Onthisday

What onthisday MCP server does

The onthisday MCP server gives MCP-compatible clients access to historical information organized by calendar date. It wraps the free, unauthenticated byabbe.se/on-this-day service and accepts a numeric month and day for each query.

The package provides three focused operations:

• get_events returns historical events associated with a date, including descriptions, years, and additional details.
• get_births finds notable people born on a date and returns names, birth years, and biographical information.
• get_deaths finds notable people who died on a date and returns names, death years, and biographical information.

This fits assistants that need to answer questions such as what happened on July 20, which notable figures share a birthday, or who died on a particular day.

How it works

The onthisday MCP server accepts month values from 1 through 12 and day values from 1 through 31. Clients invoke one of the three tools with those arguments, and the server retrieves the corresponding historical results from the underlying source.

Two connection models are available. A local stdio process communicates through standard input and output and exposes only the pack’s three tools. The hosted Pipeworx endpoint uses MCP over HTTP and exposes the On This Day tools together with shared gateway meta-tools.

The gateway’s ask_pipeworx tool can route a natural-language request across Pipeworx’s catalog, including this data source. The endpoint’s initialize response is the authoritative source for the tools available on a particular connection.

Setup and configuration

For a hosted connection, add the following MCP endpoint to the client configuration:

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

The README names Claude Desktop, Cursor, and Windsurf as supported client examples. No account is needed for the initial gateway calls, and the wrapped data source requires no authentication.

To run locally, use the published package through npx:

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

Running npx -y @pipeworx/mcp-onthisday directly starts the stdio server for a basic launch check. A full Pipeworx gateway URL is also available when direct access to all catalog packs is preferred.

Tools and capabilities

Use get_events for date-specific historical events, get_births for notable people born on the date, and get_deaths for notable people who died on the date. Each tool uses the same month-and-day input model, making the server suitable for calendar features, historical lookups, and date-based research workflows.

The hosted connection additionally includes gateway-wide tools such as discover_tools, search_within, remember, recall, and ask_pipeworx. These are part of the gateway rather than the standalone onthisday package.

Limitations and notes

Results are limited to the information returned by byabbe.se/on-this-day. The tools take a month and day, not a complete year, so they are designed for recurring calendar-date lookups rather than unrestricted historical search.

The hosted pack endpoint lists shared Pipeworx meta-tools in addition to the pack tools. The standalone process does not provide those tools or gateway routing. Both connection types use the same underlying On This Day source and the same three pack operations.