# Thingy

> Thingy is Jamie Thingelstad's sidekick, an AI agent and the librarian for his public archive: 10,468 thingelstad.com blog posts since 2004, 354 issues of The Weekly Thing newsletter since 2017, and the Another Thing podcast since 2025. He answers questions with citations back to the original posts and issues, in chat on this site or inside your own AI through the Librarian MCP server.

The archive also carries 38,215 links Jamie shared, 15,038 photos searchable by what they show, and 181 Currently entries (what Jamie was reading, watching and playing). It is Jamie's published writing only; nothing private is in it. Weekly Thing subscribers sign in with their email; there is no password.

## Pages

- [Home](https://thingy.thingelstad.com/): what Thingy is and what to ask him
- [Chat](https://thingy.thingelstad.com/chat/): ask Thingy about the archive; guests get a short daily preview, subscribers sign in
- [About](https://thingy.thingelstad.com/about/): what is in the archive and how Thingy works
- [Connect your AI](https://thingy.thingelstad.com/connect/): add the archive to Claude, ChatGPT, Claude Code or any MCP client
- [Librarian MCP reference](https://thingy.thingelstad.com/connect/reference/): every tool with its parameters and results, OAuth 2.1, budgets and protocol conventions

## MCP server

- [MCP endpoint](https://librarian.thingelstad.com/mcp): Streamable HTTP, stateless
- [Auth](https://thingy.thingelstad.com/connect/reference/#oauth): OAuth 2.1 bearer access token carrying the archive:read scope, issued by https://librarian.thingelstad.com. The reader signs in with an emailed six-digit code, the same sign-in Thingy uses; the address must be an active Weekly Thing subscription.
- [Budget](https://thingy.thingelstad.com/connect/reference/#quotas): 500 calls a day for a reader, 300 an hour

## MCP tools

- [`search_faq` (Thingy FAQ)](https://thingy.thingelstad.com/connect/reference/#tool-search_faq): Search the Weekly Thing FAQ: subscribing, cost, membership, RSS, schedule, archive access, privacy, contact and how the newsletter works.
- [`search_archive` (Search the archive)](https://thingy.thingelstad.com/connect/reference/#tool-search_archive): Search the whole archive (Weekly Thing, blog, podcast) by meaning and exact terms.
- [`get_source` (Read a source)](https://thingy.thingelstad.com/connect/reference/#tool-get_source): Read one source whole: a Weekly Thing issue, blog post or podcast episode, by the id other tools return.
- [`list_content` (Browse the archive)](https://thingy.thingelstad.com/connect/reference/#tool-list_content): List and count sources deterministically: by source_kind, year_range, topic, linked domain, link kind or category, blog posts an issue reprinted (also_in_issue) or linked (linked_from_issue), and issues with an audio edition (has_audio; each carries audio_url and audio_duration_seconds).
- [`find_links` (Find links)](https://thingy.thingelstad.com/connect/reference/#tool-find_links): The links Jamie shared: by domain (with subdomains), by url ("has Jamie linked this before"), by topic, link_role (the headline pick, commentary or journal), source_kind and year_range.
- [`corpus_stats` (Archive statistics)](https://thingy.thingelstad.com/connect/reference/#tool-corpus_stats): What the archive holds: counts by source and year, the newest and oldest items, link counts, the Weekly Thing's audio editions (count and total length), and for each recent year its distinctive terms, top domains and a sample source.
- [`list_topics` (Topics and clusters)](https://thingy.thingelstad.com/connect/reference/#tool-list_topics): The topic catalogue: the nine clusters every issue is filed under, and the weekly site's topic pages (names among the 40 most-extracted of 5+ issues, twins folded, counting every issue that names one twice; archive_lens counts every mention) with counts, first and last issue, related topics and page url.
- [`latest_content` (Latest content)](https://thingy.thingelstad.com/connect/reference/#tool-latest_content): The newest issues, posts and episodes, by date.
- [`quote_search` (Find a quote)](https://thingy.thingelstad.com/connect/reference/#tool-quote_search): Exact phrase search: whether a name or phrase actually appears in the archive, and where.
- [`archive_lens` (Topic history)](https://thingy.thingelstad.com/connect/reference/#tool-archive_lens): Trace a topic, person, product or idea across the whole archive: counts by year, first and latest mention, a timeline, year and source buckets, evidence spans and a reading path.
- [`compare_eras` (Compare eras)](https://thingy.thingelstad.com/connect/reference/#tool-compare_eras): Then versus now: the best passages on one topic from two eras side by side (year_a and year_b are each [start_year, end_year]).
- [`source_neighborhood` (Related sources)](https://thingy.thingelstad.com/connect/reference/#tool-source_neighborhood): What surrounds one source (by id): its outgoing and incoming links, links between Jamie's own sites, similar issues or similar blog posts by meaning, and related sources: sharing at least 3 distinctive words or picked domains (each used by fewer than max(2% of the sources in scope, 20) sources).
- [`archive_gems` (Hidden gems)](https://thingy.thingelstad.com/connect/reference/#tool-archive_gems): A few sources worth reading, drawn at random: from the sources that name a theme, or with no theme by mode (serendipity, forgotten or recent).
- [`find_evidence` (Find evidence)](https://thingy.thingelstad.com/connect/reference/#tool-find_evidence): For one to four claims, the passages in the archive that bear on each, with their source id and voices (jamie, quoted, link).
- [`media_search` (Search photos)](https://thingy.thingelstad.com/connect/reference/#tool-media_search): Find photos by what they show: every word of query in the alt text, caption, context, a vision description of the image, a blog post's title, or its file name's words (plurals match both ways; a quoted query is a phrase).
- [`view_photo` (View archive photos)](https://thingy.thingelstad.com/connect/reference/#tool-view_photo): Look at up to 3 archive photos (image_url values from media_search): the images come back to you, so describe what they show rather than their captions.
- [`currently_history` (Reading, playing & watching)](https://thingy.thingelstad.com/connect/reference/#tool-currently_history): What Jamie was reading, watching, playing, listening to, building and more, from every issue's Currently section: dated entries with their issue, counted by kind and year.
- [`top_references` (Top references)](https://thingy.thingelstad.com/connect/reference/#tool-top_references): The domains Jamie picks most (Weekly Thing headline links, by host; source_kind blog ranks blog links), with counts by year, first and last seen, and sample titles.
- [`on_this_day` (On this day)](https://thingy.thingelstad.com/connect/reference/#tool-on_this_day): What Jamie published on this calendar day, this year and in past years, across the newsletter, the blog and the podcast; today in America/Chicago by default, window_days for the week around it.
- [`fetch_page` (Read a page on Jamie's sites)](https://thingy.thingelstad.com/connect/reference/#tool-fetch_page): Read one page on Jamie's own sites live (www, weekly, another and thingy.thingelstad.com), for a post too new to be in the archive.

