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gutenberg-mcp-server

by io.github.cyanheads
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Get Gutenberg Book Text

gutenberg_get_text
Read-onlyIdempotent

Retrieve the plain-text content of a Project Gutenberg book, stripped of the standard license header and footer so the response contains only the literary work. For long works — novels routinely run 500KB–2MB — use offset and limit to read in chunks rather than fetching the whole book at once. The response reports totalChars and remainingChars for reliable pagination. Prefers UTF-8 plain text; falls back to an HTML edition converted to text; refuses audio books (media_type "Sound") with a clear error.

Input Schema

TableJSON Schema
NameRequiredDescriptionDefault
idYesProject Gutenberg book ID. Use gutenberg_search_books or gutenberg_get_book to find IDs. Example: 1342 for Pride and Prejudice, 2600 for War and Peace, 84 for Frankenstein.
limitNoRequested maximum characters. Default 20,000 (~4–5 pages of prose); requests above 50,000 are capped locally at 50,000. Paragraph-boundary trimming may return less than the applied limit — use length for continuation.
offsetNoCharacter offset into the stripped literary text at which to start reading. 0 returns the beginning of the work. To read subsequent chunks, use offset = prior_offset + prior_length (the length field from the previous response — NOT offset + limit, because the actual returned length may be slightly less than limit due to paragraph-boundary trimming).

Output Schema

TableJSON Schema
NameRequiredDescriptionDefault
idNoGutenberg book ID.
textNoThe requested chunk of literary text, stripped of Gutenberg license boilerplate. Encoding: UTF-8. Line endings: normalized to LF.
errorNoPresent when the call failed. Absent on success.
titleNoBook title, from the catalog record.
lengthNoNumber of characters in this chunk.
offsetNoCharacter offset where this chunk begins.
hasMoreNoTrue if there is more text after this chunk. When true, call again with offset = offset + length.
provenanceNoOne-line source note with Project Gutenberg ID, title, and license URL.
totalCharsNoTotal characters in the stripped literary text. Use with offset and length to determine progress and plan subsequent calls.
appliedLimitNoCharacter limit applied to this chunk, at most 50,000.
sourceFormatNoThe format that was fetched. "text/html" indicates HTML-to-text conversion was applied because no plain-text format was available.
remainingCharsNoCharacters remaining after this chunk (totalChars - offset - length). 0 means this chunk includes the end of the book.
requestedLimitNoPositive integral character limit requested by the caller, before capping.

Schema Changelog

Changes observed during successful MCP inspections.

