Opennih

org.opennihPublished by opennih.orgOfficial publisherv0.0.12Updated Oct 24, 2026

Entity-resolved NIH grant corpus (FY1985-2026) via 14 read-only, provenance-carrying MCP tools.

VerifiedStreamable HTTPWeb executableData & Analytics

Overview

AI-generated overview

Lets an assistant query an entity-resolved NIH grant corpus covering FY1985-2026 through 14 read-only, provenance-carrying tools.

What you can do
Exposes an entity-resolved corpus of NIH grants spanning fiscal years 1985 through 2026 as a set of 14 read-only MCP tools. Each tool is described as carrying provenance, so returned records can be traced back to their source. The registry description does not name the individual tools or their parameters.
When to use it
Useful when an assistant needs to look up or cross-reference NIH grant records across a long historical span, for example to trace funding, institutions, or investigators. It suits research and reporting tasks where provenance of each result matters. It is not intended for modifying grant data.
Requirements
A remote MCP endpoint at over streamable HTTP. No packages, environment variables, or headers are declared, and the manifest declares no authentication. Network access to the endpoint is required.
Before you install
The registry description says the tools are read-only, so no writes, sends, or deletions are indicated. No credentials, payments, private keys, or third-party data sharing are shown in the supplied material. The manifest declares no authentication, so queries sent to the remote endpoint are not tied to a verified account; avoid submitting confidential or unpublished research material. Details of the 14 tools are not listed, so review them before relying on results.

Installation

In SourceWeft

  1. Open Opennih in the dashboard and add it to a workspace.
  2. Enable the server for the chats that should use its tools.

Web executable via Streamable HTTP. Remote servers run from the web runtime once configured in a workspace.

Use with an agent

Paste this prompt into Claude Code, Codex, Cursor or another agent — or into SourceWeft chat. The agent reads this server's install guide, shows you its publisher, endpoint and sign-in, and adds it to your client once you agree. Keys never go into a command.

Read https://sourceweft.com/mcp/org.opennih%2Fopennih/install.md and connect the MCP server it describes to my client. Before changing any config, show me its publisher, endpoint and sign-in method and wait for my OK. Never put an API key in a command or in a file I would commit; ask me where it should come from.

Read the install guide the agent follows

Other MCP clients

Add this to your client's mcpServers config.

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "opennih": {
      "type": "http",
      "url": "https://mcp.opennih.org/mcp"
    }
  }
}

Tools

14

source_status

OpenNIH source status

Use this tool when the user asks whether the OpenNIH corpus is loaded, which official sidecars are available, or how stale the data might be — and before reporting 'no such grant', since corpus_lag_note explains that a grant added to RePORTER after the snapshot cutoff is absent here, not nonexistent. Read-only status for the deployed NIH project corpus and official sidecars. Takes no parameters; no caller paths or external URLs are accepted.

Takes no parameters.

search_grants

Search OpenNIH NIH grants

Use this tool when the user asks to find NIH grants — by topic, principal investigator, institution, NIH Institute/Center, activity code, fiscal year, or project number ('what NIH grants exist on CRISPR', 'show me Stanford's R01s in 2022', 'look up 5R01CA036569-02'). This is the primary entry point: results carry pi_profile_id, the NIH RePORTER PI identifier. Read-only bounded search over the entity-resolved NIH ExPORTER/RePORTER corpus; results include mechanism_class, funding_basis and provenance, and a null award_amount means not reported, never zero. Bounds: query/text_search/institution/pi_name 2-64 chars, project_num ^[A-Z0-9-]{1,24}$, activity_code ^[A-Z0-9]{1,5}$, fiscal years 1985-2100, limit 1-50 (default 20), offset 0-100000 (offset>10000 is rate-limited to 12/min — partition by fiscal_year instead). meta.total_funding is the full matching-slice sum, not the returned page. Results are cached for ~1 hour. Counting: one result is one source application-year row, so (project_num, fiscal_year) is NOT unique - a multi-component award (P/U center) emits one row per sub-project, so the same project_num can appear several times in one fiscal year with different PIs and titles. These are distinct NIH application records, not duplicates. Each row carries appl_id, the NIH application id and authoritative row identity - two rows sharing (project_num, fiscal_year) with different appl_id are distinct sub-project applications, and appl_id is the key to de-duplicate on. meta.total counts rows, not grants; meta.unique_project_nums counts distinct project numbers, and meta.distinct_awards (row field core_project_num) counts distinct awards.

Parametersiclimitqueryoffsetpi_nameinstitutionproject_numtext_searchactivity_codefiscal_year_endfiscal_year_start

rank_institutions

Rank NIH institutions (RPG research)

Use this tool when the user asks which institutions get the most NIH money — 'top NIH-funded universities', 'where does NCI money go', 'rank research hospitals by R01 funding'. Each ranked row also yields its entity_id, the canonical institution identifier. Ranks institutions by competitive RPG-research NIH funding (R01 baseline), excluding intramural/contracts/centers/career/training, de-duplicated on core_project_num; NULL total_funding is not reported, never $0. total_funding here is RPG-research-only and is NOT comparable to the all-mechanism NIH totals served elsewhere. Bounds: limit 1-50 (default 20), offset 0-100000, fiscal years 1985-2100, ic 2-64 chars (NIH abbreviation or code, e.g. NCI or CA), sort_by one of composite | funding_scale | portfolio_breadth | new_grant_activity | avg_award_size.

