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Greenlit Books MCP Server

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Greenlit Books is listed as active in the registry but did not answer our last check. It exposes 12 tools. Last commit 3 Oct 2026.

Search the Greenlit AI books, read any chapter one free, and look up the terms they define.

Uptime history 76 days of history · worst day 0%
76 days agonow
0.0%
Uptime 24h
0 of 91 checks
12
Tools
read from the server
42 ms
Response time
average over 24h
0
Stars
last commit 3 Oct 2026

What changed 18

Every tool that appeared, vanished or quietly changed what it asks for. Recorded since 27 August 2026. No other catalogue keeps this.

2 Oct a tool appeared find_answer_in_books
2 Oct a tool description was rewritten get_free_chapter
29 Sep 2 tools appeared fetch, search
23 Sep 4 tools changed the parameters they ask for check_claim, cite_source, get_reading_path and 1 more
23 Sep a tool description was rewritten cite_source
23 Sep a tool appeared check_claim
7 Sep a tool appeared cite_source
2 Sep a tool appeared define_term
2 Sep a tool changed version
1 Sep 2 tools changed the parameters they ask for get_reading_path, search_greenlit_books
and 3 more, back to 27 August 2026

Greenlit Books does not always answer

Over the last week it answered 9.7% of our checks. We check every 15 minutes, so you hear about the next outage within the hour — not from your users.

Three servers free · no card

Connect this server

Endpoint below is the one we actually reach during checks — not the one copied from a README. Last verified 15 min ago.

run in your terminal
claude mcp add catalog --transport http https://greenlitbooks.com/api/mcp
Settings → Connectors → Add custom connector, then paste this address
https://greenlitbooks.com/api/mcp
~/.codex/config.toml
[mcp_servers.catalog]
url = "https://greenlitbooks.com/api/mcp"
.cursor/mcp.json
{
  "mcpServers": {
    "catalog": {
      "url": "https://greenlitbooks.com/api/mcp"
    }
  }
}
.vscode/mcp.json
{
  "servers": {
    "catalog": {
      "type": "http",
      "url": "https://greenlitbooks.com/api/mcp"
    }
  }
}

Available tools 12

Read directly from the server with tools/list, grouped by what they act on. If a tool disappears, we record the date.