  1. Changed7 schema fields changed
    • changedInput schema / properties / limit / description
      Previous value: -"Maximum number of characters to return in this chunk. Default 20,000 (~4–5 pages of prose). Increase toward 50,000 for large context windows. The actual returned length may be slightly less than limit when a natural paragraph boundary is found within 500 characters of the limit — check the length field in the response for the actual character count returned."New value: +"Requested maximum characters. Default 20,000 (~4–5 pages of prose); requests above 50,000 are capped locally at 50,000. Paragraph-boundary trimming may return less than the applied limit — use length for continuation."
    • changedInput schema / properties / limit / maximum
      Previous value: -50000New value: +9007199254740991
    • changedOutput schema / anyOf
      Previous value: -[
-  {
-    "not": {
-      "required": [
-        "error"
-      ]
-    },
-    "required": [
-      "id",
-      "title",
-      "text",
-      "offset",
-      "length",
-      "totalChars",
-      "remainingChars",
-      "hasMore",
-      "provenance",
-      "sourceFormat"
-    ]
-  },
-  {
-    "required": [
-      "error"
-    ]
-  }
-]New value: +[
+  {
+    "not": {
+      "required": [
+        "error"
+      ]
+    },
+    "required": [
+      "id",
+      "title",
+      "text",
+      "offset",
+      "length",
+      "requestedLimit",
+      "appliedLimit",
+      "totalChars",
+      "remainingChars",
+      "hasMore",
+      "provenance",
+      "sourceFormat"
+    ]
+  },
+  {
+    "required": [
+      "error"
+    ]
+  }
+]
    • addedOutput schema / properties / appliedLimit
      Added value: +{
+  "description": "Character limit applied to this chunk, at most 50,000.",
+  "type": "number"
+}
    • changedOutput schema / properties / error / properties / data / properties / reason / description
      Previous value: -"Machine-readable failure mode. Declared by this tool: `not_found`: No book exists with the given ID. `audio_book`: The book is an audio recording (media_type \"Sound\"), not a text book — no literary plain text is available. `no_text_format`: The book has no UTF-8 plain-text or HTML edition available to read (for example an older ASCII-only entry). `offset_out_of_range`: The offset is greater than or equal to totalChars (past the end of the book). `text_fetch_failed`: The Gutenberg file server returned an error or did not respond within the timeout. `catalog_unavailable`: The catalog lookup that precedes reading a book did not answer within the time this server allows. Other values are possible when a failure originates below the handler."New value: +"Machine-readable failure mode. Declared by this tool: `text_file_not_found`: The catalog entry exists but its mirror text file returned HTTP 404. `text_fetch_rejected`: The mirror permanently rejected this text request. `invalid_text_response`: The mirror returned an empty document, HTML on a plain-text path, or recognizable server failure document. `not_found`: No book exists with the given ID. `audio_book`: The book is an audio recording (media_type \"Sound\"), not a text book — no literary plain text is available. `no_text_format`: The book has no UTF-8 plain-text or HTML edition available to read (for example an older ASCII-only entry). `offset_out_of_range`: The offset is greater than or equal to totalChars (past the end of the book). `text_fetch_failed`: The Gutenberg mirror had a transient failure or did not respond within the request budget. `catalog_unavailable`: The catalog lookup that precedes reading a book did not answer within the time this server allows. Other values are possible when a failure originates below the handler."
    • changedOutput schema / properties / error / properties / data / properties / reason / examples
      Previous value: -[
-  "not_found",
-  "audio_book",
-  "no_text_format",
-  "offset_out_of_range",
-  "text_fetch_failed",
-  "catalog_unavailable"
-]New value: +[
+  "text_file_not_found",
+  "text_fetch_rejected",
+  "invalid_text_response",
+  "not_found",
+  "audio_book",
+  "no_text_format",
+  "offset_out_of_range",
+  "text_fetch_failed",
+  "catalog_unavailable"
+]
    • addedOutput schema / properties / requestedLimit
      Added value: +{
+  "description": "Positive integral character limit requested by the caller, before capping.",
+  "type": "number"
+}
  2. Changed2 schema fields changed
    • changedOutput schema / properties / error / properties / data / properties / reason / description
      Previous value: -"Machine-readable failure mode. Declared by this tool: `not_found`: No book exists with the given ID. `audio_book`: The book is an audio recording (media_type \"Sound\"), not a text book — no literary plain text is available. `no_text_format`: The book has no UTF-8 plain-text or HTML edition available to read (for example an older ASCII-only entry). `offset_out_of_range`: The offset is greater than or equal to totalChars (past the end of the book). `text_fetch_failed`: The Gutenberg file server returned an error or did not respond within the timeout. Other values are possible when a failure originates below the handler."New value: +"Machine-readable failure mode. Declared by this tool: `not_found`: No book exists with the given ID. `audio_book`: The book is an audio recording (media_type \"Sound\"), not a text book — no literary plain text is available. `no_text_format`: The book has no UTF-8 plain-text or HTML edition available to read (for example an older ASCII-only entry). `offset_out_of_range`: The offset is greater than or equal to totalChars (past the end of the book). `text_fetch_failed`: The Gutenberg file server returned an error or did not respond within the timeout. `catalog_unavailable`: The catalog lookup that precedes reading a book did not answer within the time this server allows. Other values are possible when a failure originates below the handler."
    • changedOutput schema / properties / error / properties / data / properties / reason / examples
      Previous value: -[
-  "not_found",
-  "audio_book",
-  "no_text_format",
-  "offset_out_of_range",
-  "text_fetch_failed"
-]New value: +[
+  "not_found",
+  "audio_book",
+  "no_text_format",
+  "offset_out_of_range",
+  "text_fetch_failed",
+  "catalog_unavailable"
+]
  3. Changed6 schema fields changed
    • changedInput schema / $schema
      Previous value: -"http://json-schema.org/draft-07/schema#"New value: +"https://json-schema.org/draft/2020-12/schema"
    • addedInput schema / additionalProperties
      Added value: +false
    • changedOutput schema / $schema
      Previous value: -"http://json-schema.org/draft-07/schema#"New value: +"https://json-schema.org/draft/2020-12/schema"
    • addedOutput schema / anyOf
      Added value: +[
+  {
+    "not": {
+      "required": [
+        "error"
+      ]
+    },
+    "required": [
+      "id",
+      "title",
+      "text",
+      "offset",
+      "length",
+      "totalChars",
+      "remainingChars",
+      "hasMore",
+      "provenance",
+      "sourceFormat"
+    ]
+  },
+  {
+    "required": [
+      "error"
+    ]
+  }
+]
    • addedOutput schema / properties / error
      Added value: +{
+  "additionalProperties": {},
+  "description": "Present when the call failed. Absent on success.",
+  "properties": {
+    "code": {
+      "description": "JSON-RPC error code for this failure.",
+      "maximum": 9007199254740991,
+      "minimum": -9007199254740991,
+      "type": "integer"
+    },
+    "data": {
+      "additionalProperties": {},
+      "properties": {
+        "reason": {
+          "description": "Machine-readable failure mode. Declared by this tool: `not_found`: No book exists with the given ID. `audio_book`: The book is an audio recording (media_type \"Sound\"), not a text book — no literary plain text is available. `no_text_format`: The book has no UTF-8 plain-text or HTML edition available to read (for example an older ASCII-only entry). `offset_out_of_range`: The offset is greater than or equal to totalChars (past the end of the book). `text_fetch_failed`: The Gutenberg file server returned an error or did not respond within the timeout. Other values are possible when a failure originates below the handler.",
+          "examples": [
+            "not_found",
+            "audio_book",
+            "no_text_format",
+            "offset_out_of_range",
+            "text_fetch_failed"
+          ],
+          "type": "string"
+        },
+        "recovery": {
+          "additionalProperties": {},
+          "description": "Actionable next step for the caller.",
+          "properties": {
+            "hint": {
+              "type": "string"
+            }
+          },
+          "required": [
+            "hint"
+          ],
+          "type": "object"
+        },
+        "retryable": {
+          "description": "Whether retrying may succeed.",
+          "type": "boolean"
+        }
+      },
+      "type": "object"
+    },
+    "message": {
+      "description": "Human-readable description of what went wrong.",
+      "type": "string"
+    }
+  },
+  "required": [
+    "code",
+    "message"
+  ],
+  "type": "object"
+}
    • removedOutput schema / required
      Removed value: -[
-  "id",
-  "title",
-  "text",
-  "offset",
-  "length",
-  "totalChars",
-  "remainingChars",
-  "hasMore",
-  "provenance",
-  "sourceFormat"
-]
  4. First observed

