lantern-mcp
Server Configuration
Describes the environment variables required to run the server.
| Name | Required | Description | Default |
|---|---|---|---|
| LANTERN_CACHE_DIR | No | Override the default cache directory for OCR downloads. | |
| LANTERN_MIN_REQUEST_INTERVAL | No | Minimum request interval in seconds (default 5). Overrides the crawl-delay from robots.txt. |
Instructions
Guidance the server publishes about itself, which clients place ahead of the tool catalog so the model reads it before choosing anything.
This server publishes no instructions, or was last inspected before Glama recorded them.
Capabilities
Features and capabilities supported by this server
Protocol revision2025-11-25
| Capability | Details |
|---|---|
| tools | {
"listChanged": true
} |
| logging | {} |
| prompts | {
"listChanged": false
} |
| resources | {
"subscribe": false,
"listChanged": false
} |
| extensions | {
"io.modelcontextprotocol/ui": {}
} |
| experimental | {} |
Tools
Functions exposed to the LLM to take actions
| Name | Description |
|---|---|
| search_lanternA | Search the entertainment trade press full text. Lantern indexes the Media History Digital Library: Variety, Billboard, the New York Clipper, Motion Picture Herald, the studio year books and the fan magazines, roughly 1900-1960. This is the industry's own press - where stage acts were reviewed, booked and gossiped about by the trade that employed them - rather than general news coverage. THE DEFAULT OPERATOR IS OR, NOT AND. Bare words are combined with OR, so
Each result resolves to one scanned leaf and carries its keyword-in-context excerpt inline, with matches in {braces}, so no further call is needed to judge a hit. |
| get_lantern_textA | Download one leaf's OCR text, returning the path to the cached file. Use only when the search excerpt is not enough and the whole page has to be read or grepped. This is expensive per volume: the Internet Archive serves OCR per volume rather than per page, so the first leaf of a volume costs an 8-25 MB download and every later leaf of that volume is then free. |
Prompts
Interactive templates invoked by user choice
| Name | Description |
|---|---|
No prompts | |
Resources
Contextual data attached and managed by the client
| Name | Description |
|---|---|
No resources | |
TDQS
Scored across 2 tools
The two tools have clearly distinct purposes: one searches and returns excerpts, the other fetches full OCR text for a specific leaf. There is no ambiguity in their roles, and descriptions reinforce their complementary nature.
Both tool names follow a consistent verb_noun snake_case pattern: search_lantern and get_lantern_text. Even though one adds a modifier, the verb-first structure and shared domain noun keep the naming uniform and predictable.
With only two tools, the set feels minimal — at the low end of what's useful. For such a narrow domain (searching and reading a specific archive), two might suffice, but it still borders on overly thin.
The workflow is complete for the core use case: search to locate relevant pages, then fetch full text when needed. Minor gaps exist, such as no way to browse volumes or get metadata, but these are not essential for typical search-and-read tasks.