Medical Terminologies MCP

Search MeSH

mesh_search

Read-onlyIdempotent

Search for MeSH (Medical Subject Headings) descriptors.

Use this tool to:

Find MeSH terms for indexing medical literature
Look up subject headings for PubMed searches
Find controlled vocabulary terms

Set language to request NLM's official translations where they exist (e.g. language: "pt" for Portuguese labels); content is never machine-translated.

Returns matching descriptors with MeSH IDs and labels.

Input Schema

TableJSON Schema

Name	Required	Description	Default
`match`	No	Match type: exact, contains, or startswith. Default: contains	contains
`query`	Yes	Search term (e.g., "diabetes", "heart failure")
`language`	No	Language code (default: en). Returns the source's OFFICIAL translation when it exists (e.g. 'pt' for official Portuguese); content is never machine-translated.	en
`max_results`	No	Maximum number of results (1-100). Default: 25

Output Schema

TableJSON Schema

Name	Required	Description
`match`	Yes
`query`	Yes
`provenance`	Yes	Provenance block: source, URL, data vintage, extraction instant, origin diagnostics, citation, license
`attribution`	Yes	Canonical source URLs of this response (attribution list)
`descriptors`	Yes
`total_count`	Yes

Schema Changelog

Changes observed during successful MCP inspections.

Changed1 schema field changedOct 16, 2026

changedOutput schema / properties / provenance / properties / notices / description

Previous value: -"Notices the source publishes alongside the data (license statements, caveats), verbatim. Absent when there is none"New value: +"Caveats the source publishes about the data, verbatim (license statements are not repeated here; see the info://licenses resource). Absent when there is none"

Changed7 schema fields changedOct 8, 2026

changedOutput schema / properties / provenance / description

Previous value: -"Provenance block (contract v1.1): source, URL, data vintage, extraction instant, origin diagnostics, citation, license"New value: +"Provenance block: source, URL, data vintage, extraction instant, origin diagnostics, citation, license"

addedOutput schema / properties / provenance / properties / derivation_note

Added value: +{
+  "description": "What this server computed; present together with derived",
+  "type": "string"
+}

addedOutput schema / properties / provenance / properties / derived

Added value: +{
+  "description": "Present (true) only when this server computed the value (e.g. a ranking or summary statistics) instead of passing on what the source returned",
+  "type": "boolean"
+}

changedOutput schema / properties / provenance / properties / field_sources / description

Previous value: -"Present only when the response joins parts from different origins or extraction instants (contract v1.2): for each group of fields, its URL, extraction instant and whether it came from cache. Absent in single-origin responses"New value: +"Present only when the response joins parts from different origins or extraction instants: for each group of fields, its URL, extraction instant and whether it came from cache. Absent in single-origin responses"

addedOutput schema / properties / provenance / properties / notices

Added value: +{
+  "description": "Notices the source publishes alongside the data (license statements, caveats), verbatim. Absent when there is none",
+  "items": {
+    "type": "string"
+  },
+  "minItems": 1,
+  "type": "array"
+}

changedOutput schema / properties / provenance / properties / retrieval / description

Previous value: -"Origin diagnostics of THIS source in this call (contract v1.1): requests made to the upstream, attempts summed across retries, anomalies worked around (kind + count); unstable=true when any anomaly happened. null when nothing was measured (bundled dataset, or response served entirely from cache)"New value: +"Origin diagnostics of THIS source in this call: requests made to the upstream, attempts summed across retries, anomalies worked around (kind + count); unstable=true when any anomaly happened. null when nothing was measured (bundled dataset, or response served entirely from cache)"

addedOutput schema / properties / provenance / properties / revision

Added value: +{
+  "additionalProperties": false,
+  "description": "Whether the data can still change at the source: current = the version in force, the source may revise it; provisional = preliminary; final = will not change. Absent when unknown",
+  "properties": {
+    "note": {
+      "description": "O específico da fonte: o que revisa, quando, por quê",
+      "type": [
+        "string",
+        "null"
+      ]
+    },
+    "status": {
+      "description": "current = versão vigente, a fonte pode revisá-la; provisional = preliminar, incompleta ou sujeita a mudança (não compare como se fosse fechada); final = não muda mais, declarado pela fonte",
+      "enum": [
+        "current",
+        "provisional",
+        "final"
+      ],
+      "type": "string"
+    }
+  },
+  "required": [
+    "status",
+    "note"
+  ],
+  "type": "object"
+}

