🔍 About

ra-mcp provides AI assistants with access to millions of transcribed historical documents from Riksarkivet (the Swedish National Archives). Search 17th-19th century court records, prison registers, and other digitized materials using advanced search syntax.

Full-text search ALTO XML transcriptions IIIF images Wildcards Fuzzy search Boolean operators

📖 Learn more: github.com/AI-Riksarkivet/ra-mcp

🔌 Connect MCP Server

For Mistral, Claude or ChatGPT

Adding ra-mcp with streamable http:

URL: https://riksarkivet-ra-mcp.hf.space/mcp

For Claude Code

claude mcp add --transport http ra-mcp https://riksarkivet-ra-mcp.hf.space/mcp

With MCP Inspector

cat > mcp.json <<'EOF'
{
  "mcpServers": {
    "ra-mcp": {
      "type": "streamable-http",
      "url": "https://riksarkivet-ra-mcp.hf.space/mcp",
      "note": "ra-mcp server - Swedish National Archives"
    }
  }
}
EOF

npx -y @modelcontextprotocol/inspector --config ./mcp.json

Open http://0.0.0.0:7860 in your browser to access the Inspector UI.

🛠️ Available Tools

search_transcribed - Full-text search with advanced syntax and pagination
browse_document - View complete page transcriptions with highlighting

📚 Search Syntax Reference

Type	Syntax	Example	Description
Exact	`"word"`	`"Stockholm"`	Find exact matches
Wildcard (single)	`?`	`"St?ckholm"`	Match any single character
Wildcard (multiple)	`*`	`"Stock*"`	Match zero or more characters
Fuzzy	`~`	`"Stockholm~"`	Find similar terms (edit distance: 2)
Fuzzy (custom)	`~N`	`"Stockholm~1"`	Custom edit distance (0-2)
Proximity	`"w1 w2"~N`	`"Stockholm trolldom"~10`	Words within N words apart
Boosting	`^N`	`"Stockholm^4 trol*"`	Increase term relevance
Boolean AND	`AND`	`(Stockholm AND trolldom)`	Both terms required
Boolean OR	`OR`	`(Stockholm OR Göteborg)`	Either term required
Boolean NOT	`NOT`	`(Stockholm NOT trolldom)`	Exclude second term
Grouping	`(...)`	`((Stockholm OR Göteborg) AND troll*)`	Create sub-queries

Note: Always use grouping () for boolean searches and "" for multi-word phrases.

🎯 Usage Examples

Ask your AI assistant naturally:

💬 "Find documents about Stockholm"

Simple keyword search

💬 "Search for troll* - any word starting with troll"

Wildcard search: trolldom, trolleri, trollkona, etc.

💬 "Find Stockholm and trolldom mentioned close together"

Proximity search within context

💬 "Search for (Stockholm OR Göteborg) AND troll*"

Complex boolean query with wildcards

💬 "Show me page 7 of document SE/RA/310187/1"

Browse specific pages with full transcription

💬 "Browse pages 5-12 and highlight trolldom"

View page ranges with keyword highlighting

RA-MCP (WIP)