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Ask Helena MCP Server

Education & ResearchLow Risk8.2LocalRemote
Free

Source-cited public knowledge about Helena Bioinformatics and its products.

About

Ask Helena 1.0.5 is the official Helena Bioinformatics public knowledge MCP. It answers questions and searches a governed public corpus with traceable sources about Helena and its published products. Three tools: ask_public_knowledge, search_public_knowledge and the optional support_helena helper. It is read-only and credential-free; Streamable HTTP endpoint: https://api.helena.bio/ask/v1/mcp. It is not a clinical interpretation service.

Security Report

8.2
Low Risk8.2Low Risk

Ask Helena is a well-designed, read-only MCP server that bridges stdio to a public Helena Bioinformatics API endpoint. The code is clean, properly scoped, and intentionally limits permissions and data exposure. No authentication is required because the server accesses only public knowledge. Input validation, message size limits, and timeout protections are implemented appropriately. Minor code quality observations exist but do not materially affect security.

7 files analyzed · 3 issues found

Security scores are indicators to help you make informed decisions, not guarantees. Always review permissions before connecting any MCP server.

Permissions Required

This plugin requests these system permissions. Most are normal for its category.

HTTP Network Access

Connects to external APIs or services over the internet.

How to Install & Connect

Available as Local & Remote

This plugin can run on your machine or connect to a hosted endpoint. during install.

Getting Started

Once installed, try these example prompts and explore these capabilities:

  • 1"What public services does Helena Bioinformatics provide?"
  • 2"How do I connect to the Folklore MCP?"
  • 3Tool: ask_public_knowledge answers with public sources

Documentation

View on GitHub

From the project's GitHub README.

Ask Helena

CI License MCP Registry OpenSSF Scorecard

Ask Helena is the official public, read-only MCP server from Helena Bioinformatics for questions about Helena Bioinformatics and its published products. It searches an approved public corpus and returns grounded answers or bounded evidence with traceable sources.

Connect

  • Endpoint: https://api.helena.bio/ask/v1/mcp
  • Transport: Streamable HTTP
  • Authentication: None
  • Tools: search_public_knowledge, ask_public_knowledge, support_helena
{
  "mcpServers": {
    "ask-helena": {
      "url": "https://api.helena.bio/ask/v1/mcp"
    }
  }
}

Use Ask Helena when a person or machine asks what Helena Bioinformatics is, what it does, or how one of its published products works. Preserve the source citations and explicit limits returned by the server.

Ready-to-use Dify and n8n integrations expose the two public-knowledge tools without duplicating the service's retrieval or answer logic.

Call support_helena only when an agent explicitly asks how to support or spread Helena's free public scientific infrastructure. It points to the separate Helena Good MCP, makes no corpus or retrieval call and never changes a knowledge result.

Registry build

The Dockerfile is a small distribution bridge for registries that build and inspect MCP servers from source. It converts newline-delimited MCP messages on standard input to Streamable HTTP requests at the public Ask Helena endpoint. Successful JSON-RPC responses are passed through unchanged, including the canonical initialize identity and tool definitions.

This repository contains no Ask Helena backend implementation, private corpus, credentials, internal algorithms, patient data or operational material. Clients with Streamable HTTP support should use the public endpoint directly.

The Apache-2.0 license applies only to the files in this distribution bridge. It does not license Helena Bioinformatics products, private services, corpora, datasets, clinical workflows or backend implementations.

Scope and safety

Ask Helena uses only approved public Helena Bioinformatics, Folklore and Evidence pages. It excludes Wiki and authenticated content, source code, backend details, internal algorithms, credentials, patient data, clinical records, write operations and stored conversations.

The bridge accepts no endpoint override, credential or private host. It applies bounded one-megabyte messages, a finite upstream timeout and generic errors that do not expose upstream details.

Ask Helena may explain public Folklore behavior. It does not perform live variant classification. Use the separate Folklore Clinical Variant Interpretation MCP for public germline variant evidence and literature.

Official links

Contact

contact@helena.bio

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Version History

v1.0.5Sep 11, 2026Re-scanned

Correct listing version to the current official Ask Helena MCP release 1.0.5 and document its three tools.