mgi-link

An MCP (Model Context Protocol) server that grounds mouse-genetics work in Mouse Genome Informatics (informatics.jax.org). It reproduces the data on an MGI gene/marker page — especially Mutations, Alleles, and Phenotypes — as structured tools an agent can call.

Why

The MGI gene page (e.g. Wt1, MGI:98968) is a rich JS app with no clean JSON API. The data behind it exists only as bulk TSV reports and an OBO ontology file — no endpoint answers "what phenotypes does knocking out this gene cause?".

mgi-link rebuilds that surface from MGI's canonical bulk reports into a fast, offline, deterministic SQLite index and exposes it as MCP tools with structured outputs, response_mode verbosity control, and _meta.next_commands chaining. It also closes the mouse↔human gap: pass a human symbol or HGNC id to any marker tool and it resolves through the ortholog.

Related MCP server: BioContextAI Knowledgebase MCP

Quick start

Hosted — no install:

claude mcp add --transport http mgi-link https://mgi-link.genefoundry.org/mcp

Locally (Python 3.12+, uv). make data is required: the server has no data until the MGI reports are downloaded and the index is built.

make install      # uv sync --group dev
make data         # REQUIRED: download the MGI bulk reports, build the SQLite index
make dev          # unified server: FastAPI /health + MCP /mcp on 127.0.0.1:8000
make mcp-serve    # or: the stdio MCP server

claude mcp add mgi-link -- uv run mgi-link-mcp   # stdio

Deploying behind a reverse proxy? MGI_LINK_ALLOWED_HOSTS must list the public hostname — see configuration.md.

Tools

Leaf names are intentionally unprefixed per the GeneFoundry Tool-Naming Standard v1. The canonical gateway namespace token is mgi: behind genefoundry-router these surface as mgi_<tool> (e.g. mgi_get_marker), with get_marker_phenotypes pinned as the entry point. Worked call sequences: usage.md.

Data & provenance

The index is built from the MGI bulk reports at informatics.jax.org/downloads/reports: MRK_List2, MGI_PhenotypicAllele, MGI_GenePheno, VOC_MammalianPhenotype, MPheno_OBO.ontology, HOM_MouseHumanSequence, MGI_DO and MRK_ENSEMBL. A live MouseMine (InterMine) enrichment client exists but is off by default and reserved for v2.

MGI publishes roughly weekly. mgi-link-data refresh is conditional (ETag / Last-Modified, so an unchanged release costs one 304) and is driven by an external cron job — the in-process scheduler is off by default. Full model: data.md.

Data licence. MGI data are freely available for research use; please cite MGI / The Jackson Laboratory (copyright). The Mammalian Phenotype Ontology is licensed CC BY 4.0, a separate grant.

Cite (served verbatim at mgi://citation): Baldarelli RM, Smith CL, Bello SM, et al. Mouse Genome Informatics: an integrated knowledgebase system for the laboratory mouse. Genetics. 2024;227(1):iyae031. doi:10.1093/genetics/iyae031. RRID:SCR_006460.

Documentation

• Usage — canonical workflows, the tool reference, and what is out of scope in v1.

• Configuration — every MGI_LINK_* variable, the entry points, and the Host/Origin allowlists.

• Data — the source reports, the refresh model, licensing and citation.

• Deployment — cron, systemd, Docker, and running behind a proxy.

• Architecture — the data plane, the SQLite schema, and the MCP plane.

• AGENTS.md — engineering conventions and architecture invariants.

Contributing

See AGENTS.md for engineering conventions and the invariants not to break. make ci-local is the definition-of-done gate: format, lint, line budget, README standard, mypy strict, and tests. It must be green before a change lands.

License

Code: MIT © mgi-link contributors. Data: MGI data are free for research use (cite MGI / The Jackson Laboratory); the Mammalian Phenotype Ontology is CC BY 4.0.