Quotes

mcp-quotes

Quotes MCP — citation-grade quote API for public-domain authors.

Part of Pipeworx — an MCP gateway connecting AI agents to 1679+ live data sources.

Tools

Tool	Description
random_quote	Return a random quote from the corpus, optionally filtered by author, fame, verification status, or tag. Each result includes citation: work, year, speaker (for plays/fiction), and source URL.
search_quotes	Search quotes by substring. Matches both canonical text and known popular paraphrases — searching for 'protest' finds Hamlet's 'The lady doth protest too much, methinks' even though the popular form 'Methinks the lady doth protest too much' is what most people remember.
check_attribution	Given a quote and (optionally) the author it is claimed to be by, return one of four verdicts: "verified" (genuine, with citation), "misattributed" (no primary source — popular but fake), "paraphrase_of_verified" (popular corruption of a real quote, returns the actual text), or "no_match" (not in corpus). Useful for journalists, researchers, and anyone tired of fake Mark Twain quotes.
quote_by_location	Look up quotes by structural address within a work — act/scene for plays, chapter for novels. Example: author_id="william-shakespeare", work_title="Hamlet", act=3, scene=1 returns the "To be, or not to be" line.
list_authors	Return all authors available in the corpus — each entry includes author id (used as input to other tools), display name, birth/death dates, and public-domain status.
list_full_text_works	List works for which the full text (every scene, speech, and line) is loaded — beyond just the famous-quote excerpts. Use this to discover what is available for deep structural lookup via get_scene and get_act.
get_scene	Return the full text of a specific scene from a play (every speech, every line, in order). Example: author_id="william-shakespeare", work_slug="hamlet", act=3, scene=1 returns the entire "To be, or not to be" scene including all of Hamlet's soliloquy and the subsequent dialogue with Ophelia. Useful for context, citation, or close reading.
get_act	Return the full text of an entire act (all scenes within it). Use this to read a full structural unit at once. Returned object contains nested scenes with their speeches and lines.
get_chapter	Return the full text of a chapter from a novel/prose work (all paragraphs in order). Example: author_id="oscar-wilde", work_slug="the-picture-of-dorian-gray", chapter=2 returns the entire chapter where Lord Henry tempts Dorian. Use list_full_text_works to discover which works are chapter-based.

Quick Start

Add to your MCP client (Claude Desktop, Cursor, Windsurf, etc.):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "quotes": {
      "url": "https://gateway.pipeworx.io/quotes/mcp"
    }
  }
}

What this endpoint actually serves

tools/list at https://gateway.pipeworx.io/quotes/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:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "pipeworx": {
      "url": "https://gateway.pipeworx.io/mcp"
    }
  }
}

Both URLs reach the same gateway and the same 1679+ data sources. The only difference is which pack's tools are listed directly; ask_pipeworx reaches all of them from either one.

No MCP client? Call it over HTTP

curl -X POST https://gateway.pipeworx.io/v1/tools/quotes_random_quote \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{"famous_only":true,"verified_only":true}'

No account needed for the first calls. Inspect any tool: GET https://gateway.pipeworx.io/v1/tools/quotes_random_quote. Find one: POST https://gateway.pipeworx.io/v1/tools/search_packs with {"query":"..."}.

Standalone (no gateway account)

This package also runs as a local stdio MCP server — no Pipeworx account, no gateway round-trip:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "quotes": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@pipeworx/mcp-quotes"]
    }
  }
}

Or run it directly to confirm it starts:

npx -y @pipeworx/mcp-quotes

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.

Using with ask_pipeworx

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:

ask_pipeworx({ question: "your question about Quotes data" })

The gateway picks the right tool and fills the arguments automatically.

More

• Docs and guides
• pipeworx.io

License

MIT