ra-mcp (WIP)

MCPs for Riksarkivet

A MCP server and command-line tools for searching and browsing transcribed historical documents from the Swedish National Archives (Riksarkivet).

Features

• Full-text search across millions of transcribed historical documents
• Complete page transcriptions with accurate text extraction from historical manuscripts
• Reference-based document browsing using official archive reference codes
• Contextual search highlighting to identify relevant content quickly
• High-resolution image access to original document scans via IIIF

Getting Started

MCP

Adding ra-mcp with streamable http for ChatGPT or Claude:

url: https://riksarkivet-ra-mcp.hf.space/mcp

Claude Code

claude mcp add --transport http ra-mcp https://riksarkivet-ra-mcp.hf.space/mcp

IDEs

cat > mcp.json <<'EOF'
{
  "mcpServers": {
    "ra-mcp": {
      "type": "streamable-http",
      "url": "https://riksarkivet-ra-mcp.hf.space/mcp",
      "note": "ra-mcp server (FastMCP) - via Streamable HTTP"
    }
  }
}
EOF

CLI

Install cli

uv pip install ra-mcp
# or
uv add ra-mcp

How to Use

1. Search for Keywords

Find documents containing specific words or phrases:

# Basic search
uv run ra search "Stockholm"

# Search with full page transcriptions
uv run ra search "trolldom" --browse --max-pages 5

# Wildcard search - single character (?)
uv run ra search "St?ckholm"  # Matches "Stockholm", "Stäckholm", etc.

# Wildcard search - multiple characters (*)
uv run ra search "Stock*"     # Matches "Stockholm", "Stocksund", "Stocken", etc.
uv run ra search "St*holm"    # Matches "Stockholm", "Strömholm", etc.
uv run ra search "*holm"      # Matches "Stockholm", "Söderholm", etc.

# Fuzzy search - find similar words
uv run ra search "Stockholm~"   # Matches "Stockholm", "Stokholm", "Stokholms", etc.
uv run ra search "Stockholm~1"  # Matches "Stockholm", "Stokholm" (max edit distance: 1)

# Proximity search - find words within distance
uv run ra search '"Stockholm trolldom"~10'  # "Stockholm" and "trolldom" within 10 words

# Boosting terms - increase relevance of specific terms
uv run ra search "Stockholm^4 trol*"  # Boost "Stockholm" relevance with wildcard
uv run ra search '("Stockholm dom*"^4 Reg*)'  # Boost entire phrase with wildcard

# Boolean operators - combine search terms
uv run ra search "(Stockholm AND trolldom)"  # Both terms required
uv run ra search "(Stockholm OR Göteborg)"  # Either term (or both)
uv run ra search "(Stockholm NOT trolldom)"  # Stockholm but not trolldom
uv run ra search "+Stockholm -trolldom"  # Require Stockholm, exclude trolldom

# Grouping - create complex queries with sub-queries
uv run ra search "((Stockholm OR Göteborg) AND troll*)"  # Either city + häxprocess
uv run ra search "((troll* OR häx*) AND (Stockholm OR Göteborg))"  # Complex grouping

Search Options:

• --browse - Show full page transcriptions
• --max N - Maximum search results (default: 50)
• --max-display N - Maximum results to display (default: 20)
• --max-pages N - Maximum pages to load context for (default: 10)
• --max-hits-per-vol N - Maximum hits to return per volume (default: 3)

Search Types:

Type	Syntax	Example	Description
Exact	"word"	"Stockholm"	Find exact matches
Wildcard (single)	?	"St?ckholm"	Matches any single character
Wildcard (multiple)	*	"Stock*"	Matches zero or more characters
Fuzzy	~	"Stockholm~"	Finds similar terms based on edit distance (default: 2)
Fuzzy (custom)	~N	"Stockholm~1"	Finds similar terms with max edit distance N (0-2)
Proximity	"word1 word2"~N	"Stockholm trolldom"~10	Finds terms within N words of each other
Boosting	^N	"Stockholm^4 trol*"	Increases relevance of boosted term (default: 1)
Boolean AND	AND or &&	(Stockholm AND trolldom)	Both terms must be present
Boolean OR	OR or ||	(Stockholm OR Göteborg)	Either term (or both) must be present
Boolean NOT	NOT or !	(Stockholm NOT trolldom)	First term without second term
Required/Exclude	+ / -	+Stockholm -trolldom	Require term (+) or exclude term (-)
Grouping	(...)	((Stockholm OR Göteborg) AND troll*)	Group clauses to form sub-queries

