lmorchard/oblique-strategies-mcp

Oblique Strategies MCP Server

An MCP (Model Context Protocol) server that provides access to Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt's Oblique Strategies - a collection of prompts designed to help overcome creative blocks through lateral thinking.

Why?

Why not?

No, seriously, why?

Because I've built Oblique Strategies thingies for various devices & platforms and I wanted to make another one to play with the MCP protocol.

This is a very silly project and you should just go buy a real deck of cards.

Quick Start

No installation required, if you have uvx and you trust my code from github. (Weirdo.)

Run directly from GitHub using uvx:

uvx --from git+https://github.com/lmorchard/oblique-strategies-mcp oblique-strategies-mcp

For Claude Desktop, add to your config file:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "oblique-strategies": {
      "command": "/path/to/uvx",
      "args": [
        "--from",
        "git+https://github.com/lmorchard/oblique-strategies-mcp",
        "oblique-strategies-mcp"
      ]
    }
  }
}

For Claude Code:

claude mcp add oblique-strategies -- /path/to/uvx --from git+https://github.com/lmorchard/oblique-strategies-mcp oblique-strategies-mcp

Features

• Get random strategies from multiple editions (1975-1982)
• Search strategies by keyword
• Choose from 7 different collections including programming-specific adaptations
• Default: Edition 2 (1978) with 128 strategies

MCP Tools

• get_strategy - Get a random strategy (optionally specify edition)
• search_strategies - Search strategies by keyword
• list_editions - List all available editions

Available Collections

• Edition 1-4: Original Oblique Strategies (1975-1982)
• Condensed: Comprehensive collection (195 strategies)
• Programmers: Programming-specific adaptations (96 prompts)
• Do It: Action-oriented prompts (32 strategies)

Installation

For Development

# Clone the repository
git clone <repository-url>
cd oblique-strategies-mcp

# Install dependencies with uv
uv sync

Running the Server

Development Mode

From the project directory:

# Using the package entry point
uv run oblique-strategies-mcp

# Or using Python module syntax
uv run python -m oblique_strategies_mcp

# Or using the wrapper script
./run-server.sh

After Global Installation

oblique-strategies-mcp

Configuration

For Claude Desktop

Add to your Claude Desktop config file (~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json on macOS):

Development Setup

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "oblique-strategies": {
      "command": "/path/to/uv",
      "args": [
        "--directory",
        "/path/to/oblique-strategies-mcp",
        "run",
        "oblique-strategies-mcp"
      ]
    }
  }
}

Note: Replace /path/to/uv with the full path to your uv executable (typically ~/.local/bin/uv or use which uv to find it).

Global Installation Setup

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "oblique-strategies": {
      "command": "oblique-strategies-mcp",
      "args": [],
      "env": {}
    }
  }
}

For Claude Code

Development Setup

claude mcp add oblique-strategies -- uv --directory /path/to/oblique-strategies-mcp run oblique-strategies-mcp

Using Wrapper Script

claude mcp add oblique-strategies /path/to/oblique-strategies-mcp/run-server.sh

Global Installation

claude mcp add oblique-strategies oblique-strategies-mcp

After adding, restart Claude Desktop or reconnect in Claude Code.

License

MIT

Acknowledgments

• Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt for creating Oblique Strategies
• Strategy collections sourced from: https://github.com/zzkt/oblique-strategies