TDQS

A4.7/5.0
Behavior5/5

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

Annotations cover the safety profile (readOnly, openWorld, idempotent), but the description adds substantial behavior beyond them: license header/footer stripping, the 500KB–2MB size reality, chunked reading, the UTF-8→HTML fallback chain, audio-book refusal with a clear error, and pagination counters (totalChars/remainingChars). This is unusually rich disclosure for a read tool.

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

Conciseness5/5

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

Three tightly packed sentences with the core purpose front-loaded, followed by the chunking constraint and the format/fallback policy. Every sentence carries distinct information; nothing is redundant with the schema.

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

Completeness5/5

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 explained, yet the description still surfaces totalChars/remainingChars for pagination. Combined with fallback and refusal behavior, an agent has everything needed to call this correctly without trial and error.

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

Parameters4/5

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

Schema description coverage is 100%, so the baseline is 3, and the schema already documents offset/limit mechanics in detail. The description adds the 'why' behind the parameters — that novels routinely run 500KB–2MB and should be read in chunks via offset and limit — which is strategy-level context the schema does not supply.

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

Purpose5/5

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

States a specific verb+resource ('Retrieve the plain-text content of a Project Gutenberg book') and immediately scopes it: license header/footer are stripped, so only the literary work is returned. This cleanly distinguishes it from gutenberg_get_book (metadata) and gutenberg_search_books (discovery).

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

Usage Guidelines4/5

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

Gives clear operational context: chunk long works with offset/limit instead of fetching whole books, and notes the media fallback order (UTF-8 text, then HTML edition) plus the refusal of audio books. It does not explicitly name sibling tools or state when to prefer them (e.g. 'use gutenberg_get_book for metadata'), so it stops short of full when/when-not routing.

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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