swiss-school-calendar-mcp 0.1.0

MCP server for Swiss school and public holidays — all 26 cantons, differentiated by Schulart

🇨🇭 Part of the Swiss Public Data MCP Portfolio

This is a private project. It is independent of any employer or institutional affiliation and represents no official position of any authority.

📅 swiss-school-calendar-mcp

MCP server for Swiss school holidays and public holidays across all 26 cantons — differentiated by Schulart (school type), which matters more than it first appears. No API key required.

🇩🇪 Deutsche Version

---

Overview

swiss-school-calendar-mcp gives AI assistants like Claude direct access to Swiss school and public holiday data for all 26 cantons — no API keys required. School holidays are set cantonally, sometimes at district level, and — in six cantons — separately per school type. A federal calendar does not exist; anyone planning across cantonal borders is otherwise reduced to opening 26 PDF pages.

The server covers two thematic clusters: school holidays (with Schulart differentiation) and public holidays / long weekends. Each cluster maps to a group of purpose-built tools that translate raw agency data into clean, provenance-tagged JSON responses. All data comes from the OpenHolidays API (CC BY 4.0) and Nager.Date (MIT).

Mnemonic: A duplicate in Swiss school data is usually a school type in disguise. The underlying API publishes the same holiday period several times when a canton differentiates by school type. That looks like duplicated data and invites naive de-duplication — which would destroy exactly the distinction a school authority needs.

Anchor demo query: "In which weeks of 2026 are the compulsory schools of Zurich, Zug and Aargau simultaneously on holiday — and how many overlapping days does each pair share?" → This exercises find_common_free_window, compare_school_holidays and list_school_types in a single conversation, and answers a question that recurs every planning cycle in inter-cantonal coordination. → More use cases by audience →

---

Features

• 🏫 School holidays — periods per canton and date range, differentiated by Schulart (VS / MS / BS / EO)
• 🎌 Public holidays — cantonal holiday sets, not just the federal minimum (Berchtoldstag & friends)
• 🔍 Date check — is a given date a school or public holiday in a canton?
• 🔗 Cross-cantonal comparison — pairwise overlap matrix of holiday days between cantons
• 🪟 Common free windows — date ranges where all listed cantons are simultaneously on holiday
• 🌉 Long weekends & bridge days — computed from federal public holidays (Nager.Date)
• 🩺 Source health — reachability and latency of both upstreams, always evaluable
• 🔑 No authentication required — both data sources are publicly accessible
• ☁️ Dual transport — stdio for Claude Desktop, Streamable HTTP/SSE for cloud deployment
• 🧾 Provenance on every response — live_api | cached | degraded, never a silent empty list

---

Data Sources

Source	Data	Licence
OpenHolidays API	Cantons, Schularten, school holidays, public holidays	CC BY 4.0
Nager.Date	Long weekends and required bridge days	MIT

Both sources are publicly accessible, no authentication required. Attribution required: OpenHolidays (CC BY 4.0) and Nager.Date must be cited as the source when using their data.

---

Tools

Tool	Purpose	Data Source
list_cantons	The 26 cantons with ISO codes and official languages	OpenHolidays
list_school_types	Schulart groups per canton (CH-ZH-VS etc.)	OpenHolidays
get_school_holidays	School holidays for one canton and date range	OpenHolidays
get_public_holidays	Public holidays for one canton and year	OpenHolidays
check_date	Is a given date a school or public holiday?	OpenHolidays
compare_school_holidays	Pairwise overlap matrix across cantons	OpenHolidays
find_common_free_window	Windows where all listed cantons are on holiday	OpenHolidays
next_school_holidays	The next upcoming holiday periods	OpenHolidays
get_long_weekends	Long weekends and required bridge days	Nager.Date
source_status	Reachability and latency of both upstreams	Built-in

All tools are annotated readOnlyHint: true. No tool writes anywhere.

Example Use Cases

Query	Tool
"Which cantons are there, and what are their codes?"	list_cantons
"Show Zurich's compulsory-school holidays for spring 2026"	get_school_holidays
"Is 3 April 2026 a public holiday in Ticino?"	check_date
"Do Zurich and Zug school holidays overlap this year?"	compare_school_holidays
"When can all of ZH, ZG, AG plan a joint week off school?"	find_common_free_window
"What are the next holidays for Basel-Stadt schools?"	next_school_holidays
"Which long weekends does 2026 have, and which bridge days do they need?"	get_long_weekends

---

🛡️ Safety & Limits

Aspect	Details
Access	Read-only (readOnlyHint: true) — the server cannot modify or delete any data
Personal data	No personal data — all sources are aggregated, public holiday calendars
Caching	12-hour in-memory TTL (holiday tables change a handful of times per year)
Retry	Exponential backoff 2s / 4s / 8s; 4xx except 429 are not retried
Timeout	20 seconds per API call (8 seconds for health probes)
Authentication	No API keys required — both upstreams are publicly accessible
Degradation	Upstream failure yields a degraded envelope with an explanatory note, never a silent empty list
Terms of Service	Subject to the ToS of the respective data sources: OpenHolidays, Nager.Date

---

Architecture

This server uses Architecture A (live API only, with in-memory cache).