Changed1 schema field changedOct 6, 2026

addedOutput schema / properties / provenance / properties / field_sources

Added value: +{
+  "description": "Present only when the response joins parts from different origins or extraction instants (contract v1.2): for each group of fields, its URL, extraction instant and whether it came from cache. Absent in single-origin responses",
+  "items": {
+    "additionalProperties": false,
+    "description": "Proveniência de um grupo de campos da resposta: de onde veio e quando foi extraído",
+    "properties": {
+      "data_vintage": {
+        "description": "Vintage/competência da sub-fonte",
+        "type": [
+          "string",
+          "null"
+        ]
+      },
+      "dataset_id": {
+        "description": "Identificador do conjunto da sub-fonte",
+        "type": [
+          "string",
+          "null"
+        ]
+      },
+      "fields": {
+        "description": "Campos do payload atribuídos a esta sub-fonte",
+        "items": {
+          "type": "string"
+        },
+        "minItems": 1,
+        "type": "array"
+      },
+      "retrieved_at": {
+        "description": "ISO-8601 da extração desta sub-fonte na origem",
+        "type": [
+          "string",
+          "null"
+        ]
+      },
+      "served_from_cache": {
+        "description": "true se esta sub-fonte veio do cache do servidor (retrieved_at é o da extração original); false se foi buscada nesta chamada; null se o servidor não distingue",
+        "type": [
+          "boolean",
+          "null"
+        ]
+      },
+      "source_url": {
+        "description": "URL canônica da sub-fonte que originou estes campos",
+        "type": "string"
+      }
+    },
+    "required": [
+      "fields",
+      "source_url",
+      "dataset_id",
+      "data_vintage",
+      "retrieved_at"
+    ],
+    "type": "object"
+  },
+  "minItems": 1,
+  "type": "array"
+}

Changed3 schema fields changedSep 27, 2026

changedOutput schema / properties / provenance / description

Previous value: -"Provenance block (contract v1.0): source, URL, data vintage, extraction instant, citation, license"New value: +"Provenance block (contract v1.1): source, URL, data vintage, extraction instant, origin diagnostics, citation, license"

addedOutput schema / properties / provenance / properties / retrieval

Added value: +{
+  "anyOf": [
+    {
+      "additionalProperties": false,
+      "properties": {
+        "anomalies": {
+          "description": "Anomalias superadas até o sucesso, somadas por classe, em ordem fixa; [] se nenhuma",
+          "items": {
+            "additionalProperties": false,
+            "properties": {
+              "count": {
+                "description": "Ocorrências desta classe na chamada",
+                "maximum": 9007199254740991,
+                "minimum": 1,
+                "type": "integer"
+              },
+              "kind": {
+                "description": "Classe da anomalia (vocabulário fechado do contrato)",
+                "enum": [
+                  "timeout",
+                  "network",
+                  "http_4xx",
+                  "http_5xx",
+                  "rate_limited",
+                  "malformed_body"
+                ],
+                "type": "string"
+              }
+            },
+            "required": [
+              "kind",
+              "count"
+            ],
+            "type": "object"
+          },
+          "type": "array"
+        },
+        "attempts": {
+          "description": "Tentativas somadas, incluindo as repetidas (>= requests)",
+          "maximum": 9007199254740991,
+          "minimum": 1,
+          "type": "integer"
+        },
+        "requests": {
+          "description": "Idas distintas à origem que compõem esta resposta (fatias, páginas)",
+          "maximum": 9007199254740991,
+          "minimum": 1,
+          "type": "integer"
+        },
+        "unstable": {
+          "description": "true se houve repetição (attempts > requests) ou alguma anomalia",
+          "type": "boolean"
+        }
+      },
+      "required": [
+        "requests",
+        "attempts",
+        "anomalies",
+        "unstable"
+      ],
+      "type": "object"
+    },
+    {
+      "type": "null"
+    }
+  ],
+  "description": "Origin diagnostics of THIS source in this call (contract v1.1): requests made to the upstream, attempts summed across retries, anomalies worked around (kind + count); unstable=true when any anomaly happened. null when nothing was measured (bundled dataset, or response served entirely from cache)"
+}