## MCP prompts

- [`thinking_over_time` (topic)](https://thingy.thingelstad.com/connect/reference/#prompt-thinking_over_time): Trace how Jamie's own view of a topic changed across the archive, in Jamie's words, with dated citations.
- [`year_in_review` (year)](https://thingy.thingelstad.com/connect/reference/#prompt-year_in_review): A year of the archive: what Jamie published, the themes, what Jamie was into, and the links that mattered.
- [`reading_path` (theme, length)](https://thingy.thingelstad.com/connect/reference/#prompt-reading_path): An ordered reading list through one theme of the archive, with why each piece comes where it does.
- [`this_week_in_past_years` (date)](https://thingy.thingelstad.com/connect/reference/#prompt-this_week_in_past_years): What Jamie published this week in past years: the archive's on-this-day, a week wide.
- [`research_brief` (subject)](https://thingy.thingelstad.com/connect/reference/#prompt-research_brief): A brief on a person, product, company or project, from what the archive holds about it.

## MCP resources

- [`librarian://wt/{n}`](https://thingy.thingelstad.com/connect/reference/#resources): One Weekly Thing issue as markdown, e.g. librarian://wt/351.
- [`librarian://blog/{id}`](https://thingy.thingelstad.com/connect/reference/#resources): One thingelstad.com blog post or micropost by its micro.blog id, e.g. librarian://blog/6034145.
- [`librarian://page/{id}`](https://thingy.thingelstad.com/connect/reference/#resources): One thingelstad.com page (About, Resume, a list, a collection, an Open Loop episode) by its page id, the number in page-<id>, e.g. librarian://page/57851.
- [`librarian://link/{id}`](https://thingy.thingelstad.com/connect/reference/#resources): One link Jamie saved on Linking Things (links.thingelstad.xyz) by its id, the 12 characters in link-<id>, e.g. librarian://link/734afb8ff14f: the page it saved, when, its tags, the issues that shared it and its note.
- [`librarian://topic/{slug}`](https://thingy.thingelstad.com/connect/reference/#resources): A topic by the slug of its page (librarian://topic/apple) or cluster (librarian://topic/ai-and-agents): its catalogue card and its timeline across the archive.
- [`librarian://year/{yyyy}`](https://thingy.thingelstad.com/connect/reference/#resources): What the archive holds for one year: counts by source, the year's distinctive terms and domains.
- [`librarian://on-this-day/{mm-dd}`](https://thingy.thingelstad.com/connect/reference/#resources): What Jamie published on one calendar day in every year, this one included, e.g. librarian://on-this-day/09-29.

## Optional

- [librarian-thing](https://github.com/jthingelstad/librarian-thing): the open-source corpus pipeline, API and MCP server
- [thingy.thingelstad.com](https://github.com/jthingelstad/thingy.thingelstad.com): the open-source source of this site
- [Sitemap](https://thingy.thingelstad.com/sitemap.xml)