Overview

The Wayback Machine and Internet Archive library (40M+ items). Find and fetch archived snapshots of any URL, search the library by keyword and metadata, and retrieve item metadata, file manifests, and OCR text from any MCP client. Runs as a stdio process or a local Streamable HTTP server.

Tools

| Tool | Description | |:---|:---| | ia_find_snapshots | Find Wayback Machine snapshots of a URL, by closest timestamp or full capture history | | ia_get_snapshot | Fetch archived page content at a specific Wayback timestamp | | ia_search_items | Search the IA library (40M+ items) by keyword and metadata filters | | ia_get_item | Retrieve full metadata and file manifest for an Archive item | | ia_get_text | Retrieve readable OCR text from a text item, with paging |

Resources

| Resource | Description | |:---|:---| | ia://item/{identifier} | Metadata snapshot for an Archive item — title, creator, mediatype, description, subjects, collections, date, license, and file count |

All resource data is also reachable via ia_get_item.

Capability reference

ia_find_snapshots tool

• closest mode: returns the nearest capture to a given timestamp via the Availability API, falling back to one CDX closest-capture query (preferring a 200 capture, 25 s deadline) when the Availability API has no answer
• history mode: full capture list via the CDX API; filter by date range (from/to), HTTP status (status_filter), and MIME type
• Default collapse of timestamp:8 (one capture per day); adjustable to timestamp:N, N=1–14
• Up to 10,000 records per call (limit, default 100); resume_key pagination for large histories
• Replay URLs are always https://web.archive.org/web/…
• Typed errors: missing_timestamp (closest mode without a timestamp, answered before any lookup), no_snapshots (no matches), no_snapshot_available (closest mode, no capture near timestamp from either source), cdx_unavailable (CDX 5xx, 429, or unreadable response, or the closest-mode CDX check did not complete), availability_unavailable (closest mode, Availability API 5xx, 429, or unreadable response); a 429 is answered after one request with a hint to wait

ia_get_snapshot tool

• Resolves to the nearest available capture when the exact timestamp has no snapshot; exact 14-digit timestamps skip resolution
• Reports the capture Wayback served — replay_url, resolved_timestamp, and resolved_status follow Wayback's redirect when the requested timestamp is not itself a capture
• Decodes the page with its declared charset (Content-Type, then <meta>, else UTF-8 when the bytes are valid UTF-8, else Wayback's guessed charset or windows-1252), then removes scripts, styles, comments, and tags and decodes character references, returning readable plain text alongside the replay URL
• Reads at most the first 4 MiB of a page (a notice says when a page is longer); output capped at IA_MAX_SNAPSHOT_CHARS (default 50,000 characters)
• Typed errors: no_snapshot_available, content_fetch_failed (Wayback unreachable during lookup or fetch)

ia_search_items tool

• Solr query syntax plus structured filters: mediatype, collection, creator, language, and date range (date_from/date_to)
• mediatype takes the ten Internet Archive media types — texts, movies, audio, software, image, data, web, collection, etree, account — case-insensitively, and resolves common near-misses (text, book, books → texts; movie, video, videos → movies; images → image; collections → collection)
• Sort by relevance, date, or downloads (sort, Solr syntax; default downloads desc)
• Up to 200 results per page (rows, default 50), 1-indexed page
• Output carries total_found, page, rows for pagination; an empty page returns a notice rather than an error — naming the mediatype applied when nothing matched, or the last page when page is past the end
• Typed error invalid_mediatype for any other mediatype, listing the accepted values, answered before any search request

ia_get_item tool

• Returns title, creator, description, subject, collection, licenseurl, rights, and language when present in upstream metadata; creator, description, subject, collection, and language may be a string or a list
• files[] is one page of the manifest in upstream order — format, size, md5, and a direct download_url per file; file_count is always the full manifest size
• max_files (1–500, default 50) and file_offset (default 0) page through large items; when files remain, the response sets truncated and names the next file_offset
• format keeps one file type (exact match, case-insensitive — e.g. DjVuTXT, Text PDF, VBR MP3) before paging and reports the match count as totalCount; a format with no matches returns an empty page and a notice listing the formats the item has
• Typed error item_not_found for unknown identifiers

ia_get_text tool

• max_chars (defaults to IA_MAX_SNAPSHOT_CHARS) and char_offset page through long documents; has_more signals additional text remains
• Locates the best available text file — DjVuTXT preferred, falls back to plain text; source_file names the file fetched
• Typed errors: item_not_found, no_text_file, download_forbidden (restricted collections)

ia://item/{identifier} resource

• Returns application/json — title, creator, mediatype, description, subject, collection, date, licenseurl, rights, language, and file_count
• identifier comes from ia_search_items results
• Typed error item_not_found for unknown identifiers

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.

