MCP server for textfiles.com, the definitive archive of BBS era text files: 1980s/90s zines, phreaking docs, hacker culture, and early net history.

Tools

Tool	What it does
`list_topics`	Topic sections (adventure, anarchy, hacking, phreak, magazines, music…)
`list_files`	Files + subdirectories inside a section
`read_file`	Read a text file (latin-1 decoded, it predates UTF-8)

Usage

npm run build && node dist/index.js

Example:

list_topics {}
list_files { dir: "hacking" }
read_file { path: "hacking/22.txt" }

No API, the site is a static tree with its own HTML tables, parsed directly. Read the same DDN bulletins, phreak docs, and underground zines that shaped the early internet.

Quick start

npm install
npm run build
node dist/index.js

The server uses stdio, so it can be connected to Claude Desktop, Cursor, VS Code, MCP Inspector, or another compatible MCP client.

Tools at a glance

list_topics: List the topic sections of textfiles.com (art, etext, hacking,
list_files: List the files in a textfiles.com directory.
read_file: Read a text file from the archive (1980s/90s zines, docs, and net culture).

Limits and privacy

This project is intentionally narrow. It should be treated as a practical helper, not a complete certification or security audit. Check the implementation and the returned data before using it with sensitive material. No credentials are required unless the project explicitly says otherwise.

Try it

After building, connect the server through your MCP client. The repository root also contains smoke-test.mjs for projects covered by the shared harness. A typical tool call starts with list_topics.