mavedb-link

A read-only Model Context Protocol (MCP) server, built on FastMCP 3.x, that grounds variant-effect work in MaveDB — the database of Multiplexed Assays of Variant Effect, which assigns quantitative functional scores to variants by deep mutational scanning and related assays. Part of the GeneFoundry *-link fleet; federates into genefoundry-router under the mavedb namespace.

Important

Research use only. Not clinical decision support. Do not use for diagnosis, treatment, triage, or patient management.

Why

MaveDB's REST API hands back a score and its interpretation as separate, unjoined parts of the record. The scores arrive as a CSV column of bare floats; whether a given float means abnormal depends on that score set's own curated calibration ladder, which lives elsewhere in the record and which the caller must fetch and apply by hand. A raw MAVE score is uninterpretable on its own, and an agent handed one will either guess or hallucinate a threshold.

This server never returns a naked score. It carries MaveDB's curated interpretation layer — functional-classification thresholds with ACMG PS3/BS3 evidence strength and OddsPath ratios — alongside every value, and resolves identifiers (HGVS, GA4GH VRS, URN) internally instead of forcing a map-first round-trip. find_variant answers the question the record-oriented API leaves you to assemble yourself: what does every MAVE dataset say about this one variant?

Reads are served from a local SQLite mirror of the CC0 Zenodo bulk dump and fall back to the live API on a miss, so lookups are fast and work offline.

Quick start

Hosted — no install required:

claude mcp add --transport http mavedb-link https://mavedb-link.genefoundry.org/mcp

Or run it locally (Python 3.12+, uv):

uv sync --group dev
uv run python server.py --transport unified --host 127.0.0.1 --port 8000
curl -s localhost:8000/health | python -m json.tool
claude mcp add --transport http mavedb-link http://127.0.0.1:8000/mcp

No data build is required — the server runs pure-live out of the box. Building the local mirror is optional, and makes lookups fast and offline:

make data-build     # download the latest Zenodo dump → data/mavedb.sqlite

--transport unified serves REST and MCP at /mcp; --transport http is REST/health only and exposes no MCP endpoint — router and MCP clients need unified. For Claude Desktop (stdio), run uv run python mcp_server.py instead.

Tools

Tool	Purpose
search_score_sets	Full-text + faceted search of score sets (gene, organism, author, journal, keyword)
get_score_set	Score-set record (targets, publications, licence) + score_calibrations: ACMG/OddsPath thresholds
get_variant_scores	The quantitative variant × score table (paged); each row carries its calibrated functional class
get_variant_score	One variant's score + per-calibration classification (by variant URN, or score-set URN + HGVS)
get_classified_variants	Every variant in a calibrated functional class (e.g. all abnormal / PS3), with scores
get_score_distribution	Server-side summary stats (quartiles, histogram) + a query score's percentile and class
find_variant	One variant's score + class across every score set — anchored by GA4GH VRS id, variant_urn, or a bare hgvs= (+ optional gene_symbol=) resolved to VRS internally
get_hgvs_validation	Validate an HGVS string and surface why it is invalid (reference mismatch, missing accession)
get_gene_score_sets	All published MAVE datasets for an HGNC gene symbol (lean listing with a has_calibrations flag)
get_experiment	Experiment record + child score-set URNs
search_experiments	Full-text experiment search
get_mapped_variants	Genome-mapped GA4GH VRS alleles + ClinGen Allele IDs for a score set
get_collection	Curated collection members (URN from a score set's official_collections, or mavedb.org)
get_server_capabilities	Discovery surface: tools, signatures, limits, error taxonomy
get_diagnostics	Live API reachability + version + mirror/cache/runtime metrics

search_score_sets is the router's pinned entry point. Leaf names are unprefixed per Tool-Naming Standard v1; behind genefoundry-router they surface as mavedb_<tool> — e.g. mavedb_search_score_sets.

The server also registers the mavedb:// resource family (capabilities, tools, usage, reference, research-use, citation) and a response_mode token-cost lever on every tool; see docs/architecture.md.

Data & provenance

Upstream is the public MaveDB REST API (https://api.mavedb.org/api/v1) — read-only, no credentials, no API key. The router never forwards a caller's token upstream.

Refresh model: mirror-primary, live-backup. A local SQLite mirror is built from the CC0 MaveDB Zenodo bulk dump (concept DOI 10.5281/zenodo.11201736, always resolving to the newest version); a mirror-miss — for example a record newer than the snapshot — falls back transparently to the live API. Each response stamps _meta.data_source (mirror | live | mixed) and mirror_as_of. Full mechanics, including the lazily-backfilled VRS/ClinGen layer: docs/data.md.

Data licence: per score set. MaveDB has no blanket data licence — each dataset carries its own (CC0 1.0, CC BY 4.0, or CC BY-SA 4.0). Honour each record's license.shortName.

Citation. Cite the platform, and alongside it the specific score-set URN, its licence, and its primary publication:

Esposito D, Weile J, Shendure J, et al. MaveDB: an open-source platform to distribute and interpret data from multiplexed assays of variant effect. Genome Biology. 2019;20(1):223. doi:10.1186/s13059-019-1845-6

MaveDB functional scores are experimental measurements, not clinical variant classifications; a calibrated class such as abnormal/PS3 is assay evidence, not a pathogenicity call.

Documentation

• Architecture — the MaveDB data model, the calibration layer, the response contract, and the mavedb:// resources.
• Configuration — every MAVEDB_LINK_* variable, the transport modes, and the Host/Origin request guard.
• Data & the local mirror — the Zenodo dump, build/refresh commands, and the lazy mapped-variant cache.
• Deployment — the container stacks, the data-init container, bundle pinning, and the reverse proxy.
• Design spec · implementation plan.
• AGENTS.md — engineering conventions: the two-plane boundary, tool naming, and the mirror invariant.

Contributing

See AGENTS.md for engineering conventions and the repository layout. make ci-local is the definition-of-done gate: format, lint, the line budget, the README standard, mypy strict, and the tests.

License

MIT © Bernt Popp — this repository's code. Note the three layers: the MaveDB platform code is AGPL-3.0, and each MaveDB dataset carries its own licence (CC0 1.0 / CC BY 4.0 / CC BY-SA 4.0) — honour license.shortName on every record you use.