MCP-Server-IETF

A Model Context Protocol server for fetching IETF documents (RFCs) for Large Language Models.

Overview

This project implements a Model Context Protocol (MCP) server that provides access to IETF RFC documents. It enables Large Language Models to access RFC specifications through a standardized interface.

Key features:

Download and cache RFC index and documents
Search RFCs by keyword in titles
Access RFC documents with pagination support
Extract metadata like page numbers from documents

Installation

Requirements

Python 3.11 or higher
Dependencies as listed in pyproject.toml

Install from source

# Clone the repository
git clone https://github.com/tizee/mcp-server-ietf
cd mcp-server-ietf

# Install with pip
pip install -e .

Usage

Starting the server

# Start the server
mcp-server-ietf

Or use it with the MCP inspector:

npx @modelcontextprotocol/inspector uv run mcp-server-ietf

Available Tools

When connected to the server, the following tools are available:

`list_docs_number`

Get the total number of RFC documents available in the index.

`get_doc`

Get an RFC document by its number with pagination support.

Parameters:

number: The RFC number (e.g., "1234")
start_line: The line number to start from (default: 1)
max_lines: Maximum number of lines to return (default: 200)

`search_rfc_by_keyword`

Search for RFC documents by keyword in their titles.

Parameters:

keyword: The search term to look for in RFC titles

Development

Setup Development Environment

# Install development dependencies
uv install -e .[dev]

Run inspector with Makefile:

make dev

Running Tests

# Run tests
uv run pytest

Or using the Makefile:

make test

Cache Location

By default, the server caches RFC documents and the index at ~/.cache/ietf-doc-server.

Environment Variables

LOG_LEVEL: Set the logging level (default: "DEBUG")

License

MIT License - See LICENSE file for details.

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please feel free to submit a Pull Request.