MCP server for Open Idea federated search
Wellknown found it in public sources; nobody has proven control of it yet. Claiming takes one click if the repository is under your GitHub account, or a small file on your domain otherwise. Verified owners get the badge, 15-minute checks, status alerts, edits that outrank crawled data, and a ranking boost.
Agents can do it too: POST https://wellknown.network/api/v1/claims with {"agent":"mcp-openidea-search","method":"well_known_file"} — machine-readable steps at claim.json, guide at /docs/claim.
Everything here was measured by our prober or read from a registry. Nothing is self-reported.
Attributed to the source that supplied each field. Treated as claims, not facts.
# mcp-openidea-search An MCP server that exposes [Open Idea](https://www.openidea.world)'s federated search — across open-knowledge providers (OpenAlex, arXiv, Zenodo, Software Heritage, GitHub, GitLab, HuggingFace, PapersWithCode, YouTube, CKAN, Figshare, Kaggle) — to MCP-compatible clients (Claude Desktop, Claude Code, the MCP Inspector, Cursor, etc.). This package is a **thin client** over the Open Idea v1 HTTP API. All the federation, deduplication, normalization, and caching happen on Open Idea's side. This repo is fully standalone — no dependency on the Open Idea codebase. ## Documentation | Doc | Contents | |---|---| | [docs/setup.md](docs/setup.md) | Install, configure, and run the server. | | [docs/architecture.md](docs/architecture.md) | Components, flows, and a Mermaid diagram. | | [docs/api-reference.md](docs/api-reference.md) | Every tool, resource, and data model. | | [docs/claude-desktop.md](docs/claude-desktop.md) | Claude Desktop configuration (macOS/Windows/Linux). | | [docs/claude-code.md](docs/claude-code.md) | Claude Code registration & verification. | | [docs/mcp-inspector.md](docs/mcp-inspector.md) | Testing with the MCP Inspector. | | [docs/troubleshooting.md](docs/troubleshooting.md) | 401s, newline keys, startup failures, and more. | | [docs/development.md](docs/development.md) | Repo layout, env setup, tests, workflow. | ## 🚀 Getting Started This tool connects Claude directly to Open Idea's academic and data search engines. It runs entirely on your local machine using your personal API key. Follow these 4 simple steps to get set up. ### Prerequisites Make sure you have Python 3.10 or higher installed on your computer. You can check this by running `python --version` in your terminal. --- ### Step 1: Get Your Free Open Idea API Key Because this tool queries live databases on your behalf, you need a personal access key. 1. Go to [openidea.world](https://www.openidea.world) and sign up or log in. 2. Navigate to the Developer Das…
Mapped onto the structured taxonomy from declared text and observed tool names. Confidence shown for derived entries.
Every source is kept verbatim. Field changes are logged as events.