MichaelTroelsen/tdz-c64-knowledge

TDZ C64 Knowledge

MCP server for managing and searching Commodore 64 documentation. Ingest PDFs, text, Markdown, HTML, Excel, and web pages into a searchable knowledge base accessible via Claude Code or other MCP clients.

🚀 Quick Start

# 1. Install
python -m venv .venv
.venv\Scripts\activate
pip install -e .

# 2. Configure Claude Code
claude mcp add tdz-c64-knowledge -- .venv\Scripts\python.exe server.py

# 3. Add documents
.venv\Scripts\python.exe cli.py add-folder "C:\c64docs" --tags reference --recursive

# 4. Search via Claude Code
# Ask: "Search the C64 docs for VIC-II sprite registers"

See for detailed setup.

Features

Search & Retrieval

• FTS5 full-text search - 480x faster queries (50ms vs 24s)
• Semantic search - Find by meaning, not keywords (e.g., "movable objects" → "sprites")
• RAG question answering - Answer questions by synthesizing docs with citations
• Fuzzy search - Typo tolerance ("VIC2" → "VIC-II", "asembly" → "assembly")
• Progressive refinement - Search within results to narrow down
• Hybrid search - Combines keyword + semantic with configurable weighting
• Similarity search - Discover related documentation automatically
• Query preprocessing - NLTK stemming and stopword removal
• Smart tagging - AI-powered tag suggestions by category
• Table/code search - Search extracted tables and code blocks

Document Management

• Multi-format - PDF, TXT, MD, HTML, Excel, web scraping
• Duplicate detection - Content-based deduplication
• Chunked retrieval - Get specific sections without loading entire docs
• Metadata extraction - Author, subject, page numbers
• Persistent index - Documents stay indexed between sessions

AI-Powered Features

• Entity extraction - Extract hardware, memory addresses, instructions, concepts (5000x faster with C64 regex patterns)
• Relationship mapping - Co-occurrence analysis with distance-based strength scoring
• Document comparison - Side-by-side analysis with similarity scores
• Natural language query translation - Parse queries into structured search parameters
• Anomaly detection - ML-based baseline learning for URL-sourced content (3400+ docs/second)
• Temporal analysis - Event detection, timeline construction, historical context (5 event types, 8 date formats)
• Advanced visualizations - 3D knowledge graphs, hierarchical bundling, Sankey flow diagrams

Wiki Export (NEW in v2.23.15)

• Static HTML wiki - Export entire knowledge base to browsable website
• Document similarity map - 2D visualization using UMAP/t-SNE dimensionality reduction
• Interactive timeline - Horizontal scrollable timeline with zoom levels and event filters
• Knowledge graph - D3.js force-directed graph (178 entities, 20 relationships)
• Enhanced UI - Explanation boxes, prominent ASK AI button, file type detection
• Clickable clusters - Browse k-means clusters with linked documents
• No server required - Pure client-side JavaScript, works offline
• Full-text search - Fuse.js powered search across all content
• See for usage

REST API (Optional)

• 27 endpoints - Full CRUD, search, analytics, export
• OpenAPI/Swagger docs - Interactive API at /api/docs
• API authentication - Secure via X-API-Key header
• See for details

Performance

• Scalability - Tested to 5,000+ documents
• Concurrent throughput - 5,712 queries/sec (10 workers)
• Lazy loading - 100k+ document support
• Search caching - 50-100x speedup for repeated queries

Installation (Windows)

Prerequisites

• Python 3.10+ - https://python.org (check "Add Python to PATH")
• uv (recommended) or pip: pip install uv

Setup

cd C:\Users\YourName\mcp-servers\tdz-c64-knowledge

# Using uv (faster)
uv venv
.venv\Scripts\activate
uv pip install mcp pypdf rank-bm25 nltk

# Or using pip
python -m venv .venv
.venv\Scripts\activate
pip install mcp pypdf rank-bm25 nltk

# Test
python server.py  # Press Ctrl+C to stop

Configuration

Claude Code

claude mcp add tdz-c64-knowledge -- C:\path\.venv\Scripts\python.exe C:\path\server.py

