Freebazi vs Fojin — Buddhist Canon Tools
A side-by-side look at the Freebazi and Fojin — Buddhist Canon Tools MCP servers: transport, auth, tools, quality signals, and the config to install either one in Claude, Cursor, Windsurf or VS Code.
Verdict: choose Freebazi for spirituality & esoterica work as a local process; choose Fojin — Buddhist Canon Tools for spirituality & esoterica as a local process. You can also run both side by side in one mcpServers block.
Which MCP server should you choose?
Choose Freebazi when
- You need dedicated capabilities in the Spirituality & Esoterica domain.
- You prefer a local stdio subprocess transport.
- You want tools like
compute_bazi_chart, search_cities.
Choose Fojin — Buddhist Canon Tools when
- You need dedicated capabilities in the Spirituality & Esoterica domain.
- You prefer a local stdio subprocess transport.
- You want tools like
search_corpus, read_passage, get_parallels.
Feature & specification comparison
Rows where the two servers differ are marked.
| Spec | ||
|---|---|---|
| Category | Spirituality & Esoterica | Spirituality & Esoterica |
| Quality signal | 53/100 · Good | 64/100 · Good |
| Install command | Confirmed | Confirmed |
| Transport | Local subprocess (stdio) | Local subprocess (stdio) |
| Auth | Not declared | Not declared |
| Pricing | Not declared | Not declared |
| Required env vars | None listed | None listed |
| Verified owner | Community listing | Community listing |
| GitHub stars | 0 | 352 |
| Directory activity | 3 views 0 installs 0 upvotes | 1 views 0 installs 0 upvotes |
| Tools | 2 | 8 |
| Full listing | View Freebazi | View Fojin — Buddhist Canon Tools |
Tools & capabilities
Freebazi tools 2
compute_bazi_chartCompute a full Chinese Bazi (八字, Four Pillars of Destiny) chart from a birth date, time, and place. Returns the four pillars, Day Master, Ten Gods, Hidden Stems, Five Elements, Na Yin, Growth Stages, Shen Sha, branch relations, Luck Pillars, and the current year, computed with True Solar Time and historical daylight-saving handling. Provide a birth city (use search_cities to resolve it) for accurate true solar time, or pass longitude and utcOffset directly.search_citiesSearch the built-in city list (about 490 major world cities) by English or Chinese name. Returns matches with their country, longitude, and IANA time zone, so you can pass an exact city to compute_bazi_chart for accurate True Solar Time.
Fojin — Buddhist Canon Tools tools 8
search_corpusSemantic search across fojin's Buddhist corpus (10K+ texts, 30+ langs). Returns the most relevant passages, each with a `urn`, title, snippet and similarity score. `lang` optionally filters by language code (lzh=Classical Chinese, pi=Pali, sa=Sanskrit, bo=Tibetan, en=English).read_passageRead the full content of one fascicle (卷) of a text, with its `urn`. Use the `text_id`/`juan_num` from a search_corpus hit. Returns the actual canonical text — quote from this, not from memory.get_parallelsCross-canon parallel passages aligned to a fascicle. fojin's alignment moat: given a Chinese fascicle, returns the aligned Pali/Tibetan/Sanskrit parallels (each with its own `urn`) so you can compare how a passage is rendered across traditions.lookup_dictionaryLook up a Buddhist term across fojin's dictionaries (748K+ entries).lookup_entitySearch fojin's knowledge graph for entities — people, places, works, doctrinal terms — matching `query`.resolve_urnResolve a fojin URN (e.g. fojin:cbeta/T0001.1) to a reader URL and confirm it exists in the corpus. Use to verify or dereference a citation.verify_quoteVerify that a Buddhist-canon quote exists VERBATIM in the corpus. Call this before presenting any quoted scripture to a reader: LLMs routinely invent plausible-looking quotes. Returns `verbatim` (bool), where it was found (`matches`, each with a resolvable `urn`), or the closest near-miss window when it wasn't. `cite` optionally narrows the search — a CBETA id ("T0374") or fojin URN ("fojin:cbeta/T0374.13") — and `cite_matched` reports honestly whether the quote is where you claimed (a hit in a different fascicle does NOT confirm your citation). Quote must be ≥4 CJK chars after normalisation; Classical Chinese only. Short quotes are answered but say less: a four-character phrase recurs across the canon, so read `cite_matched` rather than `verbatim`, and check `matches_capped` before treating the list as complete. Each match carries an absolute `reader_url` — cite that, not a reconstructed third-party link.commentariesWhat the historical commentators said about a passage of Buddhist scripture. Give a line of a sūtra and get back the classical commentaries that gloss it — each with the commentator's own words, the work it comes from, a quality tier, and a resolvable citation. This is the layer no other tool exposes for the Chinese canon: CBETA marks up almost none of it, and the alignment behind this was derived text by text. Two things to read carefully rather than skim. `total` is how many commentators the passage actually has — `truncated` says the list you got is a sample. And coverage is partial: roughly half of what a commentator wrote is not aligned, so an absent commentator means "not in the data", never "he said nothing". When nothing matches, `available_sutras` tells you which sūtras have data at all — do not read a miss as silence from the tradition.
Ready-to-paste client configs
Paste either block (or both) into your client config, e.g. claude_desktop_config.json or ~/.cursor/mcp.json. We only show a config when the install command is confirmed.
Freebazi
{
"mcpServers": {
"freebazi": {
"command": "npx",
"args": [
"-y",
"freebazi-mcp"
]
}
}
}
Fojin — Buddhist Canon Tools
{
"mcpServers": {
"fojin-buddhist-canon-tools": {
"command": "uvx",
"args": [
"fojin-mcp"
]
}
}
}
Frequently asked questions
Freebazi is categorized under Spirituality & Esoterica and uses a local stdio subprocess. Fojin — Buddhist Canon Tools belongs to Spirituality & Esoterica and uses a local stdio subprocess. Pick Freebazi for spirituality & esoterica work and Fojin — Buddhist Canon Tools for spirituality & esoterica.
Copy the mcpServers block from the config section on this page into your client's config (for example claude_desktop_config.json or ~/.cursor/mcp.json), then fully restart the client.
Freebazi has no declared pricing — check the project's own site. Fojin — Buddhist Canon Tools has no declared pricing — check the project's own site. If a server needs environment variables such as API keys, define them under the env key in your client's MCP config.
Yes. MCP clients support multiple servers: add freebazi and fojin-buddhist-canon-tools as separate keys in the same mcpServers object, and your assistant will call tools from either one.
On AllMCPs, Freebazi has a quality signal of 53/100 (Good) with 3 views, 0 installs and 0 GitHub stars. Fojin — Buddhist Canon Tools has 64/100 (Good) with 1 views, 0 installs and 352 GitHub stars.