Internet Standards

RFCs and IANA registries for coding agents, straight from the RFC Editor and IANA: the exact text of any RFC section, whether an RFC is still current and what replaces it today, the errata filed against a section, and registered values such as HTTP status codes, header fields, media types, ports and TLS cipher suites.

Models quote obsolete RFCs from memory. Ask one about HTTP/1.1 and it cites RFC 2616, which was replaced twice (by RFCs 7230 to 7235 in 2014, then by RFCs 9110 to 9112 in 2022). Internet Standards follows every obsoleted-by chain to its end, warns whenever a section comes from an obsolete RFC, and returns section text verbatim with the verified errata that correct it, so an agent can quote a requirement exactly and know it still applies.

• rfc_info: status, whether it is current, what obsoletes it and the current replacements at the end of the chain, what updates it. Accepts RFC numbers, BCP/STD/FYI series (BCP 14 is RFC 2119 and RFC 8174) and Internet-Draft names.

• rfc_section: one section's exact text by number (15.5.5) or title, with its verified and held errata; a phrase search across the RFC; or the table of contents, with subsections listed so an agent can drill down.

• search_rfcs: topic search in which current documents rank above the ones they replaced.

• iana_lookup: HTTP status codes, fields and methods, media types, URI schemes, port numbers, TLS cipher suites, link relations and DNS record types, each with its defining RFC section.

No account or key needed. Built and maintained by Arhan Canli.

Install

Needs Node.js 20 or newer. No account or key.

Claude Code

claude mcp add internet-standards -- npx -y internet-standards-mcp

Claude Desktop: download internet-standards-mcp-<version>.mcpb from the latest release and open it. The bundle is signed; verify it with gh attestation verify <file> --repo arhancanli/internet-standards-mcp.

Any other client (Windsurf, Zed, Cline, Continue and others), in its MCP config file:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "internet-standards": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": [
        "-y",
        "internet-standards-mcp"
      ]
    }
  }
}

Docker

docker build -t internet-standards-mcp https://github.com/arhancanli/internet-standards-mcp.git && docker run -i --rm internet-standards-mcp

Hosted (Streamable HTTP): node src/server.mjs --http serves stateless MCP at POST /mcp (port from PORT, default 3000).

Related MCP server: mcp-ietf-datatracker

Example

An agent calls rfc_info with:

{
  "ids": [
    "RFC 2616",
    "BCP 14",
    "draft-ietf-httpbis-semantics",
    "RFC 99999"
  ]
}

and gets back (recorded from the live server on 2026-09-26):

{
  "results": [
    {
      "id": "RFC 2616",
      "rfc": "RFC 2616",
      "title": "Hypertext Transfer Protocol -- HTTP/1.1",
      "status": "Draft Standard",
      "current": false,
      "obsoleted_by": [
        "RFC 7230",
        "RFC 7231",
        "RFC 7232",
        "RFC 7233",
        "RFC 7234",
        "RFC 7235"
      ],
      "current_replacements": [
        "RFC 9110",
        "RFC 9111",
        "RFC 9112"
      ],
      "updated_by": [
        "RFC 2817",
        "RFC 5785",
        "RFC 6266",
        "RFC 6585"
      ],
      "obsoletes": [
        "RFC 2068"
      ],
      "published": "June 1999",
      "authors": "R. Fielding, J. Gettys, J. Mogul, H. Frystyk, L. Masinter et al.",
      "url": "https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc2616.html",
      "errata": "https://www.rfc-editor.org/errata/rfc2616",
      "info": "https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2616"
    },
    {
      "id": "BCP 14",
      "series": "BCP14",
      "rfc": "RFC 2119",
      "title": "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate Requirement Levels",
      "status": "Best Current Practice",
      "current": true,
      "updated_by": [
        "RFC 8174"
      ],
      "published": "March 1997",
      "authors": "S. Bradner",
      "url": "https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc2119.html",
      "errata": "https://www.rfc-editor.org/errata/rfc2119",
      "info": "https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2119"
    },
    {
      "id": "BCP 14",
      "series": "BCP14",
      "rfc": "RFC 8174",
      "title": "Ambiguity of Uppercase vs Lowercase in RFC 2119 Key Words",
      "status": "Best Current Practice",
      "current": true,
      "updates": [
... (43 more lines)

Tools

How it behaves

• Read-only: no tool changes anything outside this process.

• Network: HTTPS only, to the hosts listed in package.json under factory.allowHosts, with a deadline, a size cap and bounded retries; a read that stalls is abandoned and retried. Nothing else is contacted, and nothing is logged except unexpected failures (to stderr, without your inputs).

• Per-RFC lookups use the RFC Editor's small per-document records. The full RFC index (for search, series and drafts) and the errata export are downloaded compressed on first use, then kept in memory as parsed data for 12 hours; RFC texts and IANA registries for 24 hours.

• Section text is the RFC Editor's published plain text with page footers and running headers removed; long sections are cut at 12,000 characters with an explicit marker.

• Results are compact JSON with a matching output schema.

Benchmark

Measured 2026-09-26 with gpt-5.4-mini, 10 fixed tasks graded by fixed checks (bench/tasks.json, raw results in bench/results/).

Performance

Measured 2026-09-26 from Dubai, home connection against the live upstream, Node 24.19.0 (bench/perf.json, scripts/perf.mjs in the factory).

First call: a fresh server process, including the TLS connection and the upstream's own time. Repeat: the same call again, answered from the in-process cache, so it shows this server's own overhead.

Tool definitions the model reads on every turn (name, description, input schema): 2,119 characters, against 3,643 for rfcxml-mcp, the most active RFC server. The full tool list, with the output schemas and annotations clients use to validate results, is 3,610 characters (3,636 for the alternative).

Data sources

• RFC Editor: per-RFC records, RFC text, the RFC index and the errata database.

• IANA protocol registries (CSV exports).

More MCP servers by Arhan Canli

• Actions Check: Checks GitHub Actions workflows: outdated actions, old Node runtimes, retired runners, injection.

• Config Check: Validates config files against their official schemas: tsconfig, compose, workflows, 1,400+ more.

• Cron Check: Explains cron expressions, lists next run times in any time zone, converts between cron dialects.

• Dockerfile Check: Checks Dockerfiles: build-breaking mistakes, base image tags that exist, digests, platforms, EOL.

• Domain Health: Email and domain checks: SPF lookup limits, DKIM keys, DMARC, DNS records, registration expiry.

• End of Life: Is this version still supported? EOL dates, latest patch and upgrade target for 470+ products.

• Kube Check: Checks Kubernetes manifests for your version: removed APIs, unknown fields, Pod Security, risks.

• License Check: Open source license answers: SPDX ids, copyleft, and whether a dependency's license fits yours.

• The whole collection, 12 more

License

MIT, Copyright (c) 2026 Arhan Canli.