Or add to .claude/settings.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "tdz-c64-knowledge": {
      "command": "C:\\path\\.venv\\Scripts\\python.exe",
      "args": ["C:\\path\\server.py"],
      "env": {
        "TDZ_DATA_DIR": "C:\\c64-knowledge-data"
      }
    }
  }
}

Claude Desktop

Add to %APPDATA%\Claude\claude_desktop_config.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "tdz-c64-knowledge": {
      "command": "C:\\path\\.venv\\Scripts\\python.exe",
      "args": ["C:\\path\\server.py"],
      "env": {
        "TDZ_DATA_DIR": "C:\\c64-knowledge-data"
      }
    }
  }
}

Environment Variables

Search Features

FTS5 Full-Text Search (Recommended)

Enable with USE_FTS5=1 for maximum performance:

• 480x faster than BM25
• Native SQLite BM25 ranking
• Porter stemming tokenizer

Semantic Search

Enable with USE_SEMANTIC_SEARCH=1:

• Meaning-based search (e.g., "movable objects" finds "sprites")
• FAISS vector similarity with sentence-transformers
• ~7-16ms per query after embeddings built
• Pre-build embeddings: pip install sentence-transformers faiss-cpu

Phrase Search

Use double quotes for exact phrases:

search_docs(query='"VIC-II chip" registers')

Fuzzy Search

Handles typos automatically with USE_FUZZY_SEARCH=1:

• "VIC-I" → "VIC-II" (83% similarity)
• "grafics" → "graphics" (88% similarity)
• Configurable threshold (default: 80%)

OCR for Scanned PDFs

Automatic with USE_OCR=1:

• Detects scanned PDFs (< 100 chars extracted)
• Uses Tesseract OCR
• Install: pip install pytesseract pdf2image Pillow + Tesseract binary
• ~1-2 seconds per page

Temporal Analysis & Visualizations

Extract events, construct timelines, and visualize knowledge graphs.

Event Detection

Automatically detect significant events in documents:

• 5 Event Types - Product releases, company milestones, technical innovations, cultural events, version updates
• 8 Date Formats - Full dates, month-year, year ranges, decades, parenthetical dates
• Confidence Scoring - Pattern matching with proximity-based confidence (0.0-1.0)
• Entity Association - Automatically link entities to events

# Extract events from a document
result = kb.extract_document_events('doc_id', min_confidence=0.7)
# Returns: event_count, filtered_count, stored_count, events list

Timeline Construction

Build chronological timelines with flexible querying:

• Automatic Timeline Building - Chronologically sorted by date (YYYYMMDD integer sort)
• Category Organization - Group by decade-type combinations (e.g., "1980s-release")
• Importance Levels - 1-5 scale based on confidence
• Date Range Filtering - Query events by year range, type, importance

# Build timeline from events
timeline_result = kb.build_timeline(min_confidence=0.5)

# Query timeline
timeline = kb.get_timeline(start_year=1980, end_year=1989, min_importance=3)

# Get historical context
context = kb.get_historical_context(year=1982, context_years=2)

Interactive Visualizations

Generate interactive HTML visualizations with Plotly and NetworkX:

Timeline Visualizations:

• Interactive Timeline - Horizontal timeline with zoom/pan, color-coded by event type
• Event Network - Spring layout showing event relationships
• Trend Charts - Multi-subplot dashboard (bar chart, stacked area, cumulative line)

Advanced Graph Visualizations:

• 3D Knowledge Graph - Interactive 3D entity-relationship graph with rotation controls
• Hierarchical Bundling - Circular layout with curved edges bundled through center
• Sankey Diagrams - Topic flow over time (decade or year grouping)

