HGB Basel Server

An MCP server that exposes the Historisches Grundbuch Basel (HGB) corpus for use with Claude and other MCP-compatible clients.

Architecture

hgb_full_*.xml  ──► build_db.py ──► hgb.db (SQLite + FTS5)
                                         │
                                    server.py  (FastMCP / HTTP SSE)
                                         │
                              http://<host>:8000/sse

The 800 MB XML is parsed once into a ~100 MB SQLite database. The server then runs stateless queries against it.

Setup

1. Install dependencies

cd mcp_server
pip install -r requirements.txt

2. Build the database

python build_db.py --xml ../hgb_full_26_05_29_05.xml --db hgb.db

This takes ~10 minutes and produces hgb.db. Run it once; repeat only when the XML changes.

3. Start the server

python server.py --db hgb.db --host 0.0.0.0 --port 8000

4. Connect a client

Add to your claude_desktop_config.json (or equivalent):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "hgb": {
      "url": "http://<server-ip>:8000/sse"
    }
  }
}

Or for Claude Code:

claude mcp add hgb --transport sse --url http://<server-ip>:8000/sse

---

Docker deployment (recommended for the vServer)

Build image

docker compose build

First-time: build the database

# Copy XML to /data/hgb/ on the server, then:
docker run --rm \
  -v /data/hgb:/data \
  hgb-mcp \
  python build_db.py --xml /data/hgb_full_26_05_29_05.xml --db /data/hgb.db

Run

docker compose up -d

Update /data/hgb in docker-compose.yml to match the actual path on the vServer.

Reverse proxy (nginx, optional but recommended)

server {
    listen 443 ssl;
    server_name hgb-mcp.example.unibe.ch;

    location / {
        proxy_pass         http://localhost:8000;
        proxy_http_version 1.1;
        # Required for SSE
        proxy_set_header   Connection '';
        proxy_buffering    off;
        proxy_cache        off;
        chunked_transfer_encoding on;
    }
}

---

Available tools

Tool	Description
corpus_stats	Document/span/person/event counts and year range
search_persons(query, limit)	FTS search for person names (FTS5 syntax)
get_document(doc_id)	Full document: text, all spans, events
get_dossier(dossier_id)	All documents for a property, ordered by year
search_text(query, limit)	Keyword search over raw transcriptions with snippets
get_persons_in_year_range(year_from, year_to, limit)	Person mentions filtered by year
get_cooccurrences(person_name, limit)	Other persons in the same documents
list_dossiers(limit)	All properties with coordinates and year ranges

Available resources

URI	Description
hgb://stats	Corpus statistics (JSON)
hgb://dossiers	All dossiers (JSON)
hgb://document/{doc_id}	Single document (JSON)