astp-docs-server

The open documentation server for ASTP, the AI State Tree Protocol — two transports on one substrate, over the public protocol corpus:

• an MCP server adopters' coding agents (Claude Code / Codex / Copilot) point at to implement the protocol from its normative text, and
• a web-chat head ("Clotho-lite") backing a docs-site assistant.

Both consume the shared astp-docs core and cite identical chunks, so the two heads can't drift. This repo serves only the open corpus; the proprietary corpus is a separate, private server.

This release serves SPEC 7.0.0, vendored from astp commit a1127ae. Each release pins one snapshot of the protocol docs; the exact commit and file list ship in the package as corpus/open/vendor_manifest.json.

Install (for your coding agent)

The MCP server runs locally over stdio; there is no hosted endpoint.

pip install 'astp-docs-server[mcp]'
claude mcp add astp-docs -- astp-docs-open      # Claude Code

For any other MCP client, register a stdio server whose command is astp-docs-open. If you installed into a virtualenv, give the client the command's absolute path (which astp-docs-open), since clients don't activate virtualenvs. To run it without installing: uvx --from 'astp-docs-server[mcp]' astp-docs-open.

The server indexes the bundled corpus at startup and needs no API key or network access.

Layout

src/astp_docs_server/
  open_corpus.py     # the OPEN CorpusSpec (points at the astp protocol docs)
  mcp_server.py      # FastMCP transport — search_spec / get_governance_rule /
                     #   get_conformance_vectors / get_section / get_hash_preimage /
                     #   get_test_vectors / get_license_terms / corpus_info
  atlas_manifest.py  # Atlas registration (read-only)
  web/               # HTTP transport: /chat, /search, /license-terms, /healthz + a reference demo

The retrieval engine, chunker, index, vector search, and the shared tool logic (astp_docs.toolkit) live in the core library — this repo is a thin transport layer on top. mcp (MCP transport) and fastapi/uvicorn/anthropic (web head) are separate extras, so the web head deploys without the MCP SDK and vice-versa.

The corpus is vendored

The open docs are copied into the package (src/astp_docs_server/corpus/open/) by scripts/vendor_corpus.py, and ship in the wheel/image — so a built server is self-contained (no sibling protocol checkout at runtime). Corpus resolution precedence: explicit arg → ASTP_PROTOCOL_DIR (dev override) → vendored package corpus → ~/projects/astp (dev fallback; a local checkout of scorched-earth-labs/astp).

Refresh the snapshot when the protocol docs change:

python scripts/vendor_corpus.py /path/to/astp

Run (dev)

pip install -e ../astp-docs-core          # the core library (editable)
pip install -e '.[mcp,web,dev]'           # this server + both transports

python -m astp_docs_server                # MCP server (stdio)  [needs .[mcp]]
python -m astp_docs_server.web            # web-chat head (http://127.0.0.1:8080)  [needs .[web]]
ASTP_CHAT_MODE=extractive python -m astp_docs_server.web   # keyless (no LLM)
python -m pytest tests/ -q                # self-contained (runs off the vendored corpus)

The web head answers with Claude by default (ANTHROPIC_API_KEY or an ant auth login profile; model via ASTP_CHAT_MODEL, default claude-sonnet-5-5); ASTP_CHAT_MODE=extractive runs without an LLM.

Deploy

The web head containerizes — see DEPLOY.md. Short version:

python scripts/vendor_corpus.py /path/to/astp
docker build --build-context core=../astp-docs-core \
             --build-context protocol=../astp -t astp-docs-server .
docker run -p 8080:8080 astp-docs-server

Stateless (index rebuilds from the vendored corpus at startup) → host-agnostic, scales by replicas. llms.txt and AGENTS.md (repo root) point coding agents at the corpus and these tools.