oer-mcp 1.0.1

Open-licensed K-12 math content + released assessment items as an MCP server for Claude

OER MCP

A curriculum content + assessment retrieval layer for LLMs. Open-licensed K–12 math content (OpenStax textbooks, Khan Academy transcripts, Illustrative Mathematics) and real released exam items (Smarter Balanced, NAEP, NY Regents, MCAS, AP free-response) — chunked by concept, aligned to curriculum standards, and queryable by standard ID. So an LLM tutoring, lesson-planning, or assessment-writing task is grounded in what students actually read and are tested on, not a plausible approximation from training data.

Companion to StandardGraph: StandardGraph knows what students must learn (the standards); OER MCP knows what content teaches it and how it's assessed.

Status: Live, K–12 math. 23,726 content + assessment chunks across four license-partitioned databases, 67,671 standard alignments (486 distinct CCSS standards in the core DB), served through 8 MCP tools. Real released items from 6 assessment programs. Retrieval degrades gracefully with no embedder present (FTS5 keyword fallback).

Install

# Core content (OpenStax + Illustrative Mathematics + Smarter Balanced + NAEP, CC BY / public domain)
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/swoopeagle/oer-mcp/main/install.sh | bash

# Add optional databases (any combination):
#   --with-khan    K-12 Khan Academy transcripts + OpenMiddle problems   (CC BY-NC-SA)
#   --with-state   NY Regents + MCAS released exam items                 (state copyright, educational use)
#   --with-ap      AP free-response questions                           (© College Board, educational use)
#   --all          core + every add-on
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/swoopeagle/oer-mcp/main/install.sh | bash -s -- --with-khan --with-state

Then restart Claude Desktop. Try:

• "Find content that teaches CCSS.MATH.6.NS.1"
• "Explain dividing fractions using the actual textbook examples"
• "How completely does the indexed content cover CCSS 6.RP?"
• "Which exams assess CCSS.MATH.7.EE.4, and show me real released items"
• "Build a prerequisite-aware learning path for CCSS.MATH.8.EE.1"

Tools

Tool	What it does
fetch_for_standard	OER content that teaches a given standard ID, ranked by alignment confidence; returns {standard_id, count, results}
search_content	Natural-language concept search (hybrid semantic + FTS5 keyword; degrades to keyword if no embedder)
get_chunk	Retrieve a specific section by ID, with neighbours and alignments
check_coverage	How completely the corpus covers a standard/cluster — strong/moderate/light/none bands + gaps
list_sources	Live inventory of indexed sources, books, chunks, and attached databases
map_to_assessments	Map a standard to high-stakes exams (SAT/ACT/AP/state/NAEP) — skill domains + available released items + gaps
get_learning_path	Prerequisite-aware path: walks StandardGraph prereqs → OER content per rung, bottom-up; surfaces prerequisite_gaps
get_capabilities	Self-describing manifest: sources, standard systems, exam series, grade bands, coverage stats, and all 8 tools

Every content response carries an attribution string to preserve downstream.

What's indexed

Source	Content	License	DB
OpenStax	13 math textbooks (14,065 chunks)	CC BY	core
Illustrative Mathematics	K-12 lessons (1,796 chunks, publisher CCSS tags)	CC BY	core
Smarter Balanced	525 released items (grades 3-8 + HS)	CC BY	core
NAEP	1,269 items (grades 4/8/12, 1990-2024)	public domain	core
Khan Academy	3,322 video-transcript chunks	CC BY-NC-SA	ncsa
OpenMiddle	597 DOK-3 constructed-response problems	CC BY-NC-SA	ncsa
NY Regents	1,672 released exam questions (Algebra I/Geometry/Algebra II)	state copyright, educational use	state
MCAS	366 released items (grades 3-8, 10)	state copyright, educational use	state
AP free-response	85 FRQs (Calc AB/BC, Stats, Precalc, 2023-2026)	© College Board, educational use	ap
SAT/ACT-style	Gemma-authored style items with answer keys	not verbatim; MIT	core

Assessment items carry item_type, dok_level, answer_key, exam_series, exam_year, and difficulty where the source provides them.

How it works

Claude Desktop
  ├── StandardGraph MCP   "what must students learn"     (standards, prereqs, crosswalk)
  └── OER MCP             "what teaches it / how it's assessed"
        oer_core.db    CC BY / public domain  (OpenStax, IM, SBAC, NAEP)   ← default
        oer_ncsa.db    CC BY-NC-SA            (Khan, OpenMiddle)            ← --with-khan
        oer_state.db   state copyright        (NY Regents, MCAS)           ← --with-state
        oer_ap.db      College Board          (AP free-response)           ← --with-ap

Content is ingested, chunked into typed units (exposition / worked_example / exercise_set / summary / assessment), embedded (nomic-embed-text), and aligned to CCSS at build time — by publisher CCSS tags where available, otherwise by cosine similarity against StandardGraph's standard embeddings with a grade-distance penalty and source-aware confidence bands. High-confidence embedding matches are LLM-verified (promoted to the llm_verified tier once a model confirms the content actually teaches the standard).

At query time the server does pure SQLite + vector lookups across whichever databases are attached; no live StandardGraph call, and semantic search degrades gracefully to FTS5 keyword search when no embedder is reachable.

Confidence hierarchy: human > publisher_guide > llm_verified > embedding.

Licensing

Code is MIT. Content is licensed by its publishers and partitioned by license across four databases — see NOTICE:

• oer_core.db — CC BY / public domain. Commercial-friendly with attribution.
• oer_ncsa.db — CC BY-NC-SA. Non-commercial, ShareAlike.
• oer_state.db — state copyright (NYSED, MA DESE) reproduced under each state's educational-reproduction permission. Not CC; partitioned so deployments can exclude it.
• oer_ap.db — © College Board, included under an educational-use rationale. Not CC; partitioned so deployments can exclude it.

Attribution is non-nullable and surfaced in every response.

Development

uv sync
uv run pytest                                   # full test suite

# Build the databases (needs Ollama; build-time only)
uv run python -m oer_ingestion.pipeline openstax --book all --db data/oer_core.db --sg-db <standardgraph.db>
uv run python -m oer_ingestion.pipeline im --db data/oer_core.db
uv run python -m oer_ingestion.pipeline embed-align --db data/oer_core.db --sg-db <standardgraph.db>
uv run python -m oer_ingestion.pipeline verify      --db data/oer_core.db --sg-db <standardgraph.db>
uv run python -m oer_ingestion.pipeline annotate    --db data/oer_core.db --sg-db <standardgraph.db>
uv run python -m oer_ingestion.pipeline validate    --db data/oer_core.db

uv run python -m oer_ingestion.pipeline khan --db data/oer_ncsa.db --channel-db <kolibri-khan.sqlite3>

OER_CORE_DB_PATH=data/oer_core.db uv run oer-mcp     # run the stdio server

Layout: packages/shared (config, schema, models, db), packages/ingestion (adapters + 7-stage pipeline), packages/server (FastMCP stdio server). Source adapters implement a common SourceAdapter interface.

Acknowledgements

Content from OpenStax (Rice University), Khan Academy via Learning Equality's Kolibri, Illustrative Mathematics, Smarter Balanced, NAEP, OpenMiddle, NYSED, Massachusetts DESE, and the College Board. Built on FastMCP.