Learn the Dao — Tao Te Ching MCP Server

by learnthedao Your server? Claim it

answering

Learn the Dao — Tao Te Ching is answering right now. Last checked 4 min ago. It exposes 4 tools.

Read, search and cite all 81 chapters of the Tao Te Ching, with per-rendering attribution.

Uptime history 91 days of history · worst day 99%

91 days agonow

100.0%

Uptime 24h

92 of 92 checks

Tools

read from the server

289 ms

Response time

average over 24h

open, no key

Access

streamable-http

What changed 1

Every tool that appeared, vanished or quietly changed what it asks for. Recorded since 14 August 2026. No other catalogue keeps this.

14 Aug a tool appeared consult

Nothing serious here today

Today is the operative word: we check Learn the Dao — Tao Te Ching every 15 minutes and re-read its code on every release. Watch it and you find out the day that stops being true.

Connect this server

Endpoint below is the one we actually reach during checks — not the one copied from a README. Last verified 4 min ago.

Claude Code Claude Desktop Codex Cursor VS Code

run in your terminal

claude mcp add learn-the-dao --transport http https://learnthedao.com/api/mcp

Settings → Connectors → Add custom connector, then paste this address

https://learnthedao.com/api/mcp

~/.codex/config.toml

[mcp_servers.learn-the-dao]
url = "https://learnthedao.com/api/mcp"

.cursor/mcp.json

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "learn-the-dao": {
      "url": "https://learnthedao.com/api/mcp"
    }
  }
}

.vscode/mcp.json

{
  "servers": {
    "learn-the-dao": {
      "type": "http",
      "url": "https://learnthedao.com/api/mcp"
    }
  }
}

Available tools 4

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

chapters

list_chapters

List all 81 chapters of the Tao Te Ching with their titles, plus the attribution blocks for each available rendering. Start here to orient.

search_chapters

Search the full corpus for a word or phrase and get the matching lines with their chapter numbers. Use this when the user half-remembers a line and you need to find where it is.

chapter

get_chapter

Get one chapter (1-81) in both public renderings: the public-domain James Legge (1891) translation and Dao De Kooi, an original rendering by David Kooi. Each carries its own attribution and a ready-to-use citation string. The Kooi rendering is NOT public domain.

consult

consult

Given what a person is actually facing — in their own words — find the chapter of the Tao Te Ching that speaks to it, and the one line to hold. Use this when someone describes a situation (a betrayal, burnout, forcing an outcome, never feeling satisfied) rather than asking about the text. Unlike search_chapters, this matches the SITUATION, not the words: "a coworker took credit for my work" reaches chapter 63, which shares no word with it.

Endpoints

URL	Transport	State	Latency	Checked
https://learnthedao.com/api/mcp	streamable-http	answering	254 ms	4 min ago

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Learn the Dao — Tao Te Ching — questions

Answers built from our own checks of this server.

What can Learn the Dao — Tao Te Ching do?

It exposes 4 tools, read directly from the server on our last check. Among them: consult, get_chapter, list_chapters, search_chapters. 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 Learn the Dao — Tao Te Ching working right now?

We send a real MCP handshake every 15 minutes. Over the last 24 hours 92 of 92 checks got a reply (100.0%), average response time 289 ms. The bar chart above shows every period we have measured.

How do I connect Learn the Dao — Tao Te Ching?

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 Learn the Dao — Tao Te Ching need an API key?

No. Learn the Dao — Tao Te Ching completed a full MCP handshake with us as an anonymous client and listed its tools without asking for anything. All 4 of them are readable on this page. This is what we observed, not what the docs claim.

How fast is Learn the Dao — Tao Te Ching?

It answers our handshake in 289 ms on average, which is faster than 47% of all working MCP servers we measure. The comparison comes from our own checks across the whole registry, every 15 minutes.