Overview

Datasets, software releases, and publications from Zenodo, CERN's open research repository, over its public REST API. Search deposits with filters for funder, grant, community, license, and file type; resolve any Zenodo DOI, concept DOI, or URL to its record; walk a deposit's versions; and list, open, and preview its files, including members of .zip archives. Runs as a stdio process or a local Streamable HTTP server.

Tools

Capability reference

zenodo_search_records _tool

• Keyword query (terms OR-ed unless joined with AND, quoted phrases, field syntax such as metadata.title:"…") plus resource_type, community, funder, award, creator_orcid, file_type, license, access_status, and published_from / published_to
• Up to 25 hits per page; only the first 10,000 matches are reachable (result_window_exceeded past that); latest versions only unless all_versions is true
• sort: bestmatch, newest, oldest, mostviewed, mostdownloaded, updated-desc, updated-asc (default bestmatch with a query, newest without)
• Each hit carries record and concept ids and DOIs, type, version, creators, license ids, access, file totals, and unique views and downloads; facets count resource types, access statuses, file types, subjects, and years over the full match set
• A bare DOI or record URL as query fails as query_is_identifier; a community or funder Zenodo doesn't know fails as unknown_community / unknown_funder

zenodo_get_record _tool

• id takes a record id, a Zenodo DOI, a concept DOI or concept record id (resolves to the latest version), another DOI registered to a Zenodo record, or a zenodo.org / doi.org URL; input_kind and resolved_from report how it resolved
• Returns the description as plain text (up to 4,000 characters), creators and contributors with ORCIDs and ROR affiliations, rights, access and embargo, funding, related identifiers, communities, version position with latest_recid, usage counts, and the first 25 files
• citation_style: bibtex, csl-json, apa, chicago-author-date, harvard-cite-them-right, ieee, modern-language-association, or nature
• A miss returns found: false with miss_kind (not_found, deleted, restricted, not_on_zenodo) and guidance; a deleted record adds its removal tombstone

zenodo_list_versions _tool

• Takes the same id forms as zenodo_get_record; a concept DOI and any version's DOI list the same series
• Newest first, up to 25 per page; reports total_versions, latest_recid, and the concept record id and DOI
• Each version carries its record id, DOI, version label, publication date, index, is_latest, file totals, and unique views and downloads
• Misses return found: false with the same miss_kind, guidance, and tombstone as zenodo_get_record

zenodo_list_files _tool

• Manifest entries carry key, size, MIME type, MD5, download URL, previewable, and listable (a .zip); up to 200 per page via offset / limit
• archive_key lists the members of one .zip; Zenodo lists at most 1,000 files and directories per archive, flagged by upstream_truncated
• key_contains filters keys or member paths case-insensitively before paging
• Restricted and embargoed files return the access status and embargo date with no entries; unknown and deleted records fail as record_not_found / record_deleted

zenodo_read_file _tool

• key from zenodo_list_files, plus archive_member to read inside a .zip without downloading it
• max_bytes 256–65,536 (default 16,384); continue a top-level file from next_offset; .zip members read from byte 0 only
• status is text, not_text, restricted, or empty; excerpts end on a line or character boundary
• Extensionless files typed application/octet-stream (LICENSE, Makefile) are returned only when their content is UTF-8 text
• Every result carries the deposit's rights and the download_url

zenodo_lookup_vocabulary _tool

• vocabulary: communities, funders, awards, licenses, or resource_types; query by name, acronym, or keyword, or omit it to browse
• Each entry's filter_param and filter_value name the zenodo_search_records filter and the id to pass it
• funder scopes awards to one funder, as a ROR id, ROR URL, or Crossref Funder DOI
• Up to 25 entries per page

Features

Built on @cyanheads/mcp-ts-core: stdio and Streamable HTTP transports, pluggable auth (none / jwt / oauth), swappable storage (in-memory, filesystem, Supabase, Cloudflare KV/R2/D1), structured logging with optional OpenTelemetry tracing.

Zenodo-specific:

• Accepts a record id, Zenodo DOI, concept DOI, external DOI, or zenodo.org / doi.org URL in every tool that takes id; URLs are parsed locally and never fetched
• Search filters compose into Zenodo's query, so facet counts agree with total; community and funder values are checked before the search runs
• Separate request pacers for Zenodo's search and general rate-limit buckets, backed by its X-RateLimit-* headers, plus a process-local cache (records 5 min, searches 60 s, vocabularies 1 h)
• Byte-range file reads and .zip member reads, with binary detection before any text is returned

Agent-friendly output:

• Misses as data: zenodo_get_record and zenodo_list_versions return found: false with a typed miss_kind, next-step guidance, and a deleted record's tombstone
• Depositor-supplied text is labeled untrusted: descriptions render as quoted blocks, file content in a code fence, and HTML descriptions are converted to plain text
• Search responses echo the effectiveQuery sent to Zenodo and the appliedSort, and every paged tool reports totals with a next page or offset
• Fields Zenodo omits stay absent rather than defaulting to 0, '', or false

Getting started

Add the following to your MCP client configuration file.

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "zenodo-mcp-server": {
      "type": "stdio",
      "command": "bunx",
      "args": ["@cyanheads/zenodo-mcp-server@latest"],
      "env": {
        "MCP_TRANSPORT_TYPE": "stdio",
        "MCP_LOG_LEVEL": "info"
      }
    }
  }
}

Or with npx (no Bun required):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "zenodo-mcp-server": {
      "type": "stdio",
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@cyanheads/zenodo-mcp-server@latest"],
      "env": {
        "MCP_TRANSPORT_TYPE": "stdio",
        "MCP_LOG_LEVEL": "info"
      }
    }
  }
}

Or with Docker:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "zenodo-mcp-server": {
      "type": "stdio",
      "command": "docker",
      "args": ["run", "-i", "--rm", "-e", "MCP_TRANSPORT_TYPE=stdio", "ghcr.io/cyanheads/zenodo-mcp-server:latest"]
    }
  }
}