Books For Agents

Access and search a structured open source knowledge base of book summaries optimized for AI agents via the MCP protocol.

An open source knowledge base of structured book summaries, available to any AI agent via MCP.

Setup

1. If you don't have the books-for-agents MCP server installed, add it:

text

claude mcp add --transport http books-for-agents https://booksforagents.com/mcp

Or add to your MCP config file:

json

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "books-for-agents": {
      "url": "https://booksforagents.com/mcp"
    }
  }
}

2. Once connected, you have access to all tools below.

What you can do

Search for books

Use search_books to find books by topic, keyword, or question. Supports hybrid search (full-text + semantic vector embeddings).

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search_books({ query: "how to build better habits" })
search_books({ query: "leadership", category: "business" })
search_books({ query: "cognitive biases and decision making", limit: 3 })

Read a book summary

Use get_book to retrieve the full structured summary of a specific book by slug or title (partial match supported).

text

get_book({ slug: "atomic-habits" })
get_book({ title: "Deep Work" })

Read a specific section

Use get_book_section to retrieve only one section of a book — saves tokens when you don't need the full summary. Available sections: ideas, frameworks, quotes, connections, when-to-use.

text

get_book_section({ slug: "the-lean-startup", section: "frameworks" })
get_book_section({ slug: "clean-code", section: "quotes" })
get_book_section({ slug: "thinking-fast-and-slow", section: "when-to-use" })

Browse categories

Use list_categories to see all available categories and how many books each one has.

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list_categories()

Suggest a new book

Use suggest_book to add a book to the generation backlog. Checks for duplicates against published books and existing backlog entries.

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suggest_book({ title: "Thinking in Bets", author: "Annie Duke", category: "psychology" })

See the backlog

Use list_backlog to see all pending books waiting to be generated, along with their status.

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list_backlog()

Generate a book summary

Use generate_book to get the template, example, metadata, and instructions needed to generate the next book summary. You can specify a title or let it pick the next pending one.

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generate_book()
generate_book({ title: "Never Split the Difference" })

After generating the content, call submit_book to publish it.

Publish a book summary

Use submit_book to publish a generated summary directly to the knowledge base. Call this after generating content with generate_book.

text

submit_book({
  slug: "never-split-the-difference",
  title: "Never Split the Difference",
  author: "Chris Voss",
  category: "business",
  content: "---\ntitle: \"Never Split the Difference\"\n..."
})

Tips

• Use get_book_section instead of get_book when you only need one part — it saves significant tokens.
• Use search_books with natural language queries — the semantic search understands meaning, not just keywords.
• When generating a book, follow the template and instructions returned by generate_book exactly. All content must be in English.
• Connections between books use [[slug]] format and must reference existing books only.