docs-mcp-at-aip

name	docs-mcp-at-aip
description	Access the AIP documentation MCP server at https://docs-mcp-server.kube.aip.de. Search, scrape, and fetch documentation for 15+ indexed libraries including reana, pandas, snakemake, dask, unsloth, and more. HTTP POST + SSE, internal network only.
version	1.0.0
author	AstroAgent / AIP
license	MIT
prerequisites	{"python":["cryptography","certifi"]}
metadata	{"hermes":{"tags":["infrastructure","mcp","documentation","search","aip","internal","reana","pandas","snakemake"],"category":"infrastructure","related_skills":["hermes-native-mcp","mcporter-cli","python-mcp-docs-first","dask-mcp-docs-first","pandas-datashader-mcp-docs-first","hermes-api-server","openwebui-hermes","reana-serial-python"]}}

AIP Documentation MCP Server

When to Use

Use this skill when searching for documentation on libraries and tools used at AIP. The server indexes 15+ libraries including: reana, pandas, snakemake, dask, datashader, unsloth, holoviz, hvplot, crewai, langfuse, flowise, cline, mcp, environments (docker) for reana, aiphpcdocs.

Tasks: API reference lookup, workflow specification examples (reana.yaml), configuration guides, code examples, and version-specific docs.

Prerequisites

• Internal AIP network access
• Python 3 stdlib + curl (no extra dependencies)

Procedure

1. Connect to the MCP server

The MCP endpoint is /mcp on https://docs-mcp-server.kube.aip.de.

Configure in ~/.hermes/config.yaml:

mcp_servers:
  docs:
    url: https://docs-mcp-server.kube.aip.de/mcp

Or use the Hermes native MCP client. The server uses HTTP POST + Server-Sent Events — no extra headers needed beyond the standard MCP JSON-RPC protocol.

1a. Auto-load specialized companion skills when the docs task turns into code generation

• If the user is asking to write general Python code from these docs, also load python-mcp-docs-first.
• If the task is primarily about Dask, also load dask-mcp-docs-first.
• If the task is primarily about pandas + Datashader plotting or dataframe-to-visualization pipelines, also load pandas-datashader-mcp-docs-first.
• Treat this skill as the documentation-access umbrella skill and hand off code-generation guidance to the more specialized companion skill whenever one clearly matches.

1b. TLS trust fix for hosts missing the intermediate chain

The endpoint may fail TLS verification on some hosts because the server does not always provide the full intermediate chain. A reliable local fix is to build a CA bundle that includes the GEANT intermediate and point Hermes, Python, curl, and Node at it:

mkdir -p ~/.hermes/certs
curl -fsSL http://crt.harica.gr/HARICA-GEANT-TLS-R1.cer -o ~/.hermes/certs/HARICA-GEANT-TLS-R1.cer

python3 - <<'PY'
from cryptography import x509
from cryptography.hazmat.primitives import serialization
from pathlib import Path

src = Path.home()/'.hermes/certs/HARICA-GEANT-TLS-R1.cer'
out = Path.home()/'.hermes/certs/HARICA-GEANT-TLS-R1.pem'
cert = x509.load_der_x509_certificate(src.read_bytes())
out.write_bytes(cert.public_bytes(serialization.Encoding.PEM))
print(out)
PY

python3 - <<'PY'
import certifi
from pathlib import Path

bundle = Path.home()/'.hermes/certs/custom-ca-bundle.pem'
bundle.write_text(Path(certifi.where()).read_text() + '\n' + (Path.home()/'.hermes/certs/HARICA-GEANT-TLS-R1.pem').read_text())
print(bundle)
PY

Then add to ~/.hermes/.env:

SSL_CERT_FILE=/home/$USER/.hermes/certs/custom-ca-bundle.pem
REQUESTS_CA_BUNDLE=/home/$USER/.hermes/certs/custom-ca-bundle.pem
NODE_EXTRA_CA_CERTS=/home/$USER/.hermes/certs/custom-ca-bundle.pem
CURL_CA_BUNDLE=/home/$USER/.hermes/certs/custom-ca-bundle.pem

This preserves TLS verification instead of disabling it.