Internet Archive-specific:

• No credentials required — all four APIs are public
• Three service layers: WaybackService (Availability + CDX), ArchiveSearchService (Solr), ArchiveMetadataService (Metadata + downloads)
• CDX collapse-by-day default and configurable limit keep responses tractable for high-capture URLs
• Identifies via a custom User-Agent on every request as required by IA's terms of use; configurable via IA_USER_AGENT

Agent-friendly output:

• Pagination context on every list response — total_found, page, rows (search), resume_key (CDX history), and file_count plus the next file_offset (item files) so agents never have to guess whether results are complete
• Typed error reasons (missing_timestamp, no_snapshots, no_snapshot_available, cdx_unavailable, availability_unavailable, content_fetch_failed, invalid_mediatype, item_not_found, no_text_file, download_forbidden) with recovery hints so callers can retry or explain to users without parsing text
• Structured file manifests — ia_get_item returns file-level metadata (format, size, URL) and a format filter, so agents can pick the right file without paging through thumbnails

Getting started

No API key required — the Internet Archive's APIs are fully public.

Add the following to your MCP client configuration file:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "internet-archive-mcp-server": {
      "type": "stdio",
      "command": "bunx",
      "args": ["@cyanheads/internet-archive-mcp-server@latest"],
      "env": {
        "MCP_TRANSPORT_TYPE": "stdio",
        "MCP_LOG_LEVEL": "info"
      }
    }
  }
}

Or with npx (no Bun required):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "internet-archive-mcp-server": {
      "type": "stdio",
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@cyanheads/internet-archive-mcp-server@latest"],
      "env": {
        "MCP_TRANSPORT_TYPE": "stdio",
        "MCP_LOG_LEVEL": "info"
      }
    }
  }
}

Or with Docker:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "internet-archive-mcp-server": {
      "type": "stdio",
      "command": "docker",
      "args": [
        "run", "-i", "--rm",
        "-e", "MCP_TRANSPORT_TYPE=stdio",
        "ghcr.io/cyanheads/internet-archive-mcp-server:latest"
      ]
    }
  }
}

For Streamable HTTP, set the transport and start the server:

MCP_TRANSPORT_TYPE=http MCP_HTTP_PORT=3010 bun run start:http
# Server listens at http://localhost:3010/mcp

Prerequisites

• Bun v1.4.0 or higher (or Node.js v24+).
• No external accounts or API keys required.

Installation

1. Clone the repository:

git clone https://github.com/cyanheads/internet-archive-mcp-server.git

2. Navigate into the directory:

cd internet-archive-mcp-server

3. Install dependencies:

bun install

4. Configure environment:

cp .env.example .env
# Optional: edit .env for custom User-Agent, timeouts, etc.

Configuration

All configuration is validated at startup via Zod schemas in src/config/server-config.ts.

| Variable | Description | Default | |:---------|:------------|:--------| | MCP_TRANSPORT_TYPE | Transport: stdio or http | stdio | | MCP_HTTP_PORT | HTTP server port | 3010 | | MCP_AUTH_MODE | Auth mode: none, jwt, or oauth | none | | MCP_LOG_LEVEL | Log level (debug, info, notice, warning, error) | info | | LOGS_DIR | Directory for log files (Node.js only) | <project-root>/logs | | STORAGE_PROVIDER_TYPE | Storage backend | in-memory | | OTEL_ENABLED | Enable OpenTelemetry instrumentation | false | | IA_USER_AGENT | Custom User-Agent for IA API requests | internet-archive-mcp-server/{version} (github.com/cyanheads/internet-archive-mcp-server) | | IA_REQUEST_TIMEOUT_MS | HTTP request timeout in milliseconds | 30000 | | IA_MAX_SNAPSHOT_CHARS | Default character cap for ia_get_text responses | 50000 |

See .env.example for the full list of optional overrides.

Running the server

Local development

• Build and run:

  # One-time build
  bun run rebuild
  
  # Run the built server
  bun run start:stdio
  # or
  bun run start:http

• Run checks and tests:

  bun run devcheck   # Lint, format, typecheck, security
  bun run test       # Vitest test suite
  bun run lint:mcp   # Validate MCP definitions against spec

Docker

docker build -t internet-archive-mcp-server .
docker run --rm -p 3010:3010 internet-archive-mcp-server

The Dockerfile defaults to HTTP transport, stateless session mode, and logs to /var/log/internet-archive-mcp-server. OpenTelemetry peer dependencies are installed by default — build with --build-arg OTEL_ENABLED=false to omit them.

Project structure

| Directory | Purpose | |:----------|:--------| | src/index.ts | createApp() entry point — registers tools, resource, and inits services. | | src/config | Server-specific environment variable parsing and validation with Zod. | | src/mcp-server/tools | Tool definitions (*.tool.ts). Five tools across Wayback and IA library. | | src/mcp-server/resources | Resource definitions. ia://item/{identifier} item metadata resource. | | src/services/wayback | WaybackService — Availability API + CDX API client, plus archived-page charset decoding and text extraction. | | src/services/archive-search | ArchiveSearchService — Solr Advanced Search client. | | src/services/archive-metadata | ArchiveMetadataService — Metadata API + file download client. | | tests/ | Unit and integration tests mirroring src/. |

Development guide

See CLAUDE.md for development guidelines and architectural rules. The short version:

• Handlers throw, framework catches — no try/catch in tool logic
• Use ctx.log for request-scoped logging, ctx.state for tenant-scoped storage
• Register new tools and resources via the barrels in src/mcp-server/*/definitions/index.ts
• Wrap external API calls: validate raw → normalize to domain type → return output schema; never fabricate missing fields

Contributing

Issues are welcome. Run checks and tests before submitting:

bun run devcheck
bun run test

License

Apache-2.0 — see LICENSE for details.