The Elephant Observatory

MCP Server · v0.1

TEO's knowledge graph as an MCP server. Bring the Observatory into your AI tools.

One URL. No account. No API keys. No setup files. Paste this into any MCP client and the whole Observatory is inside your AI.

https://theelephantobservatory.org/api/mcp

This is a hosted remote MCP server — TEO runs it, you just connect to it.

Setup

Two minutes. Pick your client.

Claude Desktop

  1. 1.Open Settings → Connectors
  2. 2.Click Add custom connector
  3. 3.Paste https://theelephantobservatory.org/api/mcp as the server URL
  4. 4.Done. The tools appear in your next conversation.

Cursor

Add to .cursor/mcp.json in your project (or the global Cursor MCP settings):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "teo": {
      "url": "https://theelephantobservatory.org/api/mcp"
    }
  }
}

Any MCP-compatible client

If your client supports Streamable HTTP (MCP 2025-03-26 spec), point it at:

https://theelephantobservatory.org/api/mcp

For older clients that only speak stdio, use mcp-remote as a bridge:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "teo": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "mcp-remote", "https://theelephantobservatory.org/api/mcp"]
    }
  }
}

The Problem It Solves

our AI assistant hallucinates about metamodernism. It thinks Game B is a board game and that “relevance realization” is a marketing framework. You already knew this. That’s probably why you’re here.

The Telescope Protocol is an MCP server that gives your AI tools direct access to TEO’s curated knowledge graph. When the conversation touches sensemaking, complexity, the meta-crisis, or any of the thinkers in the Observatory — your assistant can reach into the graph instead of into the void.

Not as a chatbot. Not as an additional layer of AI. As a quiet reference — a well-indexed library your tools can consult when the territory gets epistemically rough.

What's Inside

search_nodes

Semantic search across 700+ published nodes. Pass a natural language question, get ranked results with similarity scores. Supports three description depths: Apprentice, Adept, Magus.

get_node

Full node detail by slug — tiered description, tags, observer attribution, confidence score, source video URL, glossary terms, and epistemic dimension scores.

lookup_glossary

TEO's Rosetta Stone glossary. Search by term name, search definitions, or retrieve the full dictionary. Covers symmathesy, relevance realization, Game B, polycentric governance, and more.

get_observer

Observer profiles — bio, themes, published nodes, and top tags. Pass a slug for a full profile, or omit to list all observers.

explore_neighborhood

Graph traversal. Pass a node slug, get connected nodes with relationship types — prerequisite, relates_to, extends, contrasts. Supports 1 or 2 hop depth.

get_constellation

The current weekend constellation — TEO's weekly editorial theme, featured nodes, and featured observers. Pass a date for a specific past weekend.

The Usual Deal

The knowledge is free. That’s the whole point of TEO.

All six tools are free to use. No account. No API key. No credentials of any kind. The server runs on TEO’s infrastructure — we handle the database reads, the embeddings, everything. You just connect and ask.

If this gets abused we’ll add rate limits. Until then, run out of curiosity before you run out of queries.

Description Tiers

Every node in TEO has three depth levels, generated by the pipeline:

apprentice

Accessible summary. Clear language, no jargon assumed. Use this when you want the AI to explain a concept to someone unfamiliar with the domain.

adept

Analytical. Full conceptual context, some domain vocabulary. The right tier for most research and reasoning tasks.

magus

Dense. Maximum fidelity to source material, written for specialists. Use this when the AI needs to reason about or cite the concept at full depth.

Why This Exists

TEO’s mission is to synthesize the fragmented sensemaking web. That web doesn’t live exclusively in a browser tab. It lives in your research notes, your writing drafts, your conversations with AI at 1 AM when you’re trying to articulate something you can almost see clearly.

The Observatory should be there too. Not competing for attention — as a quiet reference a few tool calls away.

We built an observatory. This is the telescope you can take home.