Jisr · جسر

A bilingual Alexa+ add-on (self-hosted MCP server) that helps Arabic-speaking newcomers feel at home in a new US city — by voice.

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Inspiration

What it does

How we built it

Challenges we ran into

Accomplishments that we're proud of

What we learned

What's next for Jisr · جسر

Inspiration

Moving to a new country, the first questions aren't in a guidebook: Where can I buy halal meat? When is Maghrib here? Where's the mosque for Friday prayer? How do I tell the pharmacist my son has a fever? Millions of Arabic-speaking families in the US — refugees, students, new immigrants — ask these every week, often while their English is still growing. Grandparents and parents are exactly the people who find voice easier than apps. Alexa+ is in the kitchen already; it should speak their language and know their needs.

What it does

Jisr is an Alexa+ add-on implemented as a self-hosted MCP server with four tools:

  • find_places_like_home — closest Middle Eastern restaurants, halal food, halal groceries, mosques, bakeries, coffee, public libraries (free English classes) and clinics, with distance, hours and an Arabic name when known.
  • prayer_times — today's five prayers for any city, computed locally with the standard astronomical method (ISNA, MWL, Egypt, Makkah, Karachi).
  • say_it_in_english — the exact sentence to say at the doctor, pharmacy, school, bus, landlord or in an emergency, in English with the Arabic meaning.
  • first_week_plan — a 7-day "feel at home" plan with a real place for each day.

Every answer comes back as structured content plus a speech string in the user's language (Arabic or English), so Alexa+ can read it aloud with no extra work.

How we built it

  • MCP spec 2025-11-25 over Streamable HTTP (POST /mcp), zero-dependency Node 20: session IDs, 202 for notifications, protocol-version header checks, Origin allow-list, rate limiting.
  • Free, open, keyless data: OpenStreetMap via Overpass and Nominatim, with a bundled ODbL snapshot for 5 cities so answers return in under 500 ms, matching Alexa+'s latency requirement. Prayer times are pure math — no API.
  • Since the Alexa+ MCP Toolkit and Web Simulator are partner-only, we built an Alexa+ experience simulator: a web page that is a real MCP client, with voice input, spoken replies, an Echo Show-style screen and a live panel showing every JSON-RPC message.
  • Automated tests cover the MCP handshake, every tool, Arabic output, prayer-time sanity and a full HTTP session with a latency assertion.

Challenges

Public Overpass servers can take 30+ seconds, far too slow for voice, so we added a snapshot layer with a short live-query budget. Arabic needs RTL rendering and Arabic voices, and city names arrive in Arabic script ("هيوستن"), so the simulator maps them.

Accomplishments

A fully working, standards-compliant MCP server that any MCP client can use today, and a voice experience in Arabic as well as English.

What we learned

MCP's tool annotations, structured content and the Streamable HTTP session model map very cleanly onto voice. Designing every result around a single spoken sentence made the tools better for chat agents too.

What's next

Account linking (OAuth 2.1 + PKCE) for saved home city and family reminders, Echo Show visuals via MCP Apps, more languages (Dari, Pashto, Somali, Spanish), and partnerships with refugee resettlement agencies.

Built with

Node.js, Model Context Protocol (2025-11-25, Streamable HTTP), OpenStreetMap (Overpass, Nominatim), Web Speech API, Render.

Product feedback (required)

  • Tools used: Alexa+ MCP QuickStart and account-linking docs (to shape the server), MCP spec 2025-11-25, MCP Inspector-style testing via our own client.
  • What worked well: The QuickStart's requirement list is concrete (Streamable HTTP, 401/PRM rules, <500 ms) and easy to test against; saying account linking is optional for non-personal tools saved time.
  • What needs work: Individual setup pages don't say the MCP Toolkit / Web Simulator are partner-only, so it took time to learn we couldn't test on a real Alexa+. A public sandbox or validator for MCP add-ons (even text-only) would help hackathon builders a lot. Arabic locale availability for Alexa+ isn't documented.
  • Onboarding: Zero to a working MCP server was under an hour from the spec; the blocker was only the gated Alexa+ tooling.
  • Would we build with these again? Yes. MCP made one server usable by Alexa+ and by every other MCP client, and voice is the right interface for the families Jisr serves. We would build the account-linked version as soon as the Alexa+ MCP Toolkit opens up.

Friction log

  1. Task: test the MCP server inside a real Alexa+ device or the Web Simulator. Steps: followed the Alexa+ MCP QuickStart, then looked for Toolkit/Simulator access. Expected: a self-serve sandbox. Actual: the tools are partner-only, and individual pages don't say so. Severity: high. Workaround: built our own simulator that is a real MCP client. Suggestion: say "partner-only" on every setup page and offer a public, text-only validator for MCP add-ons.
  2. Task: support Arabic speakers. Steps: searched the Alexa+ docs for supported locales. Expected: a locale list for add-ons. Actual: Arabic availability isn't documented. Severity: medium. Workaround: every tool returns both English and Arabic speech. Suggestion: publish the locale matrix for Alexa+ add-ons.
  3. Task: meet the <500 ms latency budget with live OpenStreetMap data. Steps: called public Overpass servers. Expected: sub-second replies. Actual: 5–30 s at busy times. Severity: medium (third-party). Workaround: bundled ODbL snapshot plus a short live-query budget. Suggestion: document recommended timeout and retry behavior for slow tool backends.

Feature requests

  • Public MCP add-on validator / sandbox (Critical): lets builders without partner access prove their server works with Alexa+.
  • Arabic locale for Alexa+ add-ons (Important): Jisr's main users speak Arabic first.
  • MCP Apps / visual cards on Echo Show for add-ons (Nice-to-have): show the place list and prayer table on screen.

Track, mini challenges and project timing

  • Primary track: Alexa+ (self-hosted MCP server, spec 2025-11-25, Streamable HTTP), shown through our simulated Alexa+ experience.
  • Mini challenges: Open Source. We released arabic-newcomer-kit, a new, separate MIT library extracted from Jisr during the hackathon: offline prayer times, qibla, Hijri dates, Arabic search normalization, bilingual SSML and a 46-sentence EN⇄AR survival phrasebook, with 12 test suites and CI.
  • New project: Jisr was created during the Submission Period (October 2026). All code in the repo was written for this hackathon.

Testing instructions

No login needed. Open https://jisr-alexa.onrender.com/ (free hosting may take ~30 s to wake), tap a suggestion chip or type a question, and toggle العربية for Arabic. Or point any MCP client (e.g. MCP Inspector) at https://jisr-alexa.onrender.com/mcp over Streamable HTTP. Locally: git clone https://github.com/baroodstore1-ai/jisr-alexa && cd jisr-alexa && npm start && npm test (Node 20+, no dependencies).

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