2. Browse Specific Documents

When you find interesting documents, browse them directly:

# View single page
uv run ra browse "SE/RA/123" --page 5

# View page range
uv run ra browse "SE/RA/123" --pages "1-10"

# View specific pages with search highlighting
uv run ra browse "SE/RA/123" --page "5,7,9" --search-term "Stockholm"

Options:

• --page or --pages - Page numbers (e.g., "5", "1-10", "5,7,9")
• --search-term - Highlight this term in the text
• --max-display N - Maximum pages to display (default: 20)

3. Search with Full Context

The --browse flag shows complete page transcriptions instead of just snippets:

# Search with full page transcriptions
uv run ra search "Stockholm" --browse --max-pages 5

Output Features

🔍 Search Results

When you run a search, results are presented with:

• Document grouping - Related pages grouped together for context
• Institution & dates - Archive location and document dates
• Page numbers - Specific pages containing your search terms
• Highlighted snippets - Preview text with keywords emphasized
• Browse commands - Ready-to-run commands for deeper exploration

Example output:

Document: SE/RA/310187/1 - Kommissorialrätt i Stockholm ang. trolldom
Institution: Riksarkivet i Stockholm/Täby | Date: 1676 - 1677
├─ Page 2: "... **trolldom** ..."
├─ Page 7: "... **Trolldoms** ..."
├─ Page 8: "... **Trolldoms**..."

Browse commands:
  uv run ra browse "SE/RA/310187/1" --page 7 --search-term "trolldom"
  uv run ra browse "SE/RA/310187/1" --pages "2,7,8,52,72" --search-term "trolldom"

📄 Full Page Display

With the --browse flag, you get complete page transcriptions featuring:

• Full text transcriptions - Complete page content from ALTO XML
• Keyword highlighting - Your search terms highlighted in yellow
• Rich metadata - Document titles, dates, and archive hierarchy
• Direct access links - Quick links to images, XML, and interactive viewer

Example output:

═══ SE/RA/310187/1 - Page 7 ═══
Title: Kommissorialrätt i Stockholm ang. trolldom
Date: 1676-1677 | Institution: Riksarkivet i Stockholm/Täby

....

Links:
📄 ALTO XML: https://sok.riksarkivet.se/dokument/alto/SE_RA_310187_1_007.xml
🖼️  Image: https://lbiiif.riksarkivet.se/arkiv/SE_RA_310187_1_007.jpg
🔍 Bildvisning: https://sok.riksarkivet.se/bildvisning/SE_RA_310187_1#007

🔗 Available Resources

Each result provides direct access to:

Resource	Description	Use Case
ALTO XML	Structured transcription data with precise positioning	Text analysis, data extraction
IIIF Images	High-resolution document scans with zoom/crop support	Visual inspection, citations
Bildvisning	Interactive web viewer with search highlighting	Online browsing, sharing
Collections	IIIF metadata for document series	Understanding document context

Examples

Basic Workflow

1. Search for a keyword:

   uv run ra search "Stockholm"
   

2. Get full context for interesting hits:

   uv run ra search "Stockholm" --browse --max-pages 3
   

3. Browse specific documents:

   uv run ra browse "SE/RA/123456" --page "10-15" --search-term "Stockholm"
   

Advanced Usage

# Comprehensive search with full page content
uv run ra search "trolldom" --browse --max-pages 8

# Targeted document browsing
uv run ra browse "SE/RA/760264" --pages "1,5,10-12" --search-term "trolldom"

# Large search with selective display
uv run ra search "trolldom" --max 100 --max-display 30

Technical Details

Riksarkivet APIs & Data Sources

This tool integrates with multiple Riksarkivet APIs to provide comprehensive access to historical documents:

Current Integrations

• Search API - Primary endpoint for full-text search across transcribed materials (Documentation)
• IIIF Collections - Access to digitized document collections via IIIF standard (Documentation)
• ALTO XML - Structured text transcriptions with precise positioning data
• IIIF Images - High-resolution document images with zoom and cropping capabilities
• Bildvisning - Interactive document viewer with search highlighting
• OAI-PMH - Metadata harvesting for archive records and references (Documentation)

Additional Resources

The Riksarkivet Data Platform Wiki provides comprehensive documentation for building additional MCP integrations.

