Zenodo MCP Server

@cyanheads/zenodo-mcp-server Search and resolve Zenodo datasets, software, and publications by DOI; trace versions and funding, list files, and preview text files via MCP. STDIO or Streamable HTTP. 6 Tools

Public Hosted Server: https://zenodo.caseyjhand.com/mcp

Overview

Datasets, software releases, and publications from Zenodo, CERN's open research repository. Search deposits with filters for funder, grant, community, license, and file type; resolve any Zenodo DOI, concept DOI, or URL to its record; walk a deposit's versions; and list, open, and preview its files, including members of .zip archives.

Tools

The published zenodo-guide covers selecting a cited release, resolving funding identities, and checking inspection coverage. Plugin installs include it; MCP clients can discover it through the Skills extension and its skill resources.

Capability reference

zenodo_search_records tool

• Keyword query (terms OR-ed unless joined with AND, quoted phrases, field syntax such as metadata.title:"…") plus resource_type, community, funder, award, creator_orcid, file_type, license, access_status, and published_from / published_to
• Up to 25 hits per page; only the first 10,000 matches are reachable (result_window_exceeded past that); latest versions only unless all_versions is true
• sort: bestmatch, newest, oldest, mostviewed, mostdownloaded, updated-desc, updated-asc (default bestmatch with a query, newest without)
• Each hit carries record and concept ids and DOIs, type, version, creators, license ids, access, file totals, and unique views and downloads; facets count resource types, access statuses, file types, subjects, and years over the full match set
• A bare DOI or record URL as query fails as query_is_identifier; a community or funder Zenodo doesn't know fails as unknown_community / unknown_funder
• Invalid search syntax fails as query_syntax, naming the offending token:
• With a filter other than community or all_versions set, any invalid syntax fails (climate AND AND model, metadata.title: with no value, 'single quotes', an unclosed [a TO b]), because Zenodo would search it as plain text and drop the filters. Without such a filter it runs as plain text and the notice says so
• Constructs Zenodo cannot run fail with or without a filter, unless the query already runs as plain text: an unclosed / (escape a literal one as \/), a trailing ! (climate\!), a range bound ending in a backslash (double-quote a bound holding a space, ], or }: [a TO "b]"]), and a boost, fuzziness, or proximity value Zenodo cannot convert (climate^1.2.3, "x y"~0.5; write ^2, ~0.5, "x y"~2)
• An unclosed " inside a word (12" vinyl; escape it as 12\") fails without a filter; with one, the phrase is closed at the end of the query and the closed query is checked instead

zenodo_get_record tool

• id takes a record id, a Zenodo DOI, a concept DOI or concept record id (resolves to the latest version), another DOI registered to a Zenodo record, or a zenodo.org / doi.org URL; input_kind and resolved_from report how it resolved
• Returns the description as plain text (up to 4,000 characters), creators and contributors with ORCIDs and ROR affiliations, rights, access and embargo, funding, related identifiers, communities, version position with latest_recid, usage counts, and the first 25 files
• Every capped field reports its total, and each cut except the file list (paged with zenodo_list_files) is listed in continuations with a cursor and the record id it is bound to; pass both back to get that field's next window (8,000 characters of text, or the next page of entries)
• citation_style: bibtex, csl-json, apa, chicago-author-date, harvard-cite-them-right, ieee, modern-language-association, or nature
• A miss returns found: false with miss_kind (not_found, deleted, restricted, not_on_zenodo) and guidance; a deleted record adds its removal tombstone

zenodo_list_versions tool

• Takes the same id forms as zenodo_get_record; a concept DOI and any version's DOI list the same series
• Newest first, up to 25 per page; reports total_versions, latest_recid, and the concept record id and DOI
• Each version carries its record id, DOI, version label, publication date, index, is_latest, file totals, and unique views and downloads
• Misses return found: false with the same miss_kind, guidance, and tombstone as zenodo_get_record

zenodo_list_files tool

• Manifest entries carry key, size, MIME type, MD5, download URL, previewable, and listable (a .zip); up to 200 per page via offset / limit
• archive_key lists the members of one .zip; Zenodo lists at most 1,000 files and directories per archive, flagged by upstream_truncated
• key_contains filters keys or member paths case-insensitively before paging
• Restricted and embargoed files return the access status and embargo date with no entries; unknown and deleted records fail as record_not_found / record_deleted

zenodo_read_file tool

• key from zenodo_list_files, plus archive_member to read inside a .zip without downloading it
• max_bytes from 256 (default 16,384), at most 65,536 per call (larger values return 65,536); continue a top-level file from next_offset; .zip members read from byte 0 only
• status is text, not_text, restricted, or empty; excerpts end on a line or character boundary
• Extensionless files typed application/octet-stream (LICENSE, Makefile) are returned only when their content is UTF-8 text
• Every result carries the deposit's rights and the download_url

zenodo_lookup_vocabulary tool

• vocabulary: communities, funders, awards, licenses, or resource_types; query by name, acronym, or keyword, or omit it to browse
• Each entry's filter_param and filter_value name the zenodo_search_records filter and the id to pass it
• funder scopes awards to one funder, as a ROR id, ROR URL, or Crossref Funder DOI
• Up to 25 entries per page; only the first 10,000 entries of a list are reachable, reported as reachable beside total

Features

Built on @cyanheads/mcp-ts-core: stdio and Streamable HTTP transports, pluggable auth (none / jwt / oauth), swappable storage (in-memory, filesystem, Supabase, Cloudflare KV/R2/D1), structured logging with optional OpenTelemetry tracing.

Zenodo-specific:

• Accepts a record id, Zenodo DOI, concept DOI, external DOI, or zenodo.org / doi.org URL in every tool that takes id; URLs are parsed locally and never fetched
• Search filters compose into Zenodo's query, so facet counts agree with total; community and funder values are checked before the search runs
• Separate request pacers for Zenodo's search and general rate-limit buckets, backed by its X-RateLimit-* headers, plus a process-local cache (records 5 min, searches 60 s, vocabularies 1 h)
• Byte-range file reads and .zip member reads, with binary detection before any text is returned

Agent-friendly output:

• Misses as data: zenodo_get_record and zenodo_list_versions return found: false with a typed miss_kind, next-step guidance, and a deleted record's tombstone
• Depositor-supplied text is labeled untrusted: descriptions render as quoted blocks, file content in a code fence, and HTML descriptions are converted to plain text
• Search responses echo the effectiveQuery sent to Zenodo and the appliedSort, and every paged tool reports totals with a next page or offset
• Fields Zenodo omits stay absent rather than defaulting to 0, '', or false

Getting started

Connect to the hosted instance, no install:

claude mcp add --transport http zenodo-mcp-server https://zenodo.caseyjhand.com/mcp

Or run it locally:

claude mcp add zenodo-mcp-server -- npx -y @cyanheads/zenodo-mcp-server

For other clients, add this to the MCP config file:

{

"mcpServers": { "zenodo-mcp-server": { "command": "npx", "args": ["-y", "@cyanheads/zenodo-mcp-server"] } } }

The hosted instance shares Zenodo's anonymous rate limit across callers. An optional Zenodo personal access token in ZENODO_ACCESS_TOKEN raises the rate limit of your own instance (-e ZENODO_ACCESS_TOKEN=your-token after the Claude Code server name, or an env entry). For Docker or a source build, see Running the server.

Configuration

| `MCP_SE