⚓ imo-rules-mcp

Bring your corpus. Keep the rules local.

A read-only MCP server for offline semantic search, keyword search, document retrieval, citation traversal, and structured browsing across a locally supplied IMO regulatory corpus.

Tools · Set up a corpus · Rights boundary · Full technical reference

The server is open. The corpus is yours to license, store, and protect.

imo-rules-mcp exposes a local corpus of maritime instruments to MCP-compatible clients without crawling the web or redistributing regulation text.

MCP tools

Related MCP server: Markdown RAG MCP

Architecture

flowchart LR
    A["Licensed local corpus"] --> B["SQLite documents"]
    A --> C["TOC tree"]
    A --> D["Local embedding index"]
    B --> E["MCP server"]
    C --> E
    D --> E
    E --> F["Offline MCP client"]

Quickstart

Install:

npm install

Import a compatible exported corpus:

node scripts/import-corpus.mjs /path/to/KRcrawl

Start the stdio server:

npm start

A repository-scoped .mcp.json is included for hosts that support project-local MCP configuration.

Corpus and rights boundary

This repository contains server code only. It does not ship SOLAS, MARPOL, STCW, IMO Codes, or any other regulation corpus.

• Supply only material you are licensed to use.

• Keep corpus/ outside version control.

• Do not publish or redistribute proprietary regulation text.

• If a convenience bundle includes corpus data, keep that repository private and apply the applicable rights controls.

• Server-code licensing does not grant rights to the corpus.

Runtime contract

• Read-only tools only.

• No crawler and no required network path.

• Semantic search loads its local model/index on demand.

• Other tools operate directly on the local corpus structures.

• Corpus completeness, currency, interpretation, and legal authority remain external responsibilities.

Full technical reference

The original detailed README — including the expected corpus layout, environment variables, client configuration, and tool-by-tool behavior — is preserved unchanged at:

README.technical.2026-08-25.md

License

Server code is MIT. Corpus data is excluded from that grant.