Experimental Features

• Förvaltningshistorik - Semantic search interface (under evaluation)
• AI-Riksarkivet HTRflow - Handwritten text recognition pipeline (PyPI package)

Troubleshooting

Common Issues

1. No results found: Try broader search terms or check spelling
2. Page not loading: Some pages may not have transcriptions available
3. Network timeouts: Tool includes retry logic, but very slow connections may time out

Getting Help

uv run ra --help
uv run ra search --help
uv run ra browse --help
uv run ra serve --help

MCP Server Development

# clone repo
git clone https://github.com/AI-Riksarkivet/ra-mcp.git

Running the MCP Server

# Install dependencies
uv sync && uv pip install -e .

# Run the main MCP server (stdio)
cd src/ra_mcp && uv run ra serve

# Run with SSE/HTTP transport on port 8000
cd src/ra_mcp && uv run ra serve --http

Testing with MCP Inspector

Use the MCP Inspector to test and debug the MCP server:

# Test the server interactively
npx @modelcontextprotocol/inspector uv run ra serve --http

The MCP Inspector provides a web interface to test server tools, resources, and prompts during development.

Building and Publishing with Dagger

The project uses Dagger for containerized builds and publishing to Docker registries. Pre-built images are available on Docker Hub.

Prerequisites

• Dagger CLI installed
• Docker registry credentials (for publishing)

Available Commands

Build locally:

dagger call build

Run tests:

dagger call test

Build and publish to Docker registry:

# Set environment variables

export DOCKER_PASSWORD="your-password"

# Build and publish
dagger call publish \
  --docker-username="username" \
  --docker-password=env:DOCKER_PASSWORD \
  --image-repository="riksarkivet/ra-mcp" \
  --tag="latest" \
  --source=.

Available Dagger Functions

• build: Creates a production-ready container image using the Dockerfile
• test: Runs the test suite using pytest with coverage reporting
• publish: Builds and publishes container image to registry with authentication
• build-local: Build with custom environment variables and registry settings

The Dagger configuration is located in .dagger/main.go and provides a complete CI/CD pipeline for the project.

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Current MCP Server Implementation

The MCP server provides access to transcribed historical documents from the Swedish National Archives (Riksarkivet) through three primary tools and two resources:

🔧 Available Tools

1. search_transcribed

Search for keywords in transcribed materials with pagination support.

search_transcribed(
    keyword="trolldom",          # Search term
    offset=0,                    # Pagination offset (required)
    show_context=False,          # Full page text (default: False for more results)
    max_results=10,              # Maximum results to return
    max_hits_per_document=3      # Max hits per document
)

2. browse_document

Browse specific pages of a document by reference code.

browse_document(
    reference_code="SE/RA/310187/1",  # Document reference
    pages="7,8,52",                   # Page numbers or ranges
    highlight_term="trolldom",        # Optional keyword highlighting
    max_pages=20                       # Maximum pages to display
)

3. get_document_structure

Get document structure and metadata without fetching content.

get_document_structure(
    reference_code="SE/RA/310187/1",  # Document reference (or use pid)
    include_manifest_info=True         # Include IIIF manifest details
)

📚 Available Resources

• riksarkivet://contents/table_of_contents - Complete guide index (Innehållsförteckning)
• riksarkivet://guide/{filename} - Specific guide sections (e.g., '01_Domstolar.md', '02_Fangelse.md')

🔄 Typical Workflow

1. Search → search_transcribed("trolldom", offset=0) to find relevant documents
2. Paginate → Continue with offset=50, 100, 150... for comprehensive discovery
3. Browse → Use browse_document() to view specific pages with full transcriptions
4. Structure → Use get_document_structure() to understand document organization

💡 Search Strategy Tips

• Start with show_context=False to maximize hit coverage
• Use pagination (increasing offsets) to find all matches
• Enable show_context=True only when you need full page text for specific hits
• Browse specific pages for detailed examination with keyword highlighting

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