changedOutput schema / properties / provenance / required

Previous value: -[
-  "source",
-  "source_url",
-  "data_vintage",
-  "retrieved_at",
-  "citation",
-  "license"
-]New value: +[
+  "source",
+  "source_url",
+  "data_vintage",
+  "retrieved_at",
+  "retrieval",
+  "citation",
+  "license"
+]

Changed1 schema field changedSep 11, 2026
- addedInput schema / additionalProperties
```
Added value: +false
```
First observedSep 6, 2026

TDQS

A3.7/5.0

Behavior4/5

Does the description disclose side effects, auth requirements, rate limits, or destructive behavior?

Annotations already declare readOnly, idempotent, non-destructive and open-world behavior, so the safety profile is covered. The description adds genuinely useful context beyond that: language returns NLM's official translations only and content is never machine-translated, plus a note on what the response contains (matching descriptors with MeSH IDs and labels).

Agents need to know what a tool does to the world before calling it. Descriptions should go beyond structured annotations to explain consequences.

Conciseness4/5

Is the description appropriately sized, front-loaded, and free of redundancy?

Front-loads the purpose in one sentence, then a short scannable bullet list, then the language caveat and return summary. The three bullets are near-duplicative of each other, costing a little density, but nothing is padded or off-topic.

Shorter descriptions cost fewer tokens and are easier for agents to parse. Every sentence should earn its place.

Completeness4/5

Given the tool's complexity, does the description cover enough for an agent to succeed on first attempt?

An output schema exists, so return values need not be described in depth; the description still gives a one-line summary. With 100% schema coverage on all four parameters and full annotation coverage, the definition supplies what an agent needs to invoke the tool correctly, though it omits how results are ranked or truncated.

Complex tools with many parameters or behaviors need more documentation. Simple tools need less. This dimension scales expectations accordingly.

Parameters3/5

Does the description clarify parameter syntax, constraints, interactions, or defaults beyond what the schema provides?

Schema description coverage is 100%, so the schema fully documents query, match, language, and max_results — baseline 3. The description's language sentence adds no meaning beyond the schema, which already states the identical 'official translation, never machine-translated' semantics, so it earns no lift.

Input schemas describe structure but not intent. Descriptions should explain non-obvious parameter relationships and valid value ranges.

Purpose4/5

Does the description clearly state what the tool does and how it differs from similar tools?

States a specific verb and resource ('Search for MeSH (Medical Subject Headings) descriptors') and spells out the domain purpose in three bullets. It does not explicitly differentiate itself from siblings like mesh_descriptor or mesh_tree, so an agent must infer the split between searching, fetching a descriptor, and walking the tree.

Agents choose between tools based on descriptions. A clear purpose with a specific verb and resource helps agents select the right tool.

Usage Guidelines3/5

Does the description explain when to use this tool, when not to, or what alternatives exist?

The bulleted use cases ('find MeSH terms for indexing', 'look up subject headings for PubMed searches', 'find controlled vocabulary terms') imply when the tool is appropriate, but they largely restate the same scenario three ways. There is no guidance on when to prefer this over mesh_descriptor or mesh_tree, and no stated preconditions.

Agents often have multiple tools that could apply. Explicit usage guidance like "use X instead of Y when Z" prevents misuse.

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