EBI OLS

liveBiologyScience

EBI Ontology Lookup Service — ~250 biomedical ontologies (GO, EFO, MONDO, CL, ChEBI, …). Keyless.

6tools
0msauth
free tier50 calls/day

Tools

list_ontologies

EMBL-EBI Ontology Lookup Service (OLS4) — page through every biomedical ontology loaded into OLS, such as GO, EFO, MONDO, ChEBI, HPO and UBERON. Returns each ontology's id, title, description, term co

Parameters
NameTypeDescription
sizeoptnumber—
pageoptnumber—
▶Try it
get_ontologyrequired: id

Ontology metadata by id (e.g. "efo", "mondo", "go").

Parameters
NameTypeDescription
idreqstring—
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get_termrequired: ontology

Term details. Pass either iri, short_form, or obo_id (the latter two require ontology).

Parameters
NameTypeDescription
ontologyreqstring—
irioptstring—
short_formoptstring—
obo_idoptstring—
▶Try it
term_ancestorsrequired: ontology, iri

Transitive ancestors of a term.

Parameters
NameTypeDescription
ontologyreqstring—
irireqstring—
▶Try it
term_childrenrequired: ontology, iri

Direct children of a term.

Parameters
NameTypeDescription
ontologyreqstring—
irireqstring—
▶Try it

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/ebi-ols/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/ebi-ols/mcp \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":2,"method":"tools/call","params":{"name":"list_ontologies","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("list_ontologies", {});
ask_pipeworx
// Or ask in plain English:
const answer = await px.ask("ebi ontology lookup service — ~250 biomedical ontologies (go, efo, mondo, cl, chebi, …)");