🐟 MIT Catalog → MCP

Most of the web has no API, so agents can't use it. This MCP server turns the MIT Course Catalog (real site, no public API) into typed agent tools — TinyFish Fetch does the reading underneath.

TinyFish Student Bounty Site to MCP (Drop 002) · 3+ endpoints → 150 pts tier

📑 Contents

• 🚀 Installing / Getting started

• 🎯 Usage

• 🤖 Use with AI (MCP)

• 🛠 Tools

• 🏗️ How it works

• ✅ Live proof

• 📁 Project structure

• 🤝 Contributing

• 🔗 Links

• 📜 Licensing

Related MCP server: CrawlForge MCP Server

🚀 Installing / Getting started

pip install -r requirements.txt
export TINYFISH_API_KEY=...   # https://agent.tinyfish.ai/api-keys
mit-catalog health              # all 4 tools live; status: ok

What actually happens ↑: each tool fetches the live MIT catalog page via TinyFish Fetch and parses it into typed JSON. No API key for MIT itself — the key is only for TinyFish.

🎯 Usage

mit-catalog subjects --limit 6
mit-catalog courses 18 --limit 3
mit-catalog search "computer science" --limit 3
mit-catalog degree electrical-engineering-computing-course-6-5

🤖 Use with AI (MCP)

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "mit-catalog": {
      "command": "mit-catalog-mcp",
      "env": { "TINYFISH_API_KEY": "..." }
    }
  }
}

Tools: list_subjects · list_courses(subject) · search_degrees(query) · get_degree_info(url_or_slug) · health_check() — all return typed JSON, and the CLI above is the same code without an MCP client.

🛠 Tools

Multi-step agent use works because the tools compose: search_degrees returns a URL or slug, and get_degree_info consumes it in the next turn.

🏗️ How it works

flowchart LR
    subgraph tinyfish["TinyFish Fetch (underneath)"]
      F[fetch markdown<br/>catalog.mit.edu]
    end
    F --> P[Pure parsers<br/>parsers.py]
    P --> T1[list_subjects] & T2[list_courses] & T3[search_degrees] & T4[get_degree_info]
    T1 & T2 & T3 & T4 --> MCP[MCP tools + CLI<br/>typed JSON]
    MCP --> H[health_check<br/>fails loudly if MIT redesigns]

• TinyFish Fetch does the reading/clicking for every tool — remove it and nothing works.

• Pure parsers (parsers.py) are offline-tested (make test, 7 tests).

• Retry with backoff — one flaky fetch doesn't break a tool call.

• Health check runs all 4 tools against known inputs and reports ok / broken with per-tool detail.

✅ Live proof (2026-11-08)

health → status: ok, 4/4 tools green. Examples in examples/:

• subjects.json — 16 Aeronautics, 21A anthropology, …

• courses-18.json — 18.01 Calculus, 5-0-7 units, Fall/Spring

• degrees.json — CS degree search hits with URLs

• degree.json — EECS 6-5 chart: 6.100A Intro to CS Programming in Python, …

📁 Project structure

mitcatalog/
├── __init__.py   # version + catalog base URL
├── cli.py        # same tools, no MCP client needed
├── client.py     # TinyFish Fetch wrapper (retry/backoff)
├── parsers.py    # pure offline-tested parsers
├── server.py     # MCP tools (FastMCP)
├── health.py     # 4-tool health check
mitcatalog.py     # shim (python3 mitcatalog.py …)
tests/            # parsers + health (mocked)
examples/         # live JSON outputs

🤝 Contributing

Issues and PRs welcome. Parser changes need a test; new tools need a health-check entry.

🔗 Links

• Repository: https://github.com/Ehsas317/mit-catalog-mcp

• Site wrapped: https://catalog.mit.edu (no public API — that is the point)

• TinyFish docs: https://docs.tinyfish.ai · API keys: https://agent.tinyfish.ai/api-keys

📜 Licensing

MIT — see LICENSE.