OED Access FAQs

Question 1

What is OED Access?

Accepted Answer

OED Access is an MCP (Model Context Protocol) server designed to provide AI assistants, such as Claude, with direct access to the Oxford English Dictionary 2nd Edition's definitions, etymologies, and historical usage data.

Question 2

Does OED Access include the Oxford English Dictionary data?

Accepted Answer

No, OED Access does not include any proprietary OED data. Users must legally obtain and provide their own OED2 data files (in Plan 9 format) to use this server, as it only provides the interface to read licensed data.

Question 3

What specific features does OED Access offer?

Accepted Answer

It offers comprehensive word lookups with definitions and pronunciations, detailed etymology searches, prefix-based word discovery, random word generation, and batch lookup capabilities for querying multiple words simultaneously.

Question 4

Which AI assistants are compatible with OED Access?

Accepted Answer

OED Access is built for Claude Desktop and any other AI assistants that are compatible with the Model Context Protocol (MCP), allowing them to integrate and utilize dictionary functions seamlessly.

Question 5

What are the prerequisites to use OED Access?

Accepted Answer

To use OED Access, you need Go 1.21 or later, legal access to OED2 data files in Plan 9 format (specifically 'oed2' and 'oed2index'), and an MCP-compatible client like Claude Desktop.

OED Access

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