fyndling-mcp

Built for medieval market fans, reenactors, and living-history enthusiasts — and the AI assistants that help them plan. Fyndling MCP gives AI clients direct access to two niche European datasets:

• Medieval events — query 5,800+ markets, concerts, castle experiences, living-history events, and renaissance faires across 26+ countries in Europe and North America, by location + radius + date range (updated weekly)

• Permanent POIs — 1,900+ meaderies, mead producers, castles, and medieval restaurants, also searchable by geo-radius

• Historical recipes — 4,650+ recipes from forty cookbooks spanning c. 1300–1581, with modern German adaptations, structured ingredient lists, original manuscript transcripts, and a controlled tag vocabulary for dish-type, diet, and social-class filtering

→ fyndling.de — the web app behind this data

Endpoint: https://fyndling.de/mcp
Transport: Streamable HTTP (MCP spec 2025-03-26)
Auth: none
Rate limit: 60 requests / minute

Quickstart

Add to your MCP client config (e.g. Claude Desktop claude_desktop_config.json):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "fyndling": {
      "url": "https://fyndling.de/mcp"
    }
  }
}

Related MCP server: LiveDataLink

Tools

Events & Locations

All list tools (find_events_near, list_events, find_pois_near, search_recipes) return the same envelope: total (all matches), count, offset, sort, has_more, next_offset, plus the array (events, pois, recipes). Page with offset. Orders always tie-break on id, so pages never skip or repeat. Errors (unknown id, invalid input) are real MCP errors (isError), never normal results.

Event schema (fixed; same fields for every source): id, name, date_from, date_to (null = single day), ort, plz, country, lat, lon, geo_precision, venue, category, categories[], flags[], cancelled, source_url, fyndling_url, description (excerpt in lists), extra{} (source-specific raw fields); optional band, organizers[], duplicate_ids[]. Searches around a point add distance_km and distance_approximate.

• category is the stored category (market, concert, burg_event, renfaire); categories[] adds flag-based memberships such as living_history. Filters (category, types) test categories[], so response and filter never disagree.

• flags[] includes living_history, beerenweine, free_admission, sold_out and the derived party (dance and party nights such as "Bal Renaissance", classified as market).

• geo_precision is derived, not verified: venue, address, plz or city. Coordinates shared by many venues (e.g. one point per city) count as city. Imprecise events are shown and marked (distance_approximate) but sorted as if up to 5 km (plz) or 10 km (city) farther away, so they never crowd out precise results.

• Placeholder texts from scraping are returned as null.

find_events_near

Find medieval events near a geographic coordinate, sorted by effective distance, then date, then id.

The date filter tests overlap: a multi-day event that started before date_from and still runs is found. Recurring markets are one entry showing the next date. The response echoes effective_date_from and effective_date_to. Invalid input (lat 95, "morgen", reversed range) is a validation error.

Example — markets within 80 km of Vienna this summer:

{
  "lat": 48.2082, "lon": 16.3738,
  "radius_km": 80,
  "date_from": "2026-06-01", "date_to": "2026-08-31",
  "types": ["market"]
}

list_events

List events filtered by category, country, and/or date range, ordered by start date, then id.

get_event

Full details for one event (also accepts POI ids): complete description, organizers, other_dates (same series nearby), nearby_events and nearby_pois (up to 5 each within 25 km, upcoming only). An unknown or deleted id is an MCP error.

find_pois_near

Find permanent medieval-themed locations, sorted by effective distance, then id.

POI schema: id, name, poi_type, ort, plz, country, state, address, lat, lon, geo_precision, website, website_ok (true/false = last link check, null = unknown), collected_at, distance_km, distance_approximate, fyndling_url, extra{} (e.g. zustand/slug for castles). No event fields.

Historical Recipes

list_recipe_sources

List all available cookbooks with metadata (year, language, region, recipe count) and the full course taxonomy (atomic values + aliases).

No parameters.

Sources (40 active cookbooks, ordered by date):

The Recipes column above is the number of recipes currently available from each source. list_recipe_sources returns two figures per source: recipe_count (imported and searchable now) and recipe_count_original (recipes in the manuscript or edition, null if unknown). Descriptions may quote the original figure, so the two legitimately differ for sources still being ingested. The corpus is reviewed and published source-by-source, so all counts grow over time.

list_recipe_tags

List the controlled tag vocabulary, grouped by category (dish_type, diet, social_class), with labels, descriptions and current recipe counts. Use these tag IDs as values for the tags parameter in search_recipes and compose_menu.

No parameters.