Parametersiclimitoffsetsort_byfiscal_year_endfiscal_year_start

get_pi_profile

Get NIH PI profile

Use this tool when the user asks about one researcher — 'how much NIH funding does Dr. X have', 'list this PI's grants', 'who does she collaborate with'. profile_id is the NIH RePORTER PI identifier carried in grant-search results' pi_profile_id field and is not guessable. Read-only PI profile: grants, collaborators, publications, funding totals; the headline name/institution follow the PI's LATEST grant. A fiscal-year window with no grants returns the profile with total_grants=0, not an error. fiscal_year_start/fiscal_year_end scope EVERY aggregate section — grants, profile totals AND collaborators all report only that window (issue #342; collaborators previously ignored it and returned the all-time list). COLLABORATOR COVERAGE: the collaborator sidecar covers only SOME fiscal years, so an empty collaborators list can mean 'unknown for these years' rather than 'none'. meta.collaborator_coverage.window_covered distinguishes the two: false = no data for any year in the window, and true with window_fully_covered=false means PARTIAL coverage, with the uncovered years listed in missing_fiscal_years_in_window. fiscal_years_with_collaborator_data lists the years that do have it. Bounds: profile_id 1-20 digits (^[0-9]{1,20}$), fiscal years 1985-2100, limit 1-50 (default 20), offset 0-100000.

Parameterslimitoffsetprofile_idrequiredfiscal_year_endfiscal_year_start

get_institution_profile

Get NIH institution profile

Use this tool when the user asks about one named institution — 'what is Harvard's NIH funding history', 'which PIs does this university fund', 'what mechanisms does it win'. entity_id is the canonical institution identifier (from the institution ranking); grant-search results do NOT carry one. Read-only institution profile: funding history, mechanism mix, top PIs. fiscal_year_start/fiscal_year_end scope EVERY aggregate section — the mechanism-mix, funding-trend AND top-PIs sections all report only that fiscal-year window, and provenance.fiscal_year_window echoes the window actually applied; omit both arguments for all fiscal years. meta.found and profile.organization are deliberately window-independent (they answer existence/identity, so a real entity with no funding in the window stays found with its name). meta.found is always an explicit boolean: false (with profile=null) when the entity_id matches nothing in the corpus, true otherwise — branch on it instead of null-checking funding fields. The funding-trend rows' fiscal_year is int OR null: null means 'fiscal year not reported', never 0, and such a group belongs to no fiscal-year window, so it is absent from every scoped section. Bounds: entity_id 2-256 characters, fiscal years 1985-2100.

Parametersentity_idrequiredfiscal_year_endfiscal_year_start

funding_trend

NIH funding trend by year

Use this tool to get yearly NIH funding totals and grant counts. Returns a time series for the whole NIH, one Institute/Center, one activity code, or one institution. Use it when the user asks 'how much NIH funding was awarded in FY2020', 'how has NIH's budget changed over time', or 'plot R01 dollars by year'. total_funding spans ALL NIH mechanisms (funding_scope="all_mechanisms") and is therefore 1.5-1.7x larger than research-only ranking totals for the same slice, so the two are not comparable. Rows flag the partial current fiscal year. Bounds: fiscal years 1985-2100 and fiscal_year_start <= fiscal_year_end; ic, activity_code and institution are free-text filters with no length cap (matched as parameterized SQL, never interpolated). Not paginated: the whole requested year range is returned.

Parametersicinstitutionactivity_codefiscal_year_endfiscal_year_start

topic_trend

NIH topic funding trend

Use this tool when the user asks how a research topic has trended over time — 'is CRISPR funding growing', 'how many p53 grants per year', 'when did NIH start funding long COVID'. Returns yearly project-row counts plus recorded award totals for a title keyword match; multi-word queries AND their words in any order. Bounds: query is REQUIRED, 2-64 characters; fiscal years 1985-2100 with fiscal_year_start <= fiscal_year_end. Not paginated.

Parametersqueryrequiredfiscal_year_endfiscal_year_start

activity_code_distribution

NIH mechanism class distribution

Use this tool when the user asks what KINDS of awards NIH (or one Institute) makes — 'how much goes to R01s vs training grants', 'what share of NCI's portfolio is centers', 'break NIH down by mechanism'. Returns counts and recorded totals per mechanism class (research / career / training / center / contract / intramural / ...) from ranking_core.classify. Scope is whole-NIH or one Institute; per-institution portfolios are served by the institution-profile surface instead. Bounds: fiscal years 1985-2100 with fiscal_year_start <= fiscal_year_end; ic is a free-text filter with no length cap. Not paginated.

