jail-mcp

JAIL Search — MCP Server

Search a billion+ documents — papers, books, code, legal cases, forums, Wikipedia, and more.

jail.li

Installation

Connect to the hosted MCP server:

https://api.jail.li/mcp

Get API key for higher limits — append ?jailApiKey= to the URL.

Claude Code

claude mcp add --transport http jail https://api.jail.li/mcp

With API key:

claude mcp add --transport http jail "https://api.jail.li/mcp?jailApiKey=sk_live_..."

Codex

codex mcp add jail --url https://api.jail.li/mcp

With API key: codex mcp add jail --url "https://api.jail.li/mcp?jailApiKey=sk_live_..."

Cursor

Add to ~/.cursor/mcp.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "jail": {
      "url": "https://api.jail.li/mcp"
    }
  }
}

With API key: "url": "https://api.jail.li/mcp?jailApiKey=sk_live_..."

VS Code

Add to .vscode/mcp.json:

{
  "servers": {
    "jail": {
      "type": "http",
      "url": "https://api.jail.li/mcp"
    }
  }
}

With API key: "url": "https://api.jail.li/mcp?jailApiKey=sk_live_..."

Claude Desktop

Edit ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json (macOS) or %APPDATA%\Claude\claude_desktop_config.json (Windows):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "jail": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "mcp-remote", "https://api.jail.li/mcp"]
    }
  }
}

With API key: "args": ["-y", "mcp-remote", "https://api.jail.li/mcp?jailApiKey=sk_live_..."]

OpenCode

Add to your opencode.json:

{
  "mcp": {
    "jail": {
      "type": "remote",
      "url": "https://api.jail.li/mcp",
      "enabled": true
    }
  }
}

With API key: "url": "https://api.jail.li/mcp?jailApiKey=sk_live_..."

Copilot CLI

Edit ~/.copilot/mcp-config.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "jail": {
      "type": "http",
      "url": "https://api.jail.li/mcp"
    }
  }
}

With API key: "url": "https://api.jail.li/mcp?jailApiKey=sk_live_..."

Windsurf

Add to ~/.codeium/windsurf/mcp_config.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "jail": {
      "serverUrl": "https://api.jail.li/mcp"
    }
  }
}

With API key: "serverUrl": "https://api.jail.li/mcp?jailApiKey=sk_live_..."

Hermes

Add to ~/.hermes/config.yaml:

mcp_servers:
  jail:
    url: "https://api.jail.li/mcp"

With API key: url: "https://api.jail.li/mcp?jailApiKey=sk_live_..."

Or install the skill: hermes skill install jail-search

Via npm Package

Use the npm/pypi package for stdio transport

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "jail": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "jail-mcp@latest"]
    }
  }
}

Or with Python: "command": "uvx", "args": ["jail-mcp"]

For API key with stdio: "env": { "JAIL_API_KEY": "sk_live_..." }

Tools

Tool	What it does
search	Search across all content types. Filter by type, paginate with cursor.
detail	Get full metadata for a document by ID.

Content Types

Type	Sources
academic	OpenAlex, arXiv, Semantic Scholar, DBLP
books	Books, digital libraries, classical literature
wiki	Wikipedia — en, zh, de, fr, es, ru, ja, ko + 10 more
forums	Hacker News, StackExchange, Lobsters, LessWrong, 60+ more
legal	Harvard Case Law, CourtListener, EUR-Lex, UK Legislation
news	News articles and journalism
packages	npm, PyPI, Crates.io, Libraries.io
economics	World Bank, IMF, FRED, ECB, BLS, Tax Foundation
knowledge	Wikidata, structured knowledge
video	IMDb, YouTube
music	Discogs, MusicBrainz
health	Clinical trials, food safety
geo	World place names, geographic data
tech	Dev.to, product community forums
social	Reddit, Mastodon, Lemmy, fediverse
fandom	Fan wiki articles, community knowledge
crypto	DeFi protocols, token data, on-chain analytics
predictions	Prediction markets, forecasting
audio	Podcasts and audio content

License

MIT