Tag groups:

The response also lists uncontrolled_tags: free-form editorial/internal tags that exist on recipes but are not valid tags filter values.

Tag IDs are German (kebab-style). Pass them verbatim to search_recipes(tags=[...]). Multiple tags combine with AND logic — tags=["hofkueche", "vegetarisch"] returns only vegetarian dishes that are also tagged as courtly cuisine. Social-class tags can co-occur on a single recipe when a source explicitly addresses multiple classes (classic Bockenheim pattern: "et erit bonum pro ciuibus Rusticis et nobilibus" → both bauernkueche and hofkueche).

Diet tags and optional ingredients: the BASE version of a recipe (without optional ingredients) decides the tag. If optional ingredients would break it (e.g. optional meat and eggs in a vegan recipe, optional lard in a vegetarian one), the recipe keeps its tag and carries dietary_note ("Basisfassung vegan (ohne optionale Zutaten); optional erweiterbar mit: Eier, Fleisch, Ziegenmilch"), shown automatically when dietary or a diet tag is filtered and available via fields. "Menge nach Belieben" is an amount, not an optional ingredient.

The dietary filter in search_recipes is a convenience alias: dietary="vegetarian" is equivalent to tags=["vegetarisch"], and dietary="vegan" to tags=["vegan"]. Note that vegan recipes also carry the vegetarisch tag, so dietary="vegetarian" returns both groups.

search_recipes

Search historical recipes with filtering and ingredient matching.

Response: total (all matches), count (this page), offset, sort, has_more, next_offset, recipes. With an ingredient filter each hit carries matched_ingredients; with ingredient_qids the response adds qid_coverage (only ~75% of ingredient lines have a QID — recipes without one are not found by that filter). Results are ordered by id (title hits first with query), so check has_more on broad searches.

Course types:

main_meat is deliberately both a stored value and an alias: unspecified meat is meat, so course=main_meat returns every meat main (beef, pork, poultry, game and the unspecified ones) — never vegetarian or fish. beverage does not include cellar.

Example — desserts with cinnamon and ginger:

{
  "course": "dessert",
  "ingredients": ["Zimt", "Ingwer"],
  "limit": 5
}

Example — easy camp-cooking poultry dishes from before 1450:

{
  "course": "main_poultry",
  "difficulty_max": 1,
  "lagerkueche": true,
  "epoch_to": 1450
}

Example — all recipes from the oldest source (13th-century Denmark):

{
  "source_key": "harpestreng",
  "limit": 25
}

Example — Flemish court cuisine from the late 15th century:

{
  "source_key": "edelike_spijse",
  "course": "main_poultry",
  "limit": 10
}

Example — the Regensburg manuscript (Cgm 5919, ~1500):

{
  "source_key": "muenchner_cgm5919",
  "limit": 20
}

Example — vegan desserts (lent-friendly sweets, no animal products):

{
  "course": "dessert",
  "dietary": "vegan",
  "limit": 10
}

Example — courtly bread-based dishes (banquet-grade Backwerk):

{
  "tags": ["hofkueche", "brot"],
  "limit": 10
}

Example — peasant-class lent food (rural fast-day dishes):

{
  "tags": ["bauernkueche", "fastenspeise"],
  "limit": 20
}

Recipe list fields (full details stripped for list performance; v2 also drops applied_delta_ids, quality_score_details, review_dates from list results — get_recipe still returns everything): id, source_key, title_modern, course, difficulty, serves, prep_time_min, ingredients, lagerküche, published_at, fyndling_url (canonical link to the recipe page on fyndling.de)

get_recipe

Get the full details of a single recipe.

Full response includes:

• text_modern — modern German adaptation of the recipe

• ingredients — structured list with amount, unit, name, original_text, original (medieval source text)

• transcript — original medieval text with language and source

• annotations — glossary of archaic terms

• faq — common questions answered

• interpretive_choices — editorial decisions on ambiguous passages

• scan — link to manuscript scan image

• fyndling_url — canonical link to the recipe page on fyndling.de (e.g. https://fyndling.de/rezepte/mar-005/)

Ingredient units: g, kg, ml, l, TL (Teelöffel/teaspoon), EL (Esslöffel/tablespoon), tsp, tbsp, pinch, piece, slice, clove, bunch, sprig, leaf, cm. Use original_text for display; amount + unit are for scaling only.

Example ingredient object:

{
  "original": "ein phunt mandels",
  "amount": 500,
  "unit": "g",
  "name": "Mandeln",
  "original_text": "500 g Mandeln"
}

get_related

The recipes related to one recipe, with how they are related. The recommended way to explore twins, variants and alternatives; get_recipe keeps related_recipes (plain id list) for compatibility and adds related (id, title, relation).