Parametersicfiscal_year_endfiscal_year_start

institution_concentration

NIH institution funding concentration

Use this tool when the user asks how concentrated or unequal NIH funding is across institutions — 'is NIH money concentrated in a few universities', 'what share do the top 5 take', 'has inequality grown since 2000'. Returns gini, hhi, top5_share and the top-5 institutions over the competitive RPG-research scope (NULL awards excluded, never padded to $0). Bounds: fiscal years 1985-2100 with fiscal_year_start <= fiscal_year_end. Optional `ic` narrows the scope to one NIH institute when it is an IC abbreviation such as NCI or NIGMS. Any other string is matched as a NAME FRAGMENT and can span several institutes; `meta.ic_scope.kind` reports `fragment` and how many institutes matched. Omit `ic` for all-NIH. Not paginated.

Parametersicfiscal_year_endfiscal_year_start

mechanism_mix

NIH mechanism mix

Use this tool when the user asks what mix of award types ONE institution wins — 'is this university mostly R01s or centers', 'how much of its NIH money is training', 'compare two schools' portfolios'. entity_id is the canonical institution identifier (from the institution ranking). With entity_id it returns that institution's whole NIH-administered portfolio (all mechanism classes); without it, the system-wide RPG-research breakdown — the two scopes are NOT comparable. Counts are grouped by comparability_group and never summed across classes. Bounds: fiscal years 1985-2100 with fiscal_year_start <= fiscal_year_end; entity_id is matched exactly (padded and unpadded DUNS spellings both resolve) with no length cap. Not paginated.

Parametersentity_idfiscal_year_endfiscal_year_start

ic_topic_cross

NIH IC x topic cross-tab

Use this tool when the user asks what ONE NIH Institute funds in a topic — 'what is NCI spending on immunotherapy', 'does NIMH fund psychedelics research', 'compare NIAID and NCI on vaccines' (call it once per Institute), or ic='ALL' for every IC at once. The response states which surface produced the numbers in match_strategy: 'rcdc' (official NIH RCDC categories, FY2008+) or 'text' (project_title match, used when the topic is not an RCDC category or the requested window is below the measured 50% RCDC-density minimum; provenance.rcdc_window_coverage reports the actual density). On the RCDC surface each grant is counted once even when several of its categories match. Bounds: ic and query are BOTH REQUIRED, 2-64 characters each; fiscal years 1985-2100 with fiscal_year_start <= fiscal_year_end. Not paginated.

Parametersicrequiredqueryrequiredmatch_strategyfiscal_year_endfiscal_year_start

funding_growth

NIH funding growth rate

Use this tool when the user asks about the RATE of change rather than the level — 'is this university's NIH funding growing', 'what's the CAGR since 2015', 'who grew fastest'. Returns year-over-year growth plus a window CAGR for one institution (entity_id, the canonical institution identifier) or all NIH. Both yoy_growth_pct and cagr_pct are PERCENTS (2.5905 means 2.5905%/yr, not 259%); the old fractional `cagr` key is gone. NULL awards are excluded, never padded to $0. meta echoes entity_id + organization so looped calls stay attributable. Bounds: fiscal years 1985-2100 with fiscal_year_start <= fiscal_year_end; entity_id is matched exactly with no length cap. Not paginated.

Parametersentity_idfiscal_year_endfiscal_year_start

fetch

Fetch one NIH grant (Deep Research compat)

Use this tool to retrieve the full record for one NIH grant by its id. Returns {id, title, text, url, metadata} with url set to the public OpenNIH grant page so the client can cite it. This is the OpenAI Deep Research compatibility wrapper resolving the canonical row for an id. The record is PROJECT-level, not project-year: when a project number owns several project-year rows the LATEST fiscal year is returned (metadata.matching_rows reports how many rows exist). Bounds: id is REQUIRED and must be a full NIH project number matching ^[A-Z0-9-]{1,24}$ (e.g. 1R01CA123456-01A1); core project numbers and partial numbers do not match. An id that matches no row in the corpus raises an error — a missing grant can also mean it was added to RePORTER after the snapshot cutoff, so it is absent here rather than nonexistent.

Parametersidrequired

Version history

2
  1. v0.0.12LatestOct 14, 2026
  2. v0.0.9.8Oct 13, 2026

Score

83% of the applicable checks met

How complete this listing is, computed from the registry entry, the endpoint and public sources. Not a rating of the server and not a statement that it is safe or working today: reachability is a dated check, and no installs or reviews go into the score.

  • Reached in the last 30 daysRequired25 pts
  • Auth declaredRequired10 pts
  • Tools listedRequired15 pts
  • DescriptionRequired15 pts
  • Logo10 pts
  • Documentation15 pts

    Declare a GitHub repository with a README, or serve resource_documentation in the OAuth protected-resource metadata.

  • LicenseNot applicable

    A hosted service is used under its provider's terms, so no license is expected here. This check is left out of the percentage.