2. Initialize the connection

{
  "jsonrpc": "2.0",
  "id": 1,
  "method": "initialize",
  "params": {
    "protocolVersion": "2024-11-05",
    "capabilities": {},
    "clientInfo": {"name": "hermes", "version": "1.0"}
  }
}

3. Discover available tools

{
  "jsonrpc": "2.0",
  "id": 2,
  "method": "tools/list",
  "params": {}
}

4. Key tool examples

List indexed libraries:

{
  "jsonrpc": "2.0",
  "id": 3,
  "method": "tools/call",
  "params": {"name": "list_libraries", "arguments": {}}
}

Search documentation:

{
  "jsonrpc": "2.0",
  "id": 4,
  "method": "tools/call",
  "params": {
    "name": "search_docs",
    "arguments": {
      "library": "reana",
      "query": "workflow specification yaml example",
      "limit": 3
    }
  }
}

Find available versions:

{
  "jsonrpc": "2.0",
  "id": 5,
  "method": "tools/call",
  "params": {
    "name": "find_version",
    "arguments": {"library": "pandas", "targetVersion": "2.x"}
  }
}

Fetch a URL as Markdown:

{
  "jsonrpc": "2.0",
  "id": 6,
  "method": "tools/call",
  "params": {
    "name": "fetch_url",
    "arguments": {"url": "https://docs.reana.io/reference/reana-yaml/"}
  }
}

Scrape new library docs:

{
  "jsonrpc": "2.0",
  "id": 7,
  "method": "tools/call",
  "params": {
    "name": "scrape_docs",
    "arguments": {
      "library": "my-lib",
      "url": "https://my-lib.example.com/docs/",
      "maxPages": 100,
      "maxDepth": 3
    }
  }
}

Indexed Libraries

aiphpcdocs, cline, crewai, dask, datashader,
environments (docker) for reana, flowise, holoviz, hvplot,
langfuse, mcp, pandas, reana, snakemake, unsloth

Available Tools

Tool	Description	Read-only?
list_libraries	List all indexed libraries	✅
find_version	Find matching version for a library	✅
search_docs	Search docs for a library	✅
fetch_url	Fetch any URL as Markdown	✅
list_jobs	List indexing job queue	✅
get_job_info	Get specific job details	✅
scrape_docs	Scrape and index new library docs	❌
refresh_version	Re-scrape a library version	❌
cancel_job	Cancel a running job	❌
remove_docs	Remove indexed docs	❌

Verified Connection Details

Discovered through systematic testing (hostname probing, path enumeration, header negotiation):

Property	Value
Hostname	docs-mcp-server.kube.aip.de (NOT mcp-docs.kube.aip.de which 404s)
MCP endpoint	/mcp (HTTP POST + SSE)
Protocol version	2024-11-05
Required headers	Content-Type: application/json + Accept: application/json, text/event-stream
Response format	SSE — parse data: line as JSON (strip data: prefix)
Server version	0.1.0
DNS	141.33.165.5 (IPv4 only)

Verified curl commands

Initialize:

curl -sk -m 5 -X POST "https://docs-mcp-server.kube.aip.de/mcp" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -H "Accept: application/json, text/event-stream" \
  -d '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":1,"method":"initialize","params":{"protocolVersion":"2024-11-05","capabilities":{},"clientInfo":{"name":"hermes","version":"1.0"}}}'

List libraries:

curl -sk -m 10 -X POST "https://docs-mcp-server.kube.aip.de/mcp" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -H "Accept: application/json, text/event-stream" \
  -d '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":2,"method":"tools/call","params":{"name":"list_libraries","arguments":{}}}'

Search docs:

curl -sk -m 10 -X POST "https://docs-mcp-server.kube.aip.de/mcp" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -H "Accept: application/json, text/event-stream" \
  -d '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":3,"method":"tools/call","params":{"name":"search_docs","arguments":{"library":"reana","query":"workflow specification","limit":3}}}'

Pitfalls

• Internal network only — server is not accessible from outside the AIP network.
• Incomplete certificate chain on some hosts — the endpoint may fail TLS verification until the GEANT intermediate is trusted locally. Prefer a custom CA bundle over disabling verification.
• Wrong hostname — mcp-docs.kube.aip.de returns 404 — always use docs-mcp-server.kube.aip.de.
• Wrong Accept header — omitting text/event-stream causes 32000 Not Acceptable error.
• SSE parsing — responses are SSE format: event: message\ndata: {...}\n\n. Extract the JSON from the data: line.
• scrape_docs is destructive — it re-indexes; use refresh_version for updates.

Verification

• list_libraries returns non-empty list of library names.
• search_docs with a known library and query returns structured results with URLs.
• fetch_url converts a public URL to Markdown.