Wikipedia MCP server

This Model Context Protocol (MCP) server provides language models with the ability to search Wikipedia and retrieve article content programmatically, offering a structured way for AI assistants to access Wikipedia knowledge.

Installation

You can run the Wikipedia MCP server directly using npx without installing it locally:

npx wikipedia-mcp

Configuration

To integrate the Wikipedia MCP server with your AI tools, you'll need to add it to your MCP client configuration. Most AI tools support a JSON-based configuration format for MCP servers.

Add the following to your configuration:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "Wikipedia": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "wikipedia-mcp"]
    }
  }
}

Features

The Wikipedia MCP server provides these key capabilities:

• Search Wikipedia: Find articles matching specific search terms
• Read Full Articles: Retrieve complete Wikipedia articles by title or page ID
• Markdown Conversion: All article content is automatically converted from HTML to markdown format for easier consumption

Usage

Once the server is running, your language model or AI assistant can interact with it to search for information and retrieve article content. The server handles the search queries and returns properly formatted Wikipedia content that can be incorporated into responses.

The MCP protocol allows the AI to make structured requests to find information on specific topics and retrieve relevant Wikipedia articles programmatically.

How to add this MCP server to Cursor

There are two ways to add an MCP server to Cursor. The most common way is to add the server globally in the ~/.cursor/mcp.json file so that it is available in all of your projects.

If you only need the server in a single project, you can add it to the project instead by creating or adding it to the .cursor/mcp.json file.

Adding an MCP server to Cursor globally

To add a global MCP server go to Cursor Settings > MCP and click "Add new global MCP server".

When you click that button the ~/.cursor/mcp.json file will be opened and you can add your server like this:

{
    "mcpServers": {
        "cursor-rules-mcp": {
            "command": "npx",
            "args": [
                "-y",
                "cursor-rules-mcp"
            ]
        }
    }
}

Adding an MCP server to a project

To add an MCP server to a project you can create a new .cursor/mcp.json file or add it to the existing one. This will look exactly the same as the global MCP server example above.

How to use the MCP server

Once the server is installed, you might need to head back to Settings > MCP and click the refresh button.

The Cursor agent will then be able to see the available tools the added MCP server has available and will call them when it needs to.

You can also explictly ask the agent to use the tool by mentioning the tool name and describing what the function does.