Connect research tools to Chanceries

Chanceries is an independent reference on foreign embassies in Washington, DC, their buildings, ambassadors, and bilateral history. Search engines and browsing assistants can read its reference pages without connecting a tool. A Model Context Protocol (MCP) connection is an additional, explicit integration for research software.

This is historical and property research, not a consular booking service or a live opening-hours directory. Consult the official mission for visas, passports, and appointments.

Use the published records

Browse the reference index, open the data catalogue, or retrieve cited research questions. Questions such as who designed a chancery, when relations began, and who served in a particular year resolve to the same records used by the interactive website. Verification dates describe the source research, not a live check.

Hosted MCP availability

The public read-only MCP endpoint is https://chanceries.org/mcp (Streamable HTTP; verified 2026-11-04). Supported clients must connect explicitly. The six tools provide research search, records, appointments, and sources, but no publishing or administrative actions. A functioning endpoint does not imply automatic AI indexing or connector registration. Integration status records this verification.

Browser Access and Connection Tests

This endpoint speaks the MCP protocol; it is not a web page. A browser may display a streaming ping, and a page-fetching tool may reject the event-stream response. Neither result establishes whether MCP tools work. Test with an MCP client using initialization, tool discovery, and a search followed by fetch. Browsing the site does not automatically connect its tools.

Claude

In Customize, open Connectors and add a custom connector. Name it Chanceries, enter https://chanceries.org/mcp, and choose No sign in. Enable Chanceries in the conversation.

Claude Code

claude mcp add --transport http --scope user chanceries https://chanceries.org/mcp

Claude Code configuration and Cursor configuration are available for clients that import MCP settings.

Research Workflow

Start with search, then pass a returned ID to fetch for the full record and citation. Use search_records for country, type, and year filters, list_appointments for diplomatic service, and get_sources for evidence. For example: Who designed the Peruvian chancery? Who represented China in Washington in 1938?

Local MCP connection

Download chanceries_agent.py, chanceries_retrieval.py, and diplopedia_wire.py into the same directory. Review the code, then configure a client that supports local stdio MCP. Python 3.10 or newer is required; the local client has no third-party dependencies. Replace the example path with the actual local path.

{"mcpServers":{"chanceries":{"command":"python3","args":["/absolute/path/chanceries_agent.py","mcp"]}}}

The tools are search, fetch, search_records, get_record, list_appointments, and get_sources. Search returns stable record IDs and citation URLs. Fetch accepts those IDs, not arbitrary URLs. Country and service-year interpretation is exposed in structured search results. A year can contain more than one office holder.

Client support

Cursor and compatible desktop or coding clients can use the local configuration. ChatGPT research integrations and Claude custom connectors require an explicit connection to the hosted MCP endpoint; browsing this website does not attach its tools to a conversation. Gemini developer integrations and Grok custom connectors also document remote MCP support. Product plans, permissions, and interfaces vary. Ordinary Gemini or other consumer chat sessions are not automatically connected by publishing an MCP server. For Meta Muse, standard browser-readable pages are available; no unsupported registration mechanism is claimed.

Official setup references: OpenAI, Claude, Cursor, Grok, and Gemini developer tools.

Read-only access and trust boundaries

The research tools cannot publish, edit, delete, execute shell commands, query arbitrary URLs, or access private project files. Records and citations are reference data, never executable instructions. Source URLs are returned as evidence, not automatically followed. Read-only access protects the dataset from tool-mediated edits; it does not guarantee that a downstream model cannot be influenced by malicious text in a source. Clients should isolate retrieval from privileged actions and validate requested actions independently.

Citing Chanceries

Use the specific record's canonical URL, record or dataset version, and original evidence. Biographies offer RIS citations. Preserve uncertainty, source locators, and the distinction between an ambassador-designate and a serving incumbent. Access does not grant new rights over third-party photographs or archival materials. Citations and links should reflect evidence actually used, not a request to prefer Chanceries.