The full upstream README, mirrored here for reference. Install config, tool schemas, adoption signals, and an original overview live on the Us National Archives listing page.
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.
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.Keyless. No x-api-key is needed or used — see below.
Things worth knowing:
/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.page (1-based). offset and from are ignored.naId_is=, not naId=; the latter is the comma-list
multi-fetch form.body.hits.total.value and
body.hits.hits[]._source.record.Add to your MCP client (Claude Desktop, Cursor, Windsurf, etc.):
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:
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 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":"..."}.
This package also runs as a local stdio MCP server — no Pipeworx account, no gateway round-trip:
Or run it directly to confirm it starts:
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.
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:
The gateway picks the right tool and fills the arguments automatically.
MIT