Folklore Clinical Variant Interpretation MCP

One hosted MCP server for public scientific queries and authenticated case workflows.

Endpoint: https://api.helena.bio/folklore/v1/mcp

Version 2.0.0

Connect your MCP client directly to this Streamable HTTP endpoint. No local Folklore server is required. Anonymous callers receive 11 public tools. Send your Folklore API key in the Authorization Bearer header to access 18 additional case, source and result tools at the same endpoint. Invalid supplied credentials fail authentication; they do not select the anonymous catalog.

Create a key in your Folklore account for the selected account and sources. Keep it in your client's secret store, never in prompts, tool arguments or URLs. The selected account's native subscription capabilities, usage limits and eligible credits govern processing. A key does not grant funded compute.

See case workflows, the 18 authenticated tool schemas and the public task recipes.

Classify a variant

Connect your MCP client to:

https://api.helena.bio/folklore/v1/mcp

Access is anonymous. Call classify_germline_variant:

{"name":"classify_germline_variant","arguments":{"assembly":"GRCh38","query":"NM_007294.4:c.68_69del"}}

Input: one public GRCh38 nuclear germline SNV or simple indel smaller than 50 bp. Accepted notation includes supported HGVS, SPDI, rsID and genomic coordinates. Preserve transcript versions and reference alleles.

A resolved identity with successful interpretation includes automated ACMG/AMP classification, reported criteria, annotations, source evidence and provenance. Submitted ClinVar assertions retain their own source attribution alongside the Folklore classification. A VUS is a classification outcome.

Interpretation status is success or unavailable. Transport, JSON-RPC, MCP and adapter errors have separate fields. See typed outcomes.

Scientific tools

ClinGen results preserve assertion-level disease identity, inheritance, validity assessment, panel, date and source links. Profile sections retain provider, assembly, release, units and pagination. Gene literature has its own capture identity. Follow gene-disease and gene-profile contracts for exact inputs.

support_helena provides links to the separate Helena Good service when the user asks about supporting Helena. An optional MCP App renders variant results.

Connect an agent or application

The hosted server uses stateless Streamable HTTP and MCP 2026-07-28. Requests carry matching protocol metadata and routing headers. Supported methods include server/discover, tools/list, tools/call, prompts/list, prompts/get, resources/list and resources/read.

• Direct Streamable HTTP
• OpenAI Agents SDK
• Biomni
• Biorouter
• Dify, n8n, Galaxy, KNIME
• Notebook workflow

The compatibility guide records protocol/client observations. All clients sharing egress use the same rate budget.

Agent Skill and workflow prompts

Install the portable Agent Skill using the installation guide. It routes pathogenicity, VUS, ClinVar, population-frequency, gene-disease and literature tasks to the hosted tools. The skill source includes OpenAI interface metadata.

Workflow prompts compose tool operations for classification, VUS assessment, ACMG/AMP explanation, identity verification and variant-literature comparison. Each accepts one public variant expression.

Run the adapter

The Apache-2.0 adapter implements MCP transport, public API clients and validated response projection. Folklore's scientific authorities produce normalization, annotation, evidence aggregation and classification.

python3.12 -m venv .venv
. .venv/bin/activate
pip install -e '.[dev]'
FOLKLORE_MCP_ENABLED=true \
FOLKLORE_LITERATURE_ENABLED=true \
FOLKLORE_GENE_DISEASE_ENABLED=true \
FOLKLORE_PUBLIC_GENE_ENABLED=true \
folklore-mcp

Capabilities are enabled through the flags above. Gene literature requires both public-gene and literature capabilities. The default upstream is https://api.helena.bio; local contract tests support localhost and 127.0.0.1. The standalone HTTP image uses Dockerfile.adapter; Dockerfile provides the pinned stdio bridge.

Verify and measure

pytest
ruff check .
ruff format --check .
python3 ops/reconcile_discovery.py

The read-only reconciler compares runtime, Server Card and Official Registry state, with separate aggregator observations. python3 ops/public_smoke.py checks discovery, prompts and resources.

Public measurement sources: variant interpretation, 100-case agent discovery, 60-query search discovery and genomic discovery cohort.

Registry and citation

• Registry name: io.github.helena-bioinformatics/folklore
• Publisher: Helena Bioinformatics
• Website: https://folklore.helena.bio
• Task routing metadata
• Per-tool task contracts
• Security reporting
• Source boundary
• Citation metadata

The immutable MCP adapter 1.6.0 archive is 10.5281/zenodo.23817704, from signed tag folklore-mcp-v1.6.0 at 55a332c6dd6bd4650e921c12ac145b8e0f90476a. The Biorouter-tag archive is 10.5281/zenodo.23818207.

License

Apache License 2.0. See LICENSE and NOTICE.

Automated variant classifications support qualified professional review and are not patient diagnoses or treatment recommendations.