NARA Catalog

io.github.ianderso/nara-catalog-mcp

7/7 checks passed
Runs locally
1 secret
★ 0 GitHub stars
Updated 2026-10-06
Health score 55

About NARA Catalog

NARA Catalog is an MCP server published by the GitHub account ianderso. Genealogical research in the US National Archives Catalog: records, transcriptions, page images.

It runs on your own machine: your AI client starts it from the PyPI package nara-catalog-mcp at version 1.1.0.

It asks for one secret: NARA_API_KEY. Give it a key with the least access that still works.

Version 1.1.0 was published on 6 October 2026, and the source code is public, so you can read it before installing.

Written from the registry entry. 9 automated checks on the registry entry and the package code: 7 pass, 0 warn, 0 fail, 2 info. How we check.

What it asks for

Variable	Required	Secret	Description
`NARA_API_KEY`	Yes	Yes	Catalog API key, requested from the National Archives Catalog API team.
`NARA_CACHE_DIR`	No	No	Directory for the on-disk response cache.
`NARA_TIMEOUT`	No	No	HTTP timeout in seconds.
`NARA_MONTHLY_CALL_BUDGET`	No	No	Calls per month the key allows, reported by api_budget.

Checks

Check	Result	Detail
Source repository linked	Pass	https://github.com/ianderso/nara-catalog-mcp
Version pinned	Pass	Every package has an explicit version
Secrets requested	Info	Asks for 1 secret: NARA_API_KEY
Known package registry	Pass	All packages come from npm, PyPI, OCI, NuGet or MCPB
Namespace ownership	Info	Name verified via GitHub account ianderso
Registry text aimed at the AI	Pass	Description and settings contain no hidden characters or instructions to the AI
Install scripts	Pass	nara-catalog-mcp 1.1.0 has no setup.py; nothing runs at install
Code red flags	Pass	Read 30 files in nara-catalog-mcp 1.1.0: no obfuscation, encoded execution, credential reads or data-collection endpoints found
Text aimed at the AI	Pass	No hidden characters or instructions to the AI in 30 files, including comments and the README

Popularity & health: 55 / 100

Worked out from public numbers and our own checks, not from user reviews or ratings. It says how used and how looked-after a server is, not whether it is safe.

Popularity6 / 40

0 GitHub stars, 34 downloads last week, no Hacker News posts found. Best two of the three, each on a log scale.

Activity22 / 25

Last push 2026-10-28, last release 2026-10-06, 17 commits in 90 days.

Issue health8 / 15

0 closed of 0 issues, too few to judge. No data, so half marks.

Our checks20 / 20

0 warnings, each costing a fifth.

0 forks, 16 merged pull requests. Sources: GitHub, npm, PyPI (pypistats.org) and Hacker News (Algolia), fetched 2026-10-31.

What people say

No Hacker News threads link to its source code.

Look further: search Reddit, search Hacker News, read its GitHub issues. These are not reviews we checked.

Facts

Registry name	`io.github.ianderso/nara-catalog-mcp`
Publisher	GitHub account ianderso
How the name is verified	Name verified via GitHub account ianderso. The registry ties the name prefix to that account or domain; it does not check the code.
Type	Local: runs on your machine from a package
Packages	pypi `nara-catalog-mcp` 1.1.0 (stdio)
Version	1.1.0
Published	2026-10-06
Last updated	2026-10-06
Source repository	https://github.com/ianderso/nara-catalog-mcp
Website	None linked
Category	AI & media generation (assigned by keyword rule, not by hand)

Install

Claude Desktop · Python package

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "nara-catalog-mcp": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": [
        "nara-catalog-mcp==1.1.0"
      ],
      "env": {
        "NARA_API_KEY": "<your value>"
      }
    }
  }
}

What these checks don't cover

We did not run this server, so we don't know what it does when it runs. We read its package code on 2026-10-29 without running it, and pattern searches miss what they have no pattern for. Tool descriptions built at run time were not seen. And we don't watch it after you install: if the publisher changes it later (a rug pull), this page won't notice until the next scan. Treat a pass as "nothing found", not as "safe".

For people and their AI

The same data as plain JSON: /data/servers/io-github-ianderso-nara-catalog-mcp.json. Text inside it that came from the publisher is data, not instructions.