OpenStudio-MCP

NLR's OpenStudio-MCP (or Model Context Protocol) tool connects artificial intelligence (AI) assistants to professional building energy modeling tools.

OpenStudio-MCP lets an AI assistant carry out end-to-end building energy modeling workflows, making custom modeling and analysis accessible to people who are not programmers. It connects an AI assistant to NLR's established OpenStudio^® and the U.S. Department of Energy's EnergyPlus^® simulation engine. By wrapping those trusted, standards-based resources into a guided process, OpenStudio-MCP enables the assistant to correctly call the appropriate tool, bringing their capabilities within reach of people who previously could not use them. This lets a user create, modify, simulate, and analyze building energy models without writing a program.

Capabilities

Using a plain-language sentence, OpenStudio-MCP can:

1. Connect to the tools, skills, and measures needed to respond to the prompt, such as "Compare lighting options for this office model."

2. Run the analysis.

3. Report the results back to the AI assistant.

Using the OpenStudio software development kit and EnergyPlus simulation engine, OpenStudio-MCP provides more than 150 modeling operations spanning the full workflow, including:

• Building creation: Geometry from a description, a floor plan, or a standard building type, plus constructions, loads, and schedules

• Heating and cooling: ASHRAE 90.1 Appendix G baseline systems, plus dedicated outdoor air, variable refrigerant flow, and radiant systems, down to individual pumps, coils, and controls

• Measures: Apply curated recipes from NLR's ComStock™ and OpenStudio common-measures libraries through guided tools, or author an entirely new measure from a plain-language request, with the AI assistant doing the programming

• Simulation and diagnosis: Run EnergyPlus, monitor progress, and interpret failures

• Results: Show energy use intensity, end uses, time-series data, equipment sizing, and before-and-after comparisons

• Quality control and visualization: Validate a model before simulating, and view geometry and results in 3D.

The EnergyPlus engine handles the physics: how heat, air, and moisture move; how daylight and shadows fall; how heating, cooling, and humidity equipment respond; and how all of it plays out hour by hour across a full year. EnergyPlus can simulate a range of building types.

Results come back in the AI assistant chat session. Because the process is a conversation, a user can keep refining the model, asking for changes or deeper analysis until it best answers the question with the desired level of detail and accuracy.

OpenStudio-MCP runs on your own machine or on a shared server where each user gets an isolated workspace. For large studies, it can also drive the OpenStudio Analysis Framework on an organization's own server.

To set up OpenStudio-MCP, follow the instructions on the GitHub page.

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