# Generate visualizations
kb.visualize_timeline(start_year=1980, end_year=1990, output_path="timeline.html")
kb.visualize_knowledge_graph_3d(max_entities=50, output_path="graph_3d.html")
kb.visualize_hierarchical_bundling(max_entities=30, output_path="bundling.html")
kb.visualize_topic_flow_sankey(time_period='decade', output_path="flow.html")

MCP Tools for Timeline

4 timeline-specific MCP tools:

• extract_document_events - Extract and store events from documents
• get_timeline - Query chronological timeline with filters
• search_events_by_date - Search events by date range and type
• get_historical_context - Get events around a specific year

See for complete documentation.

Tools

62 MCP tools organized by category. Key tools listed below.

Search Tools

search_docs - Full-text search

search_docs(query="SID register", max_results=5, tags=["sid"])

semantic_search - Meaning-based search

semantic_search(query="How do sprites work?", max_results=5)

hybrid_search - Combined keyword + semantic

hybrid_search(query="SID chip", semantic_weight=0.7, max_results=10)

answer_question - RAG-based Q&A with citations

answer_question(
  question="How do I program sprites on the VIC-II?",
  max_sources=5,
  search_mode="auto"
)

fuzzy_search - Typo-tolerant search

fuzzy_search(query="VIC2 asembly", similarity_threshold=80)

search_within_results - Progressive refinement

# Broad search, then refine
results = search_docs(query="VIC-II", max_results=50)
refined = search_within_results(results, "sprite collision", max_results=5)

find_similar - Find related documents

find_similar(doc_id="abc123", max_results=5)

Document Management

add_document - Add a file

add_document(
  filepath="C:/docs/c64_ref.pdf",
  title="C64 Programmer's Reference",
  tags=["reference", "memory-map"]
)

add_documents_bulk - Bulk import

add_documents_bulk(
  directory="C:/c64docs",
  pattern="**/*.{pdf,txt}",
  tags=["reference"],
  recursive=true
)

list_docs - List all documents

get_chunk - Get specific chunk

get_chunk(doc_id="abc123", chunk_id=5)

remove_document - Remove a document

remove_documents_bulk - Bulk remove by IDs or tags

remove_documents_bulk(tags=["outdated"])

check_updates - Check for file changes

check_updates(auto_update=false)

URL Scraping

scrape_url - Scrape documentation website

scrape_url(
  url="https://www.c64-wiki.com/wiki/VIC",
  tags=["wiki"],
  depth=2,
  threads=5
)

rescrape_document - Re-scrape for updates

rescrape_document(doc_id="abc123", force=false)

check_url_updates - Check all scraped docs

check_url_updates(auto_rescrape=false, check_structure=true)

AI & Analytics

extract_entities - Extract named entities

extract_entities(doc_id="abc123", confidence_threshold=0.6)

search_entities - Search across entities

search_entities(query="VIC-II", entity_types=["hardware"])

get_entity_analytics - Comprehensive entity statistics

extract_entity_relationships - Extract co-occurrences

extract_entity_relationships(doc_id="abc123", min_strength=0.3)

search_entity_pair - Find docs with entity pair

search_entity_pair(entity1="VIC-II", entity2="sprite")

compare_documents - Side-by-side comparison

compare_documents(doc_id_1="abc", doc_id_2="def", comparison_type="full")

suggest_tags - AI-powered tag suggestions

suggest_tags(doc_id="abc123", confidence_threshold=0.6)

get_tags_by_category - Browse tags by category

translate_query - Parse natural language queries

translate_query(query="find sprites on VIC-II chip")

Export Tools

export_entities - Export to CSV/JSON

export_entities(format="csv", output_path="entities.csv", min_confidence=0.7)

export_relationships - Export relationships

export_relationships(format="json", output_path="rels.json", min_strength=0.5)

System

kb_stats - Knowledge base statistics

health_check - System diagnostics

Data Storage

SQLite database with 12+ tables:

• documents - Document metadata
• chunks - Chunked content (1500 words, 200 overlap)
• document_tables - Extracted PDF tables
• document_code_blocks - Detected code blocks
• document_entities - Extracted entities
• entity_relationships - Co-occurrence tracking
• Plus: summaries, extraction_jobs, monitoring_history, etc.

