
Connects to PoetryDB, a public API for English poetry, letting Claude search and retrieve poems by title, author, or lines. Part of the Pipeworx gateway ecosystem that bundles 850+ data sources behind a single MCP endpoint. You can add just the PoetryDB server if that's all you need, or connect to the full Pipeworx gateway for everything. Includes an ask_pipeworx tool that takes plain English questions and routes them to the right API automatically. Useful when you want Claude to quote specific poems, analyze verse by particular authors, or pull poetry into creative writing projects without manual API wrangling.
PoetryDB MCP.
Part of Pipeworx — an MCP gateway connecting AI agents to 1476+ live data sources.
| Tool | Description |
|---|---|
search_poems | Search PoetryDB for poems by title or partial title (e.g., "The Road Not Taken"). Returns matching poems with full text, author, and line count. Note: searches titles only, not poem body text. |
get_poem_lines | Full-text search within poem lines on PoetryDB — finds any poem containing the given phrase in one of its lines. Returns full poem text (capped). Keyless. |
random_poems | Fetch one or more random public-domain poems from PoetryDB. Returns full poem text (capped). Keyless. |
list_authors | List all authors available in PoetryDB. Keyless. |
Add to your MCP client (Claude Desktop, Cursor, Windsurf, etc.):
{
"mcpServers": {
"poetrydb": {
"url": "https://gateway.pipeworx.io/poetrydb/mcp"
}
}
}
tools/list at https://gateway.pipeworx.io/poetrydb/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 1476+ data sources. The
only difference is which pack's tools are listed directly; ask_pipeworx
reaches all of them from either one.
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 Poetrydb data" })
The gateway picks the right tool and fills the arguments automatically.
MIT
curl -X POST https://gateway.pipeworx.io/v1/tools/search_poems \
-H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
-d '{"title":"The Road Not Taken"}'
No account needed for the first calls. Inspect any tool: GET https://gateway.pipeworx.io/v1/tools/search_poems. Find one: POST https://gateway.pipeworx.io/v1/tools/search_packs with {"query":"..."}.