Knihobot MCP — Unofficial

An unofficial, read-only Model Context Protocol server, independently developed as an interoperability and convenience layer for end-user queries against publicly available information in the Knihobot.cz book catalog.

It lets MCP clients search the catalog, inspect a specific physical copy, compare copies of the same edition, and retrieve Knihobot recommendations. It does not sign in to or access customer accounts, carts, orders, authentication-protected data, or private data.

Features

• Search by title, author, ISBN, and catalog filters

• Inspect live prices, availability, metadata, and copy images

• Compare currently available copies of an edition

• Retrieve catalog suggestions and recommendations

• Validate upstream responses before exposing structured MCP output

• Limit concurrency and cache repeated requests

Related MCP server: librarian

Requirements

• Node.js 20 or later

• npm

Installation

git clone https://github.com/birosrichard/knihobot-mcp
cd knihobot-mcp
npm ci
npm run build

MCP client configuration

Add the server to your MCP client configuration. Replace the path with the absolute path to the cloned repository:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "knihobot": {
      "command": "node",
      "args": ["/absolute/path/to/knihobot-mcp/dist/index.js"]
    }
  }
}

The server uses the stdio transport. Diagnostic messages are written to stderr so they do not corrupt MCP messages on stdout.

Tools

• search_books searches for titles, authors, ISBNs, and other text. It supports pages 1–20 plus availability, language, author, publisher, category, condition, binding, year, and price filters.

• suggest_books returns matching books, authors, publishers, categories, labels, and series.

• get_book_detail returns metadata and live sale information for one physical copy. It accepts titleId and bookId from search or suggestion results.

• list_available_copies lists physical copies currently offered for an editionId.

• get_recommendations returns recommended books for an editionId.

Knihobot's catalog model uses titleId for a language-specific title group, editionId for an edition, and bookId for a physical copy offered for sale. These are upstream implementation details and may change.

Configuration

The server works without credentials. The following environment variables are optional:

• KNIHOBOT_BASE_URL: API origin; defaults to https://knihobot.cz

• KNIHOBOT_TIMEOUT_MS: request timeout in milliseconds; defaults to 10000

• KNIHOBOT_CACHE_TTL_MS: cache lifetime in milliseconds; defaults to 60000 and cannot exceed 300000

• KNIHOBOT_MAX_CONCURRENT: maximum concurrent upstream requests; defaults to 2 and cannot exceed 4

The server reads these values from its process environment; it does not load a .env file. All numeric values must be positive integers.

Example prompts

• "Find Czech editions of Dune under 500 CZK."

• "Show all available copies of this edition and compare their prices."

• "Recommend books related to this edition."

Development

npm ci
npm run dev
npm run check

npm run check compiles the TypeScript project and runs the test suite. Tests use mocked HTTP responses and do not require access to Knihobot.

Responsible use and limitations

This project is an independent interoperability tool. It does not replicate or redistribute the Knihobot catalog and does not maintain a persistent copy of Knihobot's database. It provides no bulk catalog export; its bounded, short-lived in-memory cache exists only to reduce repeated identical requests.

Use reasonable request rates and comply with Knihobot's website terms, robots.txt where technically applicable, and applicable law. Do not use this project to circumvent authentication, CAPTCHA, rate limits, bot protection, Cloudflare protections, or any other technical access control. If Knihobot denies or challenges a request, the server reports the restriction instead of attempting to bypass it.

Catalog data, prices, stock levels, images, recommendations, trademarks, and other upstream content remain subject to the rights of their respective owners and may become stale immediately after a tool call. Do not rely on this project as a guaranteed or supported commercial API.

Contributing

See CONTRIBUTING.md.

License

The project's source code is licensed under the ISC License. The ISC License applies only to this project's source code. Upstream product data, images, trademarks, and other content remain subject to the rights of their respective owners.