Books

liveBooksReference

Search books, get details by ISBN, and look up authors via Open Library

4tools
0msauth
free tier50 calls/day

Tools

search_books

Search for books by title, author, or keyword. Returns title, author, year, ISBN, and cover image URL. Use this to discover books before fetching full details.

No parameters required.

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get_book

Fetch Open Library edition details for a book by ISBN-10 or ISBN-13. Returns title, publish_date, number_of_pages, subjects (up to 10), description, cover_url, and author_keys for follow-up get_author

No parameters required.

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get_author

Fetch an author's profile from Open Library by their author key (e.g., 'OL23919A'). Returns name, birth_date, death_date, biographical summary, and Wikipedia URL.

No parameters required.

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get_book_work

Fetch the canonical Open Library "work" record (the concept of a book across all its editions), by work ID (e.g. "OL45804W"). Returns title, description, first publish date, subjects, and author keys.

No parameters required.

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Test with curl

The gateway speaks JSON-RPC 2.0 over HTTP POST. You can test any pack directly from the terminal.

List available tools
bash
curl -X POST https://gateway.pipeworx.io/books/mcp \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":1,"method":"tools/list"}'
Call a tool
bash
curl -X POST https://gateway.pipeworx.io/books/mcp \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":2,"method":"tools/call","params":{"name":"search_books","arguments":{}}}'

Use with the SDK

Install @pipeworx/sdk to call tools from any TypeScript/Node project.

TypeScript
import { Pipeworx } from '@pipeworx/sdk';
const px = new Pipeworx();
const result = await px.call("search_books", {});
ask_pipeworx
// Or ask in plain English:
const answer = await px.ask("search books, get details by isbn, and look up authors via open library");