# Greenlit Books [Health: Active]

**Category:** 💻 Developer Tools  
**Repository:** https://github.com/greenlitbooks/mcp  
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**Directory Page:** https://allmcps.com/mcp/greenlit-books

## Description
Search the Greenlit Books catalog: practical books on AI verification, agents, and governance.

## Tools
Capabilities this server exposes over MCP:

- **find_answer_in_books** — Ask a question in your own words and get the passages that answer it, from what the books publish free: chapter one of every book (by section), each book's named concept and its FAQ, the glossary, the claim ledger and the guides. Matched by words and by meaning. Each passage comes with the exact UR…
- **search** — Search everything on greenlitbooks.com: safety verdicts on AI agents, MCP servers and coding tools ("is X safe"), field notes, guides and the books. Returns ids to pass to `fetch`.
- **fetch** — Read one page by an id from `search`: the page as markdown, with its canonical URL to cite and its dates.
- **search_greenlit_books** — Ranked full-text search over the catalog. Filters: `series`, `audience`, `limit`.
- **get_book** — One book in full: chapters, word count, free chapter one, Amazon Kindle and paperback links, prices, Kindle Unlimited status, related reading.
- **find_books_for_topic** — Match a topic phrase (agent reliability, prompt injection, human in the loop, durable execution, ...) against the curated topic map.
- **get_reading_path** — One series with its books in reading order.
- **get_concept** — The named question a book answers, with its short answer, full explanation, and a links block (free chapter, Amazon, cite-as).
- **get_free_chapter** — The complete text of chapter one of any book, free to read and to quote, with the chapter list and where to get the rest.
- **cite_source** — The finished citation for a book, one of its free chapters, or one of its coined terms: the line to print, the canonical URL, the markdown twin of the same page, and the date it was last verified. It asserts nothing about the content, only how to name the source.
- **define_term** — The glossary: a term the books coin or pin down (the green lie, blast radius, gate faith), defined in the book's own words, with the chapter, the other books that use it, a checkable claim, related terms, and links to cite and hand off. Unknown term returns the full list with aliases.
- **check_claim** — Search the claim ledger for claims bearing on a statement, before asserting it. Each hit carries the claim, a citation URL resolving to that exact sentence, what kind of statement it is and the one-line rule for quoting that kind, a citation already written in prose and BibTeX, and for every extern…

## Claude Desktop Quick Installation
Remote MCP endpoint (confidence: high). Install path detected from listing signals. Add as a URL/SSE server in your client:

```json
"mcpServers": {
  "greenlit-books": {
    "url": "https://greenlitbooks.com/api/mcp"
  }
}
```

## Documentation

## What Greenlit Books MCP server does

The Greenlit Books MCP server gives an AI client read-only access to the catalog and related material published on greenlitbooks.com. Its content covers practical books and reference pages about working with AI, including agent reliability, prompt injection, human involvement, durable execution, governance, and safety assessments.

The service can search the wider site for book pages, guides, field notes, and safety verdicts concerning AI agents, MCP servers, and coding tools. It can also search the catalog directly, identify books associated with a topic, return a series in reading order, and provide details for an individual book.

## How it works

The Greenlit Books MCP server uses a stateless streamable HTTP connection at `https://greenlitbooks.com/api/mcp`. Responses are derived from the live catalog, and the repository does not run the server locally. No account, OAuth flow, API key, or rate-limit registration is required.

Most operations return source information alongside the requested content. Search results provide identifiers for use with `fetch`, which returns a page as Markdown with its canonical URL and dates. Book, concept, glossary, chapter, and claim results include links or citation details that can be used to inspect or reference the underlying material.

All tools are read-only. The plugin connection sends requests over HTTPS and does not read files from the local machine.

## Setup and configuration

Add the endpoint as a remote MCP server in a compatible client. For Claude Code, the documented command is:

```bash
claude mcp add --transport http greenlit-books https://greenlitbooks.com/api/mcp
```

Claude Desktop or claude.ai can add it through Settings, Connectors, and Add custom connector. Clients using MCP JSON configuration can use:

```json
{
  "mcpServers": {
    "greenlit-books": {
      "url": "https://greenlitbooks.com/api/mcp"
    }
  }
}
```

The repository also contains plugin manifests for Cursor, Grok Bot, and Grok Build. Those plugins package the remote connection and four skills; they do not install executable code, rules, commands, hooks, or scripts on the machine.

## Tools and capabilities

The Greenlit Books MCP server exposes tools for several research workflows:

- Search the site or catalog, then fetch specific pages.
- Retrieve complete free first chapters, book metadata, concepts, reading paths, and topic matches.
- Define catalog terms, including related books, claims, and citation links.
- Check statements against the claim ledger, including the distinction between internal and external support.
- Find passages that answer a question in the free chapters, concept pages, glossary, guides, and claim ledger.
- Generate finished citations for books, free chapters, and coined terms.

## Limitations and notes

The catalog intentionally does not provide publication dates, page counts, or ISBNs because the project says it has no verified source for them. `define_term` definitions are quoted and verified against the manuscript when the site is built. A search or claim check can return nothing when the catalog does not contain a relevant answer; that indicates the shelf has no matching material rather than a tool failure.

The Greenlit Books MCP server covers the catalog and site content, not general web search or write operations. Amazon links and book purchasing information may be returned by book-related tools, but the MCP tools themselves remain read-only.

_Full upstream README: https://allmcps.com/mcp/greenlit-books/readme_