penn-course-mcp

An MCP server for University of Pennsylvania course planning, built on the open-source Penn Courses (Penn Course Plan / Penn Course Review) public API.

It lets an LLM (Claude Desktop, Claude Code, or any MCP client) search the Penn course catalog, inspect sections and meeting times, read ratings, and do real planning work — detecting schedule conflicts, assembling a weekly schedule, and comparing courses side by side.

• ✅ Works with zero configuration against the public Penn Courses API.

• 🔓 Optional auth unlocks detailed Penn Course Review breakdowns; everything degrades gracefully when no credentials are set.

• 🔌 Runs over stdio (local clients) or streamable HTTP (hosted).

Tools

Course codes look like CIS-1200; section ids look like CIS-1200-001.

Related MCP server: UofT Student Helper MCP Server

Installation

# with uv (recommended)
uv pip install -e ".[dev]"

# or with pip
pip install -e ".[dev]"

Running

# stdio (default) — for Claude Desktop / Claude Code
penn-course-mcp

# streamable HTTP — serves http://127.0.0.1:8000/mcp
penn-course-mcp --transport http --port 8000

# dev / MCP Inspector
fastmcp dev src/penn_course_mcp/server.py

Claude Desktop / Claude Code config

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "penn-course": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": ["penn-course-mcp"],
      "env": {
        "PENN_COURSES_SESSION_COOKIE": ""
      }
    }
  }
}

(Use "command": "penn-course-mcp" instead if you installed it into a venv on your PATH.)

Configuration

All environment variables are optional (see .env.example):

Optional: detailed reviews

The public API already exposes aggregate ratings (course/instructor quality, difficulty, work required) — no auth needed. The detailed per-instructor Penn Course Review breakdowns require a logged-in Penn session. To enable them, log in to penncoursereview.com in your browser, copy your session cookie, and set:

export PENN_COURSES_SESSION_COOKIE="sessionid=..."

Without it, get_course_reviews returns the public aggregate ratings plus a note — it never errors.

Development

uv pip install -e ".[dev]"
pytest          # pure planning logic + mocked client + tool tests
ruff check .

The planning logic (src/penn_course_mcp/planning.py) is pure and network-free — schedule-conflict detection, time formatting, and comparison are fully unit-tested.

Notes & data quirks

• Meeting times use Penn's HH.MM encoding (10.15 = 10:15, 15.3 = 15:30); the server always renders them as readable HH:MM ranges.

• Day codes are M/T/W/R/F (R = Thursday).

• Back-to-back meetings (one ending exactly when the next starts) are not flagged as conflicts.

• This is an unofficial tool that consumes the public Penn Courses API. Please use it respectfully (it caches responses and caps concurrency).

License

MIT