alexandria

Alexandria gives AI agents semantic search over 4.6 million text chunks from 20,000+ classical philosophy and humanities works — Plato, Aristotle, Kant…

CommunityOnlineNo sign-inGlobalFreeRead-only

What it can do

  • Ping: Simple connectivity test. Returns a greeting to confirm the server is running.
  • Search Texts: Search 4.6 million classical philosophy and humanities texts from Archive.org. The collection contains public domain books (pre-1928) covering: - Philosophy: Aristotle, Plato, Kant, Hege
  • Get Book List: List books in the Alexandria collection, optionally filtered by author, subject or language. Returns unique books (one entry per Archive.org identifier) with metadata. At least one filt

What data it sees

Do you need an account

No: the server works without sign-in

Alexandria gives AI agents semantic search over 4.6 million text chunks from 20,000+ classical philosophy and humanities works — Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Nietzsche, Hegel, Hume, Descartes, Schopenhauer, and thousands more — sourced from Archive.org. Texts span Ancient Greek, Latin, German, French, English, Italian and other languages. Use search_texts to find passages by concept, argument or author. Use get_book_list to browse available works. Three prompts are available for guided analysis: philosopher_analysis, topic_exploration, and compare_philosophers.

How to connect

How to connect alexandria to Claude

The server address to paste into Claude settings:

https://alexandria--kontakt-qy0g.run.tools

  1. Open Claude (claude.ai or the desktop app).
  2. Go to Settings → Connectors.
  3. Click Add custom connector.
  4. Paste the server address copied below into Remote MCP server URL and click Add.
  5. In a chat, click + → Connectors and switch the new connector on.

Custom connectors are available on Free, Pro, Max, Team and Enterprise plans (Free is limited to one). On Team and Enterprise an organization Owner adds the connector first under Organization settings → Connectors.

Authorization

After you click Add, a sign-in window for the service opens. Sign in with your own account and approve access. Claude never sees your password.

How to connect alexandria to ChatGPT

The server address to paste into ChatGPT settings:

https://alexandria--kontakt-qy0g.run.tools

  1. Open ChatGPT in a browser (chatgpt.com). A Plus, Pro, Business, Enterprise or Edu plan is required.
  2. Turn on developer mode once: Settings → Apps → Advanced settings → Developer mode.
  3. Open Settings → Connectors and click Create.
  4. Fill in the form: Name (anything), Description (one line about what the service does), MCP server URL (copy it below).
  5. Under Authentication choose OAuth if the service requires sign-in, otherwise None. Click Create.
  6. In a new chat open + → Apps/Connectors and enable the connector.

OpenAI has renamed this section before (Connectors → Apps/Plugins). If the label differs, search settings for "developer mode". On Business/Enterprise workspaces an admin must allow custom connectors first.

Authorization

On first use ChatGPT opens the service's sign-in window. Sign in and approve access.

How to connect alexandria to Cursor

The server address to paste into Cursor settings:

https://alexandria--kontakt-qy0g.run.tools

Fastest: click Open in Cursor below and confirm the prompt.

Manually:

  1. In Cursor open Settings → Cursor Settings → MCP and click Add new global MCP server.
  2. Paste the JSON copied below into ~/.cursor/mcp.json (per project: .cursor/mcp.json in the repo root).
  3. Save the file. The server appears in the MCP list; authorize it there if asked.

Authorization

If the service needs sign-in, an authorize button appears next to the server in the MCP list.

Server tool list (3)

Raw names from tools/list. Only developers need these.

pingSimple connectivity test. Returns a greeting to confirm the server is running.
search_textsSearch 4.6 million classical philosophy and humanities texts from Archive.org. The collection contains public domain books (pre-1928) covering: - Philosophy: Aristotle, Plato, Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Descartes, Spinoza, Locke, Hume, Mill, Wittgenstein, Aquinas and many more - Ethics, metaphysics, epistemology, logic, political philosophy - Sacred and religious texts, stoicism, neoplatonism, existentialism - Classical literature, history of ideas, social theory - Sources: Internet Archive (americana, europeanlibraries, gutenberg) Texts are in original languages — primarily English, German, Latin, French, Italian, Greek, Russian. Queries in any language work due to multilingual embeddings. Args: query: What you are looking for, e.g. 'Nietzsche will to power eternal recurrence', 'Kantian categorical imperative duty ethics', 'Platonic theory of forms and the Good', 'Stoic virtue and the sage', 'Aristotle eudaimonia flourishing', 'Hegel dialectics spirit history', 'free will determinism compatibilism' author: Optional — filter results to a specific author/creator, e.g. 'Kant', 'Nietzsche', 'Aristotle'. Case-insensitive substring match. language: Optional — filter by language code, e.g. 'eng', 'ger', 'lat', 'fre', 'ita', 'gre', 'rus' limit: Number of results after reranking (default 5, max 20) Returns: List of relevant text excerpts with metadata, reranked by relevance. Each result includes rerank_score, vector_score, title, creator, date, language, subject and the full text chunk.
get_book_listList books in the Alexandria collection, optionally filtered by author, subject or language. Returns unique books (one entry per Archive.org identifier) with metadata. At least one filter parameter is recommended — without filters, results are arbitrary. Args: author: Filter by author/creator name, e.g. 'Kant', 'Nietzsche', 'Plato'. Case-insensitive substring match against the creator field. subject: Filter by subject keyword, e.g. 'ethics', 'logic', 'metaphysics'. Case-insensitive substring match against the subject field. language: Filter by language code, e.g. 'eng', 'ger', 'lat', 'fre', 'gre', 'rus'. limit: Maximum number of distinct books to return (default 20, max 100). Returns: List of books with title, creator, date, language, subject, identifier and total_chunks.