Library of Alexandria

Library of Alexandria for developers

The library's catalogue, its free shelf and its print editions, as one small set of read-only tools that any program, assistant or model can call. There is no key and nothing to sign up for. The tools never sign anyone in, take a payment or change anything; every title they return carries the address of its page on libraryofalexandria.com, where a person reads, listens, prints or starts.

Three doors lead to the same eight tools:

Door	Address	For
MCP (Streamable HTTP)	https://mcp.libraryofalexandria.com/mcp	Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, Grok, Copilot, Perplexity, Le Chat, LM Studio, Open WebUI, Cursor, VS Code, Goose and every other MCP client
REST + OpenAPI 3.1	POST https://api.libraryofalexandria.com/v1/<tool> and GET .../v1/openapi.json	scripts, automation tools (n8n, Zapier, Make, Dify, Flowise), Open WebUI tool servers, Copilot Studio
Tool files for model makers	`GET .../v1/tools?format=openai	openai-chat

The eight tools

Tool	What it does
search_books	find titles by words from a title, an author or a topic, in any language of the catalogue
get_book	the facts of one title: author, original title, cover, print editions, its page in each language
get_summary	the first key idea of the 15-minute summary of one title in full, and the headings of the others (part chooses one)
get_sample	the free opening of one title, in pages of at most 400 words (page chooses one)
list_free_shelf	the titles on the free shelf, by language and subject
read_free_chapter	one chapter of a free-shelf title, in pages of at most 400 words
get_print_options	the print editions of one title (standard and large print; paperback or hardcover) with the list price in US dollars
get_publisher_info	who publishes the library, the languages, the terms and privacy pages

A summary, a sample page or a free-shelf chapter that is not open yet (a title, a language, or all texts before they go online) answers plainly that it "opens here soon"; the tools then fill in without any change on your side. The text tools count the words they hand out for each client (72,000 a day and 48,000 an hour) and show what is left in budget.

Try it in a minute

curl -s https://api.libraryofalexandria.com/v1/search_books \
  -H 'content-type: application/json' -d '{"query":"moby dick","limit":3}'

The answer is {"ok": true, "data": {...}, "source": "Library of Alexandria, libraryofalexandria.com"}. A problem comes back as application/problem+json (RFC 9457) with a stable code; see openapi/loa-api.openapi.json.

What is in this folder

Path	What
openapi/loa-api.openapi.json	the OpenAPI 3.1 file (also served live at /v1/openapi.json)
function-tools/*.json	the eight tools in the shapes of OpenAI (Responses and Chat Completions), Anthropic, Gemini, Ollama and MCP
cli/loa.mjs	the command line loa (Node 18 or newer, no dependencies)
sdk/typescript/loa.mjs, loa.d.ts	the JavaScript and TypeScript client (no dependencies; browsers, Node, Deno, Bun, Workers)
sdk/python/loa_library.py	the Python client (standard library only)
sdk/python/loa_tools.py	one plain Python function per tool, for Ollama and any framework that builds tool schemas from type hints
mcp-bridge/loa-mcp.mjs	a stdio bridge for MCP clients that cannot reach a remote server
quickstarts/	how to connect LM Studio, Open WebUI, Ollama, Goose, Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor, VS Code, LangChain and the OpenAI Agents SDK
AGENTS.md, SKILL.md	instructions for coding agents and for assistants that help a person with the library
tests/	the tests of this kit (node --test tests/*.test.mjs and python3 tests/test_python.py)

The generated files (openapi/, function-tools/) are made from the service's own code; a test in the service fails when they are out of date.

Rules of the library, for everyone who quotes it

• Say what the answer says; use the url of a title as given; never invent a price or an offer.
• The library is not the ancient library of Alexandria and not the Bibliotheca Alexandrina.
• Payments and sign-up happen on libraryofalexandria.com only; a tool can hand over a link, never take a payment.
• Please keep to a few requests a second and send a User-Agent that names your program.

Versions

The API version is a date, sent back in the LOA-Version header (2026-10-25). Changes are announced on the developer page.

Licence

MIT, see LICENSE. The library's tools return catalogue facts, short summaries and free parts as the service allows; the licence covers this code and these documents, not the books.

Registry entry

The description of the server for the official MCP Registry is in server.json.