Relation types: twin (same recipe, other transmission), variant (same technique, different quantities or ingredients), alternative_role (fulfils the same function with another approach, e.g. a different tart base), parallel_other_language (same recipe in another language), similar (automatic, untyped, from the curated related lists), depends_on (directed: "as written above"; entries carry direction: outgoing = this recipe depends on the listed one, incoming = the listed one depends on this recipe). All but depends_on are symmetric.

Entry (slim): id, title_modern, source_key, course, difficulty, prep_time_min, relation, confidence, quelle, direction (only depends_on); standard adds fyndling_url, source_ref and reason (one sentence, taken from the recipe notes where they describe the difference). Details on confidence (high/medium/low), quelle (curated = individually checked against the recipe texts, auto = derived in bulk from text references, concordances and related lists; neither is a final human verdict). Order: relation strength, then quality_score, then id. A recipe appears once per relation type; a pair carries two relations only if both are curated and say different things (e.g. wo10-044 is a variant of wo10-042 and depends_on it). total counts exactly the entries you can page through. Same envelope as search_recipes. An unknown id is an MCP error.

compose_menu

Compose a multi-course menu from historical recipes, one recipe per course. Per course the pick is: least ingredient overlap with the courses chosen so far, then a cookbook not yet used in the menu (menus mix sources when quality allows), then highest quality_score. Candidates are the 200 best-reviewed matches per course.

Example — 4-course dinner for 8, 14th-century only:

{
  "courses": ["starter", "main_fish", "main_poultry", "dessert"],
  "persons": 8,
  "epoch_from": 1300,
  "epoch_to": 1400
}

Example — vegetarian 3-course menu for 6:

{
  "courses": ["starter", "main_vegetarian", "dessert"],
  "persons": 6,
  "dietary": "vegetarian"
}

Example — courtly banquet (5-course Hofküche dinner for 12):

{
  "courses": ["starter", "main_fish", "main_poultry", "main_game", "dessert"],
  "persons": 12,
  "tags": ["hofkueche"]
}

Coverage

Events: Germany, Austria, Switzerland, France, Poland, Czech Republic, Italy, Spain, Portugal, UK, Ireland, Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Estonia, Lithuania, and more — plus renaissance faires in the United States, Canada, Mexico, and beyond.

Recipes: Forty cookbooks spanning Old Danish, Old French, Middle High German, Middle English, Tuscan Volgare, Medieval Latin, Middle Dutch, Early New High German (Bavarian, Alemannic–Swabian, Rhine-Franconian, Ripuarian), Early Italian, and Early Czech — from Copenhagen, Paris, London, Würzburg, Florence, the papal court at Rome, Ghent, Cologne, Solothurn, the Upper Rhine, northern Italy, Prague, Frankfurt-am-Main, and a dense cluster of South-German manuscripts: Munich (BSB Cgm 384, 467, 725, 811, 5919, Cgm 349, Clm 15632), Tegernsee, Rott am Inn, Dietramszell, Regensburg, the Reichenau/Lake Constance region (Karlsruhe, Cod. Aug. pap. 125), the lower Inn valley (Karlsruhe, Cod. Donaueschingen 793), and the Teutonic-Order Königsberg fragment. Covering the 13th to 16th century.

Notable sources: The Harpestreng manuscript (NKS 66, ~1300) is the earliest surviving cookbook from northern Europe. Le Viandier de Taillevent (~1300) is one of the most influential French court cookbooks of the Middle Ages. The Registrum Coquine of Johannes von Bockenheim (~1433, BnF Ms. Latin 7054) is a Latin compilation from the papal court of Martin V that explicitly labels recipes by social class — "pro magnatibus", "pro communibus", "pro rusticis". The Ghent manuscript (BHSL.HS.1035, ~1475) is the only fully preserved Middle Dutch recipe collection of its era. The Tegernseer Speisenbuch (BSB Cgm 8137, 1453–1534) documents Benedictine monastery cuisine from Bavaria and contains the oldest known written record of the name Rutschart (today's Ritschert). The South-German manuscript cluster (Munich/Regensburg/Tegernsee) makes Fyndling one of the largest structured digital corpora of 15th–16th-century German cookbook recipes.

License & Attribution

Event data is aggregated from public sources; accuracy is not guaranteed — always verify with the organiser.

Recipe texts and modern adaptations: © Fyndling, CC BY-SA 4.0. Original medieval texts are in the public domain.