Library MCP Server

by theoldways Your server? Claim it

answering

Library is answering right now. Last checked 2 min ago. It exposes 3 tools.

Search historical texts and mythology references with citation URLs from The Old Ways library.

Uptime history 6 days of history

6 days agonow

100.0%

Uptime 24h

92 of 92 checks

Tools

read from the server

207 ms

Response time

average over 24h

open, no key

Access

streamable-http

Nothing serious here today

Today is the operative word: we check Library 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 2 min ago.

Claude Code Claude Desktop Codex Cursor VS Code

run in your terminal

claude mcp add library --transport http https://mcp.theoldways.co/mcp

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

https://mcp.theoldways.co/mcp

~/.codex/config.toml

[mcp_servers.library]
url = "https://mcp.theoldways.co/mcp"

.cursor/mcp.json

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "library": {
      "url": "https://mcp.theoldways.co/mcp"
    }
  }
}

.vscode/mcp.json

{
  "servers": {
    "library": {
      "type": "http",
      "url": "https://mcp.theoldways.co/mcp"
    }
  }
}

Available tools 3

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

collections

list_collections

List available book landing pages, traditions, content types, index-build timestamp and the source policy before exploring The Old Ways. Index-build time is not the publication date of a historical text.

library

search_library

Search the Old Ways historical-text and mythology reference collection: Norse, Greek/Hellenic, Egyptian/Kemetic, Celtic and Zoroastrian writings, glossary, deity profiles and explanatory questions. Returns canonical citation URLs and short previews from a prebuilt lexical index. Not web search or verification of historical claims. Use read_page to examine the passage and recorded edition details. Known malformed and noindex pages are excluded.

page

read_page

Read a bounded text excerpt from an indexed public theoldways.co page. Supply a canonical URL or path returned by search_library. Returns a citation URL, edition/source note, text and nextOffset for continuation. Never accesses arbitrary websites, private accounts or the live app. Imported historical editions can contain transcription errors; editorial summaries are not passage-level source verification.

Endpoints

URL	Transport	State	Latency	Checked
https://mcp.theoldways.co/mcp	streamable-http	answering	130 ms	2 min ago

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Library — questions

Answers built from our own checks of this server.

What can Library do?

It exposes 3 tools, read directly from the server on our last check. Among them: list_collections, read_page, search_library. 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 Library 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 207 ms. The bar chart above shows every period we have measured.

How do I connect Library?

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 Library need an API key?

No. Library completed a full MCP handshake with us as an anonymous client and listed its tools without asking for anything. All 3 of them are readable on this page. This is what we observed, not what the docs claim.

How fast is Library?

It answers our handshake in 207 ms on average, which is faster than 68% of all working MCP servers we measure. The comparison comes from our own checks across the whole registry, every 15 minutes.