UK National Archives Discovery MCP server

by ianderso·io.github.ianderso/tna-discovery-mcp·v0.1.0

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Search the UK National Archives' Discovery catalogue; find Chelsea pensioners' papers in WO 97.

A92/100grade A

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Safety scan

A92/100

full report

Adoption

Growing

0 stars106 downloads/wk

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If you have run it, two minutes of your experience saves the next person an afternoon.

UK National Archives Discovery tools (5)

write = sends, deletes, buys or posts

Read from the package source without running it. The installed server may list more.

browse
List the records one level below a series, sub-series or piece, in catalogue order.
budget_status
Report today's requests against the daily budget, and the last error. No network call.
find_soldier
Find a soldier's discharge papers in WO 97 (Chelsea pensioners, 1760-1854), parsed.
get_record
Read one catalogue description in full, with its hierarchy and how to cite it.
search_records
Search Discovery's catalogue descriptions: TNA's records and 2,500 other archives'.

Public scan report

scanner v0.1.10 · 2026-10-13 · same rubric, same numbers if you re-run it

no findings

Code scan8 source files scanned25/25
–Live reliabilityno gateway calls yet and no remote to proben/a
–Tool poisoningtools not inspected (local package is not executed); not countedn/a
Auth qualitylocal package, no credentials required12/15
Maintenancelast push 2 days ago15/15
Maintainer identityregistry namespace matches repository owner; GitHub account older than a year8/10

Overall 92/100. Components that don't apply are left out of the denominator. Any critical finding is an F.Rubric Appeal a finding JSON

How UK National Archives Discovery compares

Against every graded Web search MCP server, from our own scans and uptime checks. Updated after each scan run.

Safety score: 92/100; higher than 90% of 3,470 Web search servers
Tools: 5; the typical Web search server has 5
Tools that change things: 0%; typical: 0%. Fewer write tools means less an agent can break
Downloads a week: 106; more than 58% of 827 Web search servers with a package

What its tools let an agent do: 5 read

Install UK National Archives Discovery in Claude Code, Cursor or VS Code

claude mcp add tna-discovery-mcp -- uvx tna-discovery-mcp

Add to Cursor

What the publisher says

From the UK National Archives Discovery repository's README, as published. We do not edit it. Read it on GitHub

tna-discovery-mcp

An MCP server for Discovery, the catalogue of the UK National Archives (TNA): more than 37 million descriptions of the records held at Kew, and the catalogues of more than 2,500 other archives across the UK and beyond, through TNA's keyless Discovery API.

For family historians the catalogue is where a British soldier, a will, a muster roll or a county record office's papers are first found. One series gets a tool of its own: WO 97, the Royal Hospital Chelsea's soldiers' service documents, which describes every man discharged to a pension from 1760 to 1854 in one standard sentence ("JOHN ATKINSON Born MANCHESTER, Lancashire Served in Royal Artillery Discharged aged 41"). find_soldier searches it by name and keeps the men whose regiment, birthplace and discharge year fit, each parsed into fields with an estimated birth year.

It works the way a careful genealogist does. A catalogue description is a finding aid: it says a record exists and where it is, not what it says. Images of most series are not free on Discovery. WO 97's are on Findmypast, and FamilySearch collection 1952868 indexes them. Every result carries the holding archive, the reference and the record's Discovery page, because the archive's reference is what gets cited, not this server.

It is the UK counterpart of nara-catalog-mcp. Nothing here writes anywhere, and nothing here keeps a family tree.

This is an independent project. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or supported by The National Archives.

Tools

The server publishes five tools. All are read-only.

Setup

You need Python 3.11 or later and uv. There is no key to request.

Without cloning. uvx fetches it from PyPI and runs it in one step:

uvx tna-discovery-mcp

From a clone, which is what you want if you will change it:

git clone https://github.com/ianderso/tna-discovery-mcp
cd tna-discovery-mcp
uv sync
uv run tna-discovery-mcp   # stdio server, usually launched by the client

Either way the server speaks MCP over stdio, so you will normally let an MCP client start it rather than run it by hand.

Shortened. The full README is on GitHub.

Nothing above is checked by us. What we check is on the safety report.

UK National Archives Discovery: common questions

Is UK National Archives Discovery MCP server safe?: Yes, by our scan: it is graded A (92/100). Read the UK National Archives Discovery safety report
How do I install UK National Archives Discovery?: It runs on your machine. Copy the Claude Code, Cursor, VS Code or Claude Desktop config from the install section.
Does UK National Archives Discovery need an API key?: No secret keys are declared. It reads 5 settings from the environment.
Is UK National Archives Discovery maintained?: The last commit was 24 days ago (2026-10-11). The latest release is v0.1.0.
What can I use instead of UK National Archives Discovery?: Servers from other publishers that do the same job: Arxiv MCP server, Tinysearch MCP server and Open Library MCP server.
How does UK National Archives Discovery compare with other Web search MCP servers?: safety score 92/100 (higher than 90% of 3,470 Web search servers); tools 5 (the typical Web search server has 5); tools that change things 0% (typical: 0%. Fewer write tools means less an agent can break). Full comparison.

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Run it through the gateway

Local package. It runs on your machine, not through the gateway.

Rating: —
Safety grade: A · 92/100
Stars: 0
Downloads/wk: 106
Price: Free
Licence: MIT
Transport: Local · pypi
Version: 0.1.0
Category: Web search
Last release: 2026-10-11

Credentials it needs

TNA_DISCOVERY_TIMEOUTHTTP timeout in seconds for one request.
TNA_DISCOVERY_MIN_INTERVALLeast seconds between two requests. Never below 1, TNA's guideline.
TNA_DISCOVERY_DAILY_BUDGETRequests a day (UTC) before tools refuse. At most 3000, TNA's guideline.
TNA_DISCOVERY_CONTACTAn email address or URL appended to the User-Agent, so The National Archives can reach whoever runs the server.
TNA_DISCOVERY_STATE_DIRDirectory for the day's call count, the one file the server writes (a date and a number).

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