german-archives-mcp

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labw_standesbuch

Read-only

Find online civil, church, and Jewish vital registers for a Baden-Württemberg place in the Landesarchiv by year, fonds, or confession, with signatures, image counts, and page links.

Instructions

Find the online vital registers of a Baden-Württemberg place at the Landesarchiv.

Baden Standesbücher (L 10, 390: civil duplicates, 1810-1870); Württemberg church-book duplicates (F 901 Catholic, Wü 110 T 1 Protestant with Hohenzollern, 1808-1875); Jewish registers (J 386, films); Sigmaringen civil registers to 1899. Each book has a signature, years, confession, permalink and image count; read a page with labw_image. place_named_first is false for a village filed under a larger place. A zero is not a negative: try the archive's spelling, or no year.

Tool call template

Replace each placeholder with a value matching the input schema. Only required parameters are included; add optional parameters as needed.

{
  "id": 1,
  "jsonrpc": "2.0",
  "method": "tools/call",
  "params": {
    "arguments": {
      "place": "<place>"
    },
    "name": "labw_standesbuch"
  }
}

Input Schema

Name	Required	Description
`year`	No	A year the book must cover, e.g. 1850.
`fonds`	No	Search one fonds only: L 10 or 390 (Baden), F 901 (Württemberg, Catholic), Wü 110 T 1 (Württemberg and Hohenzollern, Protestant), J 386 (Jewish), Dep. 1 T 37 or T 44 (Sigmaringen civil registers). Empty searches all.
`place`	Yes	A place as the archive writes it, e.g. 'Breisach am Rhein', 'Ulm', or a village such as 'Niederrimsingen'. Umlauts matter.
`confession`	No	Keep books of one confession; empty keeps all.
`count_images`	No	Count the images of the first 4 books (slower the first time).

Schema Changelog

Changes observed during successful MCP inspections.

First observedv0.1.0Nov 10, 2026

TDQS

A4.4/5.0

Behavior4/5

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

Annotations already declare readOnlyHint and openWorld, so safety is covered; the description adds substantive behavior: each returned book carries signature, years, confession, permalink and image count, and image counting runs only on the first four books (slower on first call). It also conveys a non-obvious failure mode (zero hits may mean spelling/year mismatch rather than absence). No mention of rate limits or archive-specific auth, but nothing essential is hidden.

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

Conciseness4/5

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

Front-loaded with the core action, then the fonds inventory, then the sibling handoff and the result-interpretation warnings. Semicolon-heavy sentences pack a lot of reference data but every clause (dates, codes, confessions) carries information. Slight density cost, no filler.

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?

There is no output schema, yet the description states what a returned book contains (signature, years, confession, permalink, image count) and flags the 'place_named_first' field, so the agent can interpret results without one. Combined with the year-range caveats and the documented next-step tool, nothing an agent needs to call this correctly is missing.

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 coverage is 100%, so the baseline would be 3, but the description adds meaning the schema lacks: the date spans per record group (1810-1870 Baden, 1808-1875 Württemberg) tell the agent what a 'year' filter can realistically match, and the emphasis on archive spelling and umlauts clarifies the 'place' parameter's expected form. The fonds code expansions largely duplicate the schema's enum descriptions, which keeps this from a 5.

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?

Opens with a specific verb and resource ('Find the online vital registers of a Baden-Württemberg place at the Landesarchiv') and then enumerates exactly which record groups are covered (Baden L 10/390, Württemberg F 901 and Wü 110 T 1, Jewish J 386, Sigmaringen civil registers). It explicitly hands page-reading off to the sibling 'labw_image', so an agent can distinguish the search step from the retrieval step without opening either schema.

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 an explicit alternative for the next step ('read a page with labw_image') and practical fallback guidance for empty results ('A zero is not a negative: try the archive's spelling, or no year'). It also warns that 'place_named_first' is false for villages filed under a larger place, which pre-empts a common misread. It stops short of stating when another regional search tool would be preferred over this one.

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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