                    ┌──────────────────────────┐
   Claude / any ───▶│  swiss-school-calendar   │
   MCP host         │  (FastMCP · 10 tools)    │
                    └────────┬─────────────────┘
                             │  retry 2s/4s/8s · 12h cache
                    ┌────────┴─────────┐
                    ▼                  ▼
          OpenHolidays API        Nager.Date
          (CC BY 4.0)             (MIT)
          cantons · Schularten    long weekends
          school + public         bridge days

Rationale (verified live on 2026-07-19):

• All ten documented OpenHolidays endpoints answered HTTP 200 with plausible payloads; /Subdivisions?countryIsoCode=CH returns exactly 26 cantons, matching the official count.
• No public bulk dump could be verified at build time (openpotato/openholidays.data raw access returned 404), so Architecture B was not available.
• Holiday tables change a handful of times per year, so a 12-hour in-memory TTL removes almost all upstream load without risking staleness.

Consequences:

• Every response carries provenance (live_api | cached | degraded).
• Upstream failure yields a degraded envelope with an explanatory note, never a silent empty list.
• source_status always returns an evaluable health report.

---

Live-probe findings (2026-07-19)

Endpoint	HTTP	Status	Records	Note
/Countries	200	✅ works	36
/Subdivisions?countryIsoCode=CH	200	✅ works	26	matches official canton count
/Groups?countryIsoCode=CH	200	✅ works	11	Schulart groups, only 6 cantons
/PublicHolidays (CH, 2026)	200	✅ works	39	cantonal scope included
/SchoolHolidays (CH, 2026)	200	✅ works	193	183 distinct after school-type split
/SchoolHolidaysByDate	200	✅ works	–
/SchoolHolidays?countryIsoCode=XX	200	⚠️ silently empty	0	invalid country ≠ error
/Subdivisions?languageIsoCode=ZZ	200	⚠️ silent EN fallback	26	invalid language ≠ error
/SchoolHolidays without date range	400	✅ correct error	–	RFC 9110 problem+json
Nager /PublicHolidays/2026/CH	200	✅ works	33	29 rows carry counties
Nager /LongWeekend/2026/CH	200	✅ works	3
Nager /PublicHolidays/2026/XX	404	✅ correct error	–	stricter than OpenHolidays

Known findings

1. Apparent duplicates are school types. Zurich returns Frühlingsferien 2026 twice: once for CH-ZH-VS (Volksschulen, tagged Recommended) and once for CH-ZH-BS + CH-ZH-MS (Berufsfach- and Mittelschulen). Use the school_type parameter (VS / MS / BS / EO) rather than de-duplicating.
2. Only six cantons differentiate by school type (AI, AR, BE, GR, SO, ZH). Elsewhere groups is absent and one table covers everything. The filter therefore treats an absent groups field as "applies to all".
3. Subdivision codes mix levels. Records may carry CH-AI-AP or CH-BE-TH-BL. Always match on the CH-XX prefix, never on string equality.
4. An empty list is not an answer. An unknown country or canton code yields HTTP 200 with []. This server sets an explanatory note so that "no holidays" and "bad filter" stay distinguishable.

---

Prerequisites

• Python 3.10 or higher
• uv / uvx (recommended) or pip
• Internet access (both APIs are publicly available)

---

Installation

Run via uv's uvx — no clone or manual install needed:

uvx swiss-school-calendar-mcp

Development

git clone https://github.com/malkreide/swiss-school-calendar-mcp
cd swiss-school-calendar-mcp
pip install -e ".[dev]"

---

Configuration

Claude Desktop

Add to claude_desktop_config.json:

macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json Windows: %APPDATA%\Claude\claude_desktop_config.json

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "swiss-school-calendar": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": ["swiss-school-calendar-mcp"]
    }
  }
}

Restart Claude Desktop — the server starts automatically on first use.

Cloud Deployment (SSE / Streamable HTTP for browser access)

For use via claude.ai in the browser (e.g. on managed workstations without local software):

MCP_TRANSPORT=sse PORT=8000 python -m swiss_school_calendar_mcp

FastMCP exposes SSE at /sse, not /mcp.

Variable	Default	Description
MCP_TRANSPORT	stdio	Transport: stdio, sse, streamable-http (aka http)
PORT / MCP_PORT	8000	Port for HTTP transports
MCP_HOST	0.0.0.0	Bind address for HTTP transports

💡 "stdio for the developer laptop, SSE for the browser."

