MCP Service

An ID photo lab your agent can use today

Point any MCP client at ID.PHOTOS and your agent can turn an ordinary photograph into a compliant ID photo for more than a hundred national standards — passports, visas, residence cards — with the measurements checked and the verdict returned in the same call. No account, no sign-up, no API key.

A laptop running an AI assistant beside a printed sheet of finished ID photos

Agent instructions Browse the standards Rendering, checking and previews are free. One finished photo is paid for at a time.

Connect in one step

There is nothing to sign up for and no key to paste.

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "id-photos": {
      "type": "http",
      "url": "https://id.photos/retail/mcp/server"
    }
  }
}

JSON-RPC 2.0 over MCP streamable HTTP. initialize and tools/list answer immediately, so a client can look at the whole tool list before it does anything at all.

What your agent can do

Tool	What it does	Cost
`list_standards`	Every standard on offer, by country	Free
`get_photo_spec`	One standard's size, resolution and rules — with a link to the published specification	Free
`process_photo`	Photograph in, compliant photo and per-rule verdict out	Free
`process_photo_compare`	Renders both the plain and the studio background, to be compared	Free
`select_rendition`	Chooses which of the two the order delivers	Free
`get_session`	The state of a photo: its checks, its rendition, whether it is paid	Free
`get_preview`	The watermarked preview, enough to judge the photo	Free
`get_purchase_options`	The price and the ways it can be paid	Free
`create_checkout`	Opens a card payment and returns a link for the customer to pay on	Free
`register_payment_attempt` · `redeem_purchase`	Reports a store transaction, and hands in the receipt	Free
`download_photo`	The finished, unwatermarked image	Paid

Everything up to delivery is free, however many times it runs — so an agent can render a photograph, show the customer what failed, and render it again without anything being owed. Downloading a photo that has been paid for, again, next year, is also free.

Compliance is the product

The head height, the eye line, the crop, the background, the print size — every standard defines them differently, and a photo that misses one is rejected at the counter. Each processed photo comes back with the measurements that were applied and a pass or fail against every rule, so your agent can tell the customer what is wrong before anyone pays.

get_photo_spec also returns the published specification page for the standard. Hand that link to the customer rather than paraphrasing the rules: it is the version that stays current when a country changes them.

An ID photo beside a scale marking the required head height

No account, and what that means

The photo id is the credential

process_photo returns a file_id. That id is what identifies the work from then on — keep it, and treat it as a secret.

Come back to it any time

A dropped reply, a restart, the next morning: get_session reads the photo and its payment state back, so the client is never the authority on either.

One photo at a time

There is no balance to top up and no bill at the end of the month. A payment buys the photo it was made against.

Paying for a photo

Two ways, and they differ in who can begin the payment. By card, the agent asks for a payment link and hands it to the customer. Through the App Store or Google Play, only the customer's own device can start it, and the agent's part is to report the result.

No agent is ever given a card number. Card details are entered on Stripe's own page, by the customer. This service cannot accept a card number and will not ask for one — and nor should anything built on it.

By card	Through a store
`create_checkout` returns a Stripe-hosted link. The customer pays there.	`register_payment_attempt` announces the transaction id as soon as the store issues it — including when the purchase then fails, so a refund months later still finds the right photo.
Nothing to hand back: Stripe confirms to the server directly, so the agent simply waits.	`redeem_purchase` hands in the receipt. It is verified with the store that issued it, and the order is then paid.

Either way, get_session is the authority on whether a photo is paid — ask rather than remember, because a refund can arrive after a sale. More methods are planned, PayPal and crypto among them, and each will say in the same field whether an agent can begin it.

Getting started

Add the server to your MCP client The configuration above. There is no key to paste and nothing else to set.
Pick a standard list_standards, or browse them at /photo-specs.
Render and check Send the photograph, read the verdict, fix what failed. All free.
Deliver The customer buys the photo in the app on their device; your agent redeems the receipt and downloads the finished file.

Read the agent instructions

The instructions carry the full tool reference, a worked run, what every error means and the rules to follow — written to be read by an agent.