Us National Archives MCP Server

@pipeworx/us-national-archives

The US National Archives Catalog (NARA) — descriptions of the federal government's permanent records from every agency and presidential library, with direct links to the digitised page images where they exist.

Part of Pipeworx — an MCP gateway connecting AI agents to 1684+ live data sources.

Tools

• nara_search(query, limit?, page?, available_online?, level_of_description?, record_group_number?, include_digital_objects?) — keyword search across the catalog.
• nara_record(naid) — one record in full, with its archival hierarchy.
• nara_digital_objects(naid, limit?) — the scans attached to a record, with public-domain download URLs.

Auth

Keyless. No x-api-key is needed or used — see below.

Data sources

• https://catalog.archives.gov/proxy/v3/records/search — search and record fetch.

Things worth knowing:

• The documented /api/v2/ path with an x-api-key is not routed. Every catalog.archives.gov/api/v2/... URL returns the catalog's single-page app as text/html with a 200 and the same ETag as a deliberately nonsensical path, with or without a key. It is not an outage and a key would not fix it; the path simply is not served. The endpoint the catalog's own front end calls is /proxy/v3/records/search, and it is unauthenticated.
• /proxy/records/search (no v3) rejects most page sizes. limit 1, 10, 20, 50, 100 and 1000 return JSON; 2, 3, 4, 5, 15 and 25 return the SPA HTML with a 200. Deterministic over three runs each. /proxy/v3/records/search accepts any limit, which is why this pack only calls v3 — and it still checks the content type before parsing, because a 200 that is secretly HTML is exactly the shape of a silent failure.
• Paging is page (1-based). offset and from are ignored.
• A single record is naId_is=, not naId=; the latter is the comma-list multi-fetch form.
• NAIDs are JSON numbers in the body and strings in arguments. Reading only the string form blanks every id in a search result without erroring.
• The payload is raw Elasticsearch: body.hits.total.value and body.hits.hits[]._source.record.

Quick Start

Add to your MCP client (Claude Desktop, Cursor, Windsurf, etc.):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "us-national-archives": {
      "url": "https://gateway.pipeworx.io/us-national-archives/mcp"
    }
  }
}

What this endpoint actually serves

tools/list at https://gateway.pipeworx.io/us-national-archives/mcp returns the tools in the table above plus the shared Pipeworx meta-tools — ask_pipeworx, discover_tools, search_within, remember/recall and the rest of the gateway-wide set. So the tool count you see is larger than this table: a single-pack endpoint currently lists roughly 30 shared tools alongside the pack's own. The connection's initialize response states its exact scope, and is the authoritative answer for a given day.

This is deliberate, not multiplexing by accident. The meta-tools are what let a scoped connection answer a question this pack does not cover — via ask_pipeworx, which routes across the whole catalog — without you adding a second MCP server. There is currently no way to mount a pack endpoint without them; if the extra schemas cost you more context than the routing is worth, connect to the full gateway once rather than to several pack endpoints.

Or connect to the full Pipeworx gateway to get every pack's tools listed directly, instead of just this one's:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "pipeworx": {
      "url": "https://gateway.pipeworx.io/mcp"
    }
  }
}

Both URLs reach the same gateway and the same 1684+ data sources. The only difference is which pack's tools are listed directly; ask_pipeworx reaches all of them from either one.

No MCP client? Call it over HTTP

curl -X POST https://gateway.pipeworx.io/v1/tools/nara_search \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{"query":"Apollo 11 moon","available_online":true,"limit":3}'

No account needed for the first calls. Inspect any tool: GET https://gateway.pipeworx.io/v1/tools/nara_search. Find one: POST https://gateway.pipeworx.io/v1/tools/search_packs with {"query":"..."}.

Standalone (no gateway account)

This package also runs as a local stdio MCP server — no Pipeworx account, no gateway round-trip:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "us-national-archives": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@pipeworx/mcp-us-national-archives"]
    }
  }
}

Or run it directly to confirm it starts:

npx -y @pipeworx/mcp-us-national-archives

It speaks MCP over stdin/stdout and answers initialize/tools/list/tools/call for only this pack's tools — none of the shared meta-tools the gateway connection above adds. Same source, same tools, no ask_pipeworx routing.

Using with ask_pipeworx

Instead of calling tools directly, you can ask questions in plain English — this works on the pack endpoint above as well as on the full gateway:

ask_pipeworx({ question: "your question about Us National Archives data" })

The gateway picks the right tool and fills the arguments automatically.

More

• Docs and guides
• pipeworx.io

License

MIT