Poetrydb

What Poetrydb MCP server does

Poetrydb MCP server gives an MCP-compatible agent access to poetry data from PoetryDB. Its four pack-specific tools cover different lookup patterns:

• search_poems searches titles, including partial title matches, and returns matching poems with their authors, full text, and line counts.
• get_poem_lines searches inside poem lines for a supplied phrase and returns matching poem text, subject to the service's response cap.
• random_poems retrieves one or more random public-domain poems, also with capped full text.
• list_authors returns the authors available in PoetryDB.

The title search does not inspect poem body text. Use get_poem_lines when the phrase may appear within the lines rather than the title. All four tools are described as keyless, so the standalone package does not require a PoetryDB API key.

How it works

The package supports two connection modes. A remote MCP endpoint is available through the Pipeworx gateway at https://gateway.pipeworx.io/poetrydb/mcp. A local process can instead communicate over stdin and stdout using the @pipeworx/mcp-poetrydb package. Both modes provide the same PoetryDB pack tools and use MCP operations such as initialization, tool listing, and tool calls.

The gateway route has additional behavior. Its tool list includes shared Pipeworx meta-tools, including routing and discovery functions, in addition to the PoetryDB tools. The exact gateway scope is reported in the initialize response. The standalone process does not include those shared tools and is limited to the pack-specific capabilities.

The same gateway also offers HTTP tool calls, such as a POST request to /v1/tools/search_poems. The README states that the first calls require no account. Gateway users can also submit a natural-language request through ask_pipeworx, which selects a tool and fills its arguments.

Setup and configuration

For a local connection, add a stdio server entry to the MCP client's configuration:

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

Running npx -y @pipeworx/mcp-poetrydb directly can confirm that the process starts and speaks MCP over stdin/stdout. This route does not need a Pipeworx account or a gateway round trip.

For a remote setup, configure the MCP client with the Poetrydb MCP server endpoint:

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

The full Pipeworx gateway is also available at https://gateway.pipeworx.io/mcp when direct access to all catalog packs is preferred.

Tools and capabilities

Poetrydb MCP server is suited to agents that need to locate a poem by title, find poems containing a quoted line or phrase, enumerate available authors, or provide an unpredictable public-domain poem for reading and analysis. Returned poem content is capped where noted, so clients should not assume that every response can contain unlimited text. Choose the local mode for a focused tool set, or the gateway mode when shared routing and discovery tools are useful.

Limitations and notes

Title searches cover titles only; they do not search the body of a poem. Line searches are a separate operation and return poems containing the requested phrase in one of their lines. The README does not specify the response cap size. Gateway connections expose more tools than the four listed for this pack, while the standalone server exposes only those four. The project is licensed under MIT.