@pipeworx/softwareheritage

The Software Heritage archive of public source code: which repositories have been captured, when each was last captured successfully, and the commits inside them — addressed by content, so they keep resolving after a repository is renamed, moved or deleted.

Part of Pipeworx — an MCP gateway connecting AI agents to 1576+ live data sources.

Tools

• origin_search(query, limit?, with_visit?) — find archived origins whose URL matches a substring. Answers "is this project in the archive, and under which URL", which you need before anything else because the archive keys everything on the origin URL.

• origin_status(url) — the most recent capture of one repository that actually produced a snapshot: date, snapshot id, visit type. Answers "is this code safe, and as of when".

• origin_visits(url, limit?) — the capture history for one repository, newest first, with each visit's outcome. Answers "how continuously has this been archived", and separates never-archived from archived-for-years-and-unreachable-today.

• revision(id) — one archived commit by its 40-hex id or SWHID: message, author, committer, dates, tree id, parents. Answers "what was in this commit" for a repository that may no longer exist anywhere else.

Related MCP server: ar-mcp

Auth

Keyless. Anonymous callers get a lower rate-limit bucket than token holders, and the limit is per-IP, so a Worker sharing an egress address with other traffic can be throttled by calls that were not ours. The archive asks callers to identify themselves; this pack sends its own User-Agent.

Data sources

• https://archive.softwareheritage.org/api/1/origin/search/{query}/ — origin search. Returns a bare JSON array, not an object.

• https://archive.softwareheritage.org/api/1/origin/{url}/visit/latest/ — latest visit for one origin.

• https://archive.softwareheritage.org/api/1/origin/{url}/visits/ — visit history, paginated with per_page.

• https://archive.softwareheritage.org/api/1/revision/{sha}/ — one commit.

Things worth knowing before you touch this:

• visit/latest without require_snapshot=true is a trap. It returns the latest visit whatever its outcome, so a repository archived continuously since 2015 answers status: "not_found" because today's crawl happened to fail — the exact opposite of the question "is this archived". Reproduced on https://github.com/torvalds/linux on 2026-09-03: visit 479 was not_found while visit 478, the day before, was full. origin_status always sets the flag; if you add an endpoint here, set it too.

• The origin URL is the key, and it is matched exactly. A trailing slash, a .git suffix or http vs https makes it a different origin with its own visit history. Resolve with origin_search rather than constructing the URL.

• The origin URL is embedded in the path, unescaped. /origin/https://…/get/ is the documented shape — do not URL-encode it, the API will not find it.

• Origin endpoints return a bare JSON array, revision endpoints return an object. Anything reading these has to handle both.

• A 404 means "not archived", not "bad request". This pack turns it into an explicit archived: false / error: "revision not archived" so an absence cannot arrive looking like an empty success.

Quick Start

Add to your MCP client (Claude Desktop, Cursor, Windsurf, etc.):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "softwareheritage": {
      "url": "https://gateway.pipeworx.io/softwareheritage/mcp"
    }
  }
}

What this endpoint actually serves

tools/list at https://gateway.pipeworx.io/softwareheritage/mcp returns the tools in the table above plus the shared Pipeworx meta-tools — ask_pipeworx, discover_tools, search_within, remember/recall and the rest of the gateway-wide set. So the tool count you see is larger than this table: a single-pack endpoint currently lists roughly 30 shared tools alongside the pack's own. The connection's initialize response states its exact scope, and is the authoritative answer for a given day.

This is deliberate, not multiplexing by accident. The meta-tools are what let a scoped connection answer a question this pack does not cover — via ask_pipeworx, which routes across the whole catalog — without you adding a second MCP server. There is currently no way to mount a pack endpoint without them; if the extra schemas cost you more context than the routing is worth, connect to the full gateway once rather than to several pack endpoints.

Or connect to the full Pipeworx gateway to get every pack's tools listed directly, instead of just this one's:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "pipeworx": {
      "url": "https://gateway.pipeworx.io/mcp"
    }
  }
}

Both URLs reach the same gateway and the same 1576+ data sources. The only difference is which pack's tools are listed directly; ask_pipeworx reaches all of them from either one.

Standalone (no gateway account)

This package also runs as a local stdio MCP server — no Pipeworx account, no gateway round-trip:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "softwareheritage": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@pipeworx/mcp-softwareheritage"]
    }
  }
}

Or run it directly to confirm it starts:

npx -y @pipeworx/mcp-softwareheritage

It speaks MCP over stdin/stdout and answers initialize/tools/list/tools/call for only this pack's tools — none of the shared meta-tools the gateway connection above adds. Same source, same tools, no ask_pipeworx routing.

Using with ask_pipeworx

Instead of calling tools directly, you can ask questions in plain English — this works on the pack endpoint above as well as on the full gateway:

ask_pipeworx({ question: "your question about Softwareheritage data" })

The gateway picks the right tool and fills the arguments automatically.

More

• Docs and guides

• pipeworx.io

License

MIT