Benefits:

• Lazy loading (metadata at startup, chunks on-demand)
• ACID transactions
• Scalable to 100k+ documents
• FTS5 full-text indexes

Default location: ~/.tdz-c64-knowledge or TDZ_DATA_DIR

Usage Examples

Ask Claude Code:

• "Search the C64 docs for SID voice registers"
• "What does the memory map say about $D400?"
• "Find information about sprite multiplexing"
• "Add C:/docs/mapping_the_c64.pdf with tags memory-map, reference"
• "How do I program raster interrupts on the VIC-II?" (uses RAG)

Suggested Tags

Organize docs with consistent tags:

• reference, memory-map, basic, assembly
• sid, vic-ii, cia, kernal
• hardware, disk, graphics, sound

Troubleshooting

"pypdf not installed" - Run: pip install pypdf rank-bm25

"mcp module not found" - Run: pip install mcp

Server not responding - Use Python from virtual environment, not system Python

PDF extraction issues - Use OCR or add plain text version

BM25 issues - Check logs in TDZ_DATA_DIR/server.log, try USE_BM25=0

Development

Testing

pip install -e ".[dev]"

# Run all tests
pytest test_server.py test_wiki_export.py -v

# With coverage
pytest test_server.py -v --cov=server --cov-report=term

# Wiki export tests only
pytest test_wiki_export.py -v

Test Coverage:

• test_server.py - Core server functionality (search, entities, RAG, etc.)
• test_wiki_export.py - Wiki generation features (16 tests):
  • Document coordinate export (UMAP/t-SNE)
  • File type detection (HTML/MD)
  • Cluster document export
  • HTML generation with explanation boxes
  • JavaScript generation for interactive features

CI/CD

GitHub Actions workflow tests on Python 3.10/3.11/3.12 across Windows/Linux/macOS with Ruff code quality checks.

Documentation

Core Documentation

• (this file) - Installation, features, tools, usage
• - Fast setup guide (5 minutes)
• - Technical deep dive, database schema, algorithms
• - Project status, quick stats, version history
• - Quick reference for Claude Code integration
• - Complete version history

Feature Documentation

Browse for detailed guides on specific features:

API & Integration:

• - FastAPI REST server (27 endpoints)

AI-Powered Features:

• - Extract hardware, memory addresses, instructions
• - ML-based URL content monitoring
• - AI-powered document summarization

Data Sources:

• - Scrape documentation websites
• - Track URL-sourced content changes

Setup & Deployment:

• - Production deployment
• - Docker configuration
• - Environment variables
• - Poppler installation for PDFs

User Interfaces:

• - Streamlit web interface

Development:

• - Test suite and CI/CD
• - Usage examples and performance analysis
• - Scheduled monitoring configuration
• - Future improvements and features

Version History

v2.23.0 - RAG Question Answering & Advanced Search (Phase 2 Complete)

• RAG-based answer_question with citations
• Fuzzy search with rapidfuzz
• Progressive search refinement
• Smart tagging system

v2.22.0 - Search Improvements (Phase 1 Complete)

• Enhanced entity analytics
• C64-specific regex patterns (5000x faster)
• Performance optimizations

v2.21.0 - Anomaly Detection

• ML-based baseline learning
• 1500x performance improvement

v2.18.0 - REST API & Background Processing

• FastAPI REST server (27 endpoints)
• Background entity extraction

v2.15.0+ - Entity Intelligence

• Entity extraction, relationships, analytics

See CONTEXT.md for complete version history.

License

MIT License - Use freely for your retro computing projects!