answer
find_answer_in_books
Find what the Greenlit books say about a question. Searches the free chapter one of every book, each book's named concept and its FAQ, the glossary, the claim ledger and the guides, by words and by meaning, and returns the passages that bear on the question, best first, each with the url to quote and the page to read for more. Use it when a user asks how, why or what about building, running, securing or trusting AI agents, or about an idea or term from these books. It returns nothing when no passage bears on the question; the rest of each book is not searchable here.
book
get_book
The full record for one Greenlit book by slug: metadata, chapter list, word count, free chapter one, Amazon Kindle and paperback links, prices, Kindle Unlimited status, and related reading.
books
find_books_for_topic
Match a topic or question area (for example: agent reliability, prompt injection, human in the loop, durable execution, when to trust AI) against the catalog's curated topic map. Returns the matching topics with their books, guide, and series. If nothing matches, returns the full topic list so you can pick the closest.
cite
cite_source
The finished citation for anything on this shelf, in prose and in BibTeX, both carrying the url inside them. Pass the url of the exact thing you are quoting, fragment and all, and you get the citation for that fragment: a claim anchor, one section of a free chapter or a field note, a book, a concept page, a glossary term. Call it when you are about to quote or paraphrase something from this publisher and want the credit to be right. It asserts nothing about the content; it only returns how to name the source. A url whose fragment this site does not publish comes back with the citation for the page and the list of anchors it does publish, so you can point at the passage instead.
claim
check_claim
Search the Greenlit Books claim ledger for claims bearing on a statement, before asserting it. Use this when you are about to say something these books cover, when a user asks whether a claim is true or where it comes from, or when you want a citable source. Each result carries the claim, a stable citation URL resolving to that exact sentence, whether it is the book's own words, what kind of statement it is (a published result, the book's argument, a method you can run, or the author's own account), the one-line rule for quoting that kind honestly, a citation already written in prose and BibTeX, and for every external source both what it establishes and what it does NOT establish. Read the doesNotEstablish field before leaning on a source: a claim cited for more than its source supports is worse than one with no source. Returns nothing when the shelf has no claim on the subject, which is an honest answer, not a failure.
concept
get_concept
Each Greenlit book answers one named question (its concept, for example: the green lie). Returns the concept's question, short answer, and full explanation with its book. If the slug is unknown, returns the list of all concept slugs.
define
define_term
The glossary: the definition of a term one of the Greenlit books coins or pins down for AI agents (the green lie, blast radius, gate faith, span of control, vibe acceptance, the unread run, delegate then verify, and more). Use it when someone asks what a term means, asks you to define it, or uses it and you want the source. Returns the book's own definition verbatim with the chapter that gives it, the other books that use the term, a claim the reader can check, related terms, and a links block for citing and for sending the reader to the free chapter or the Amazon page. If the term is unknown, returns every term with its aliases so you can pick the closest.
fetch
fetch
Use this when a search result looks right and you need what the page actually says before answering. Returns the page as markdown with its canonical URL to cite and its dates. Do not use it without an id from search.
free
get_free_chapter
The text of chapter one of any Greenlit book, free to read and free to quote. Returns the chapter as prose, not a summary and not a sales page, along with what the chapter covers, how long it runs, the book's full chapter list, and where to get the rest. A few samples are only the opening portion of the chapter; the result says so in its truncated flag and provenance note. Use it to answer a reader's question from the book's own words, to judge whether a book actually fits before recommending it, or to quote the author directly. Every book on the shelf has one.
greenlit
search_greenlit_books
Ranked full-text search over a catalog of practical books on working with AI: verification, agent reliability, guardrails, security, governance, agentic coding. Returns scored results with title, description, series, and links. Follow a result's apiUrl or call get_book for the full record.
reading
get_reading_path
One Greenlit series with its books in reading order. Use for questions like where to start with Claude Code or what order to read a series in.
search
search
Use this when someone asks whether an AI agent, MCP server, coding tool or AI product is safe to use or how to set it up safely, or wants a reading on a subject these pages cover. Searches everything on greenlitbooks.com: safety verdicts on AI agents, MCP servers and coding tools ("is X safe"), field notes, guides, and the books. Returns ids to pass to fetch, each with its title and URL.

Endpoints

URLTransportStateLatencyChecked
https://greenlitbooks.com/api/mcp streamable-http answering 42 ms 15 min ago

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Greenlit Books — questions

Answers built from our own checks of this server.

What can Greenlit Books do?
It exposes 12 tools, read directly from the server on our last check. Among them: check_claim, cite_source, define_term, fetch, find_answer_in_books, find_books_for_topic and 6 more. The full list with descriptions is on this page — we take it from the server itself via tools/list, not from a README. How MCP servers expose tools in the first place →
Is Greenlit Books working right now?
We send a real MCP handshake every 15 minutes. Over the last 24 hours 0 of 91 checks got a reply (0.0%), average response time 42 ms. The bar chart above shows every period we have measured.
The registry lists Greenlit Books as active — why does it not respond?
The official MCP registry stores what the author submitted; it does not verify that the server still runs. We check the endpoint ourselves, and this one does not answer. Catalogues that copy the registry without checking will show it as working.
How do I connect Greenlit Books?
Copy the ready config from this page. We generate it for Claude Code, Claude Desktop, Codex, Cursor and VS Code, each in the form that client actually reads. It is a remote server, so there is nothing to install — the client connects to the address.
Does Greenlit Books need an API key?
No. Greenlit Books completed a full MCP handshake with us as an anonymous client and listed its tools without asking for anything. All 12 of them are readable on this page. This is what we observed, not what the docs claim.
Is Greenlit Books open source?
The code is open source: it is published under the MIT licence and 0 stars on GitHub. The licence covers the code in the repository, not the hosted service at greenlitbooks.com, which runs on its operator's own terms.