---

Project Structure

swiss-school-calendar-mcp/
├── src/
│   └── swiss_school_calendar_mcp/
│       ├── __init__.py       # Package init
│       ├── __main__.py       # Entry point: stdio / SSE / Streamable HTTP
│       ├── server.py         # FastMCP server, 10 tools
│       ├── client.py         # HTTP client: retry, 12h in-memory cache, normalisation
│       ├── constants.py      # Canton codes, Schulart suffixes, API bases
│       └── models.py         # Pydantic v2 response envelopes
├── tests/
│   ├── conftest.py           # respx fixtures
│   ├── test_tools.py         # Tool unit tests (mocked, no network)
│   ├── test_resilience.py    # Degradation / retry / cache behaviour
│   └── test_live.py          # Live smoke tests (marker: live)
├── .github/
│   ├── dependabot.yml        # Weekly dependency / action update PRs
│   └── workflows/            # ci.yml, live-tests.yml, publish.yml
├── pyproject.toml
├── CHANGELOG.md
├── CONTRIBUTING.md           # Contributing guide (English)
├── CONTRIBUTING.de.md        # Contributing guide (German)
├── SECURITY.md               # Security policy (English)
├── SECURITY.de.md            # Security policy (German)
├── EXAMPLES.md               # Use cases by audience
├── server.json               # MCP registry manifest
├── LICENSE
├── README.md                 # This file (English)
└── README.de.md              # German version

---

Lifecycle Phase

This server is in Phase 1 (read-only) — all tools read-only, no auth, no side effects. The 10-tool budget (of the 15–20 recommended maximum) deliberately leaves headroom for a Phase 2 extension: city-level Zurich specifics such as Sechseläuten and Knabenschiessen, which are neither public holidays nor school holidays upstream and would arrive via zurich-opendata-mcp.

---

Known Limitations

• Unofficial source. OpenHolidays aggregates cantonal publications. For legally binding dates, the cantonal authority remains authoritative. Every response says so.
• No municipal layer. Zurich city specifics such as Sechseläuten and Knabenschiessen are neither public holidays nor school holidays upstream, and are therefore absent. Candidate for Phase 2 via zurich-opendata-mcp.
• Nager long weekends ignore cantonal holidays. They are computed from nationwide holidays only.
• No historical depth guarantee. Coverage of years before roughly 2020 is uneven.

---

Testing

# Unit tests (no network required — respx-mocked)
PYTHONPATH=src pytest tests/ -m "not live"

# Live smoke tests (hits the real upstream APIs)
PYTHONPATH=src pytest tests/ -m "live"

# Linting
ruff check src/ tests/

---

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please read CONTRIBUTING.md (English) · CONTRIBUTING.de.md (German) for guidelines on reporting bugs, setting up the development environment, code style and test requirements.

This project follows the conventions of the Swiss Public Data MCP Portfolio.

---

Security

To report a vulnerability, please follow the responsible disclosure process in SECURITY.md (English) · SECURITY.de.md (German). The server is read-only and requires no API key; see the Safety & Limits section above for the security model.

---

Changelog

See CHANGELOG.md

---

Deployment for Swiss Public Administration

If you self-host this server for a Swiss school authority or municipal use case:

• Data residency: the query patterns themselves (which cantons a civil servant compares) may reveal ongoing planning and are best kept on Swiss or trusted infrastructure.
• Upstream calls go to OpenHolidays (EU-hosted OGD project) and Nager.Date. No personal data leaves your environment; only holiday calendars are requested.
• Logging: logs are written to stderr; configure your IT retention policy accordingly.
• HTTP transport should run behind a reverse proxy with authentication and per-IP rate limits — the server has no built-in authentication.

---

License

MIT License — see LICENSE

Source data is subject to the terms of OpenHolidays (CC BY 4.0) and Nager.Date (MIT); attribution to these sources is required when using their data.

---

Author

Hayal Oezkan · github.com/malkreide

---

Credits & Related Projects

• Data: OpenHolidays API (CC BY 4.0) · Nager.Date (MIT)
• Protocol: Model Context Protocol — Anthropic / Linux Foundation
• Built following the mcp-data-source-probe methodology: live probe before design, dump fallback before API dependency, retry before defeatism.
• Portfolio: Swiss Public Data MCP Portfolio

Server	Description
zh-education-mcp	Canton of Zurich education data
zurich-opendata-mcp	City of Zurich Open Data
swiss-statistics-mcp	BFS STAT-TAB — Swiss federal statistics
swisstopo-mcp	Swiss federal geodata (swisstopo)

MIT licensed. Public money, public code.