Openzim Mcp

✨ Highlights. A lean 8-tool advanced surface (zim_query, zim_search, zim_get, zim_get_section, zim_browse, zim_metadata, zim_links, zim_health) with a schema small enough for small-model dispatch — or one-tool Simple mode for natural-language queries. Archive-type presets auto-tune retrieval per source (Wikipedia, Stack Exchange, …), inbound link discovery answers "what links here," and native libzim introspection validates and inspects any archive. Available on Smithery and the official MCP Registry. Release notes → Docs →

OpenZIM MCP is a modern, secure, high-performance Model Context Protocol server that gives AI models structured, offline access to ZIM format knowledge archives — Wikipedia, Wiktionary, Stack Exchange, and the rest of the Kiwix Library.

Built for research assistants, knowledge chatbots, and content-analysis systems that need intelligent access to vast knowledge repositories — not just a raw text dump. Smart navigation by namespace (articles, metadata, media), structure-aware retrieval (sections, tables of contents, related articles), full-text search with suggestions and multi-archive search, and link-graph extraction to map content relationships. Cached, paginated operations keep things responsive across massive archives; comprehensive input validation and path-traversal protection keep things safe.

Streamable HTTP transport, per-entry MCP resources with live change notifications, and dual Simple / Advanced modes are all built in.

Install

# uv (recommended — isolated CLI tool)
uv tool install openzim-mcp

# pip
pip install openzim-mcp

# Docker (multi-arch image, ghcr.io) — runs as a local stdio MCP server
docker pull ghcr.io/cameronrye/openzim-mcp
docker run -i --rm -v ~/zim-files:/data ghcr.io/cameronrye/openzim-mcp

The container defaults to stdio transport, so docker run -i speaks MCP over stdin/stdout — wire it into an MCP client the same way as the binary (see Quick start). For the long-running HTTP service (bearer auth, CORS, health endpoints), opt in at runtime with -e OPENZIM_MCP_TRANSPORT=http -e OPENZIM_MCP_HOST=0.0.0.0 -e OPENZIM_MCP_AUTH_TOKEN=… -p 8000:8000; see HTTP & Docker deployment.

Verify the install:

openzim-mcp --help

Get your first ZIM archive

The server does nothing without an archive to read. Grab a real one — a 13.6 MB extract of English Wikipedia on climate change, from the openZIM project's own testing suite. No account, nothing to install:

mkdir -p ~/zim-files
curl -fsSL -o ~/zim-files/wikipedia_en_climate_change_mini_2024-06.zim \
  https://raw.githubusercontent.com/openzim/zim-testing-suite/main/data/withns/wikipedia_en_climate_change_mini_2024-06.zim

~/zim-files is the directory every example below points the server at — the server expands ~ itself, so it works from a shell and from a client config file alike. For full archives — Wikipedia, Wiktionary, Stack Exchange and the rest, ranging from a few hundred MB to tens of GB — browse browse.library.kiwix.org and save the .zim into the same directory. More detail, including checksums and a Windows PowerShell equivalent: Quick start.

Smithery & one-click install

OpenZIM MCP is listed on the Smithery registry and the official MCP Registry (as io.github.cameronrye/openzim-mcp). Add it to your MCP client with the Smithery CLI: