Archimedes Market Catalog MCP

A production-ready, read-only Model Context Protocol server for discovering engineering work and reusable assets on Archimedes Market. It gives Claude, Cursor, Copilot-compatible MCP hosts, and other agents four small typed tools:

Tool	Purpose
search_assets	Search public engineering asset titles and summaries
get_asset	Fetch one asset's public metadata and description
search_bounties	Search the official no-auth bounty API with filters
get_bounty	Fetch requirements, deliverables, and acceptance tests

The server has no write tools and accepts no user credentials. It reads only Archimedes' public bounty API and the anonymous published-asset catalog used by the Archimedes browser client.

Requirements

• Node.js 20.18.1 or newer
• Network access to https://archimedes.market

Install and run

npm install
npm run ci
npm start

npm start launches the verified stdio entry point after the TypeScript build.

Claude Desktop

Add this server to claude_desktop_config.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "archimedes-catalog": {
      "command": "node",
      "args": ["C:/path/to/archimedes-market-catalog-mcp/dist/index.js"]
    }
  }
}

Restart Claude Desktop, then try:

Find funded software bounties between $100 and $500. Inspect the most relevant result and summarize its required deliverables.

Cursor

Create .cursor/mcp.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "archimedes-catalog": {
      "command": "node",
      "args": ["C:/path/to/archimedes-market-catalog-mcp/dist/index.js"]
    }
  }
}

The same stdio configuration works in any standards-compatible MCP host.

Tool examples

search_bounties:

{
  "query": "MCP",
  "category": "software",
  "funding_status": "funded",
  "min_price_cents": 10000,
  "max_price_cents": 50000,
  "limit": 10
}

get_bounty:

{
  "id": "89c2e397-bf5d-47d5-af06-7c5b749d76d1"
}

search_assets:

{
  "query": "Python",
  "limit": 10
}

get_asset:

{
  "id": "1878153b-096a-486e-ac6b-7197346bdff2"
}

Architecture

MCP host
  └─ stdio transport
      └─ typed, read-only MCP tools
          ├─ /api/public/bounties
          ├─ /api/public/bounties/{id}
          └─ published assets (public read-only data service)

The current public JSON API exposes bounty search and detail records. The asset tools use the same anonymous catalog endpoint as the public web application, always constrain reads to status=published, and return metadata only. They never download paid files or bypass access controls.

Reliability and security

• strict UUID, pagination, price-range, and result-size validation;
• 15-second request timeout;
• 2 MB response cap;
• allowlisted Archimedes API origins and cross-origin request rejection;
• no redirects, user authentication, environment secrets, or write methods;
• MCP errors contain actionable HTTP/validation context.

Testing

npm test
npm run test:live

The regular suite is deterministic. The opt-in live suite exercises all four tools against published Archimedes records and is intended for release verification.

Cloud deployment

The included multi-stage Dockerfile builds a non-root runtime image. It can run as a stdio worker in AWS ECS/Fargate, Azure Container Apps jobs, Google Cloud Run jobs, or any agent runtime that launches MCP subprocesses. Hosted MCP gateways can wrap the stdio process with their preferred authenticated HTTP transport without changing the catalog client.

License

MIT