About thealgorithms-mcp
thealgorithms-mcp is an MCP server for developers and coding agents to search TheAlgorithms implementations across discovered language repositories and retrieve source with examples.
Key features
- 01Discover indexed languages and exclusions
- 02Search algorithms by language and category
- 03Retrieve source and extracted examples
- 04Compare implementations across languages
- 05Autocomplete algorithm names
Use cases
- 01Find an algorithm implementation in a chosen language
- 02Inspect source and examples before reuse
- 03Compare equivalents across language repositories
MCP support
Exposes tools for listing languages and categories, searching and fetching algorithms, comparing implementations, and suggesting names to MCP clients.
Configuration
Local server config is the same for every client. Copy it into your client’s MCP config file.
Tools
Local servers expose tools only once running on your machine, and the maintainer has not provided a tool list.
Details
From the project READMEthealgorithms-mcp
mcp-name: io.github.mcande21/thealgorithms-mcp
An MCP server for querying the TheAlgorithms org across every language repo — search algorithm implementations and fetch any one with its in-file examples.
Languages are auto-discovered from the org (not a hardcoded list): a repo is indexed when it
publishes a parseable DIRECTORY.md — currently 24 languages (Python, Java, C++, JavaScript,
Rust, C, TypeScript, PHP, Dart, Kotlin, Ruby, R, Scala, Swift, Julia, Haskell, MATLAB, Zig,
Fortran, Nim, Clojure, F#, Jule, aarch64-assembly). Repos without a DIRECTORY.md (Go, C#, Lua,
Solidity, …) are reported by list_languages with their exclusion reason — no silent gaps.
Hybrid design: each repo's DIRECTORY.md index is cached locally (ETag + TTL); file contents are
fetched on demand from raw.githubusercontent.com. The org/language manifest is auto-discovered via
the GitHub API and cached 7 days. No token required (set GITHUB_TOKEN to raise the rate limit).
See DESIGN.md.
Tools
| Tool | Purpose |
|---|---|
list_languages() | Indexed languages (+ counts, aliases) and excluded repos with reasons |
list_categories(language='python') | Categories with entry counts for a language |
search_algorithms(query, language='python', category?, limit=10) | Ranked {name, category, path, score} |
get_category(category, language='python') | Every algorithm in a category |
get_algorithm(path, language='python', include_source=True) | Source + extracted examples |
compare(name, languages?, min_score=90, limit_per_language=1) | Real matches across languages + missing_in |
suggest(prefix, language='python', limit=10) | Trie-backed name autocomplete (dij → Dijkstra) |
language accepts names or aliases (cpp/c++, js, ts, …). Typical flow:
search_algorithms("dijkstra", language="rust") → get_algorithm("src/graph/dijkstra.rs", language="rust").
Examples are extracted where the language has an in-file convention (Python doctests, Rust
doc-tests); other languages return source plus a note.
Install
From PyPI (recommended):
{ "thealgorithms": { "command": "uvx", "args": ["thealgorithms-mcp"] } }
From GitHub:
{ "thealgorithms": {
"command": "uvx",
"args": ["--from", "git+https://github.com/mcande21/thealgorithms-mcp", "thealgorithms-mcp"] } }
From a local checkout (development):
uv sync
uv run thealgorithms-mcp # serves over stdio
Add any of the above to ~/.normandy-generic/mcp.json (or your MCP client config).
Verify
uv run python scripts/verify_stdio.py # multi-language contract over stdio
uv run python scripts/verify_language.py rust # one language, end-to-end
The harness spawns the server over stdio and asserts every tool against the live org, including
binary-search fetch across ≥8 languages and cross-language compare().
Comments
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