward `.0.125` (RTX 40-series, 242 embeds/sec):
  - `.0.125:11434` ×4 (4090)
  - `.0.2:11436` ×2 (GPU-pinned)
  - `.0.2:11435` ×1 (GPU-pinned)
  - Do NOT use `.0.2:11434` (not GPU-pinned) or `localhost:11434` (works in dev, breaks in CI — runner container has no Ollama on its loopback).
- **Reranker**: shared `llama-rerank` sidecar on trashpanda's Tesla P4 (jina-reranker-v2-base via llama.cpp). One container serves both seed-mcp and crop-chem-docs. **Must be on `drawbar-backend_default` Docker network** — see `deploy/docker-compose.yml` for the network-attach gotcha that caused silent rerank degradation on chem-mcp prior to 2026-05-25.
- **PRODUCT_NAME**: `crop_seed` — used in the Chroma collection name (`crop_seed_docs`), the BM25 db filename (`bm25/crop_seed_docs.db`), and the `crop_seed_api_lessons` tool name. Not `seed_mcp` — that would conflict with the container/service name.

## Deploy mechanics

Watchtower handles auto-deploy. Every push to `seed-mcp/main` that touches `docs_mcp/`, `rag/`, `scrape/`, `requirements.txt`, `Dockerfile`, or `sources.json` triggers `image-only.yml`:

1. Checks out main with full corpus
2. Rebuilds Chroma + BM25 (~3 min on the GPU pool)
3. `docker build` + push three tags to the LAN registry
4. Links the package to the repo via Gitea API
5. Watchtower on trashpanda polls `:latest` every 5 min → pulls + recreates `drawbar-backend-seed-mcp-1`

Corpus refresh runs monthly via `refresh.yml` (1st of each month, 06:00 UTC) — re-scrapes all GREEN sources, commits any corpus diff, rebuilds indexes, ships a new image with `:corpus-YYYY.MM.DD` tagged.

See `CLAUDE.md` for canonical sidecar schemas, the reversed disease-scale gotcha (NK + AgriPro publish 1=best, vs Bayer/GH 9=best), and the scraper conventions.

## Status

| Phase | Status |
|---|---|
| 0 — scaffold | ✅ |
| 1 — scrapers (bayer_seeds / golden_harvest / nk / agripro / gh_plot_reports / agripro_trials) | ✅ |
| 2 — chunk + index | ✅ |
| 3 — MCP tools (6) | ✅ |
| 4-5 — Dockerfile + Gitea CI | ✅ |
| 6 — reranker integration | ✅ (eval-validated; deploy uses hybrid+rerank) |
| 7 — eval harness | ✅ (21 golden queries, baseline committed) |
| 8 — hybrid search | ✅ (default ON) |
| 11 — `crop_seed_api_lessons` curated layer | ✅ (Pioneer fallback + 7 other lessons) |
| 13 — weekly_digest | not planned for seed-mcp |

Remaining work (deferred, not blocking):

- `becks_pfr` scraper (2,089 research docs via public Sanity GROQ)
- 2023 GH plot reports backfill (~3,619 more docs)
- NK yield-results endpoint reverse-engineer
- Channel Seed brand (~320 more Bayer varieties — separate brand under the same sitemap)