Urantia Papers API

A developer and AI-agent friendly API for the Urantia Papers. Provides full-text search, structured content access, and audio URLs for all 14,500+ paragraphs across 197 papers.

API Endpoints

Method	Path	Description
GET	/toc	Table of contents (parts → papers)
GET	/papers	List all 197 papers
GET	/papers/:id	Single paper with all paragraphs
GET	/papers/:id/sections	Sections within a paper
GET	/paragraphs/random	Random paragraph
GET	/paragraphs/:ref	Paragraph by any ID format
GET	/paragraphs/:ref/context	Paragraph with surrounding context
POST	/search	Full-text search with pagination
GET	/audio/:paragraphId	Audio info for a paragraph
POST	/search/semantic	Semantic (vector) search
GET	/entities	List entities (beings, places, concepts, etc.)
GET	/entities/:id	Entity details
GET	/entities/:id/paragraphs	Paragraphs mentioning an entity
GET	/cite	Generate citation (APA, MLA, Chicago, BibTeX)
GET	/og/:ref	Dynamic Open Graph image
POST	/embeddings	Vector embeddings for paragraphs
GET	/me	User profile (auth required)
POST	/me/bookmarks	Create bookmark (auth required)
GET	/me/bookmarks	List bookmarks (auth required)
GET	/me/notes	List notes (auth required)
POST	/me/notes	Create note (auth required)
GET	/me/reading-progress	Reading progress (auth required)
GET	/me/preferences	User preferences (auth required)
POST	/auth/authorize	Get authorization code (auth required)
POST	/auth/token	Exchange code for token
GET	/auth/apps/:id	Get OAuth app info

Interactive docs available at /docs (Swagger UI). OpenAPI spec at /openapi.json.

SDKs

Official TypeScript SDKs are available on npm:

npm install @urantia/api    # Typed client for all endpoints
npm install @urantia/auth   # OAuth client for accounts.urantiahub.com

See urantia.dev/sdks for documentation.

Paragraph ID Formats

The API accepts three reference formats — auto-detected from the string:

Format	Example	Structure
globalId	1:2.0.1	partId:paperId.sectionId.paragraphId
standardReferenceId	2:0.1	paperId:sectionId.paragraphId
paperSectionParagraphId	2.0.1	paperId.sectionId.paragraphId

Search

curl -X POST https://api.urantia.dev/search \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"q": "Universal Father", "limit": 10, "type": "and"}'

Search modes: and (all words, default), or (any word), phrase (exact match). Optional filters: paperId, partId.

Audio

Paragraphs include an audio field — a nested object keyed by model and voice, or null if no audio exists:

{
  "audio": {
    "tts-1-hd": {
      "nova": { "format": "mp3", "url": "https://audio.urantia.dev/tts-1-hd-nova-3:119.1.5.mp3" },
      "echo": { "format": "mp3", "url": "https://audio.urantia.dev/tts-1-hd-echo-3:119.1.5.mp3" }
    }
  }
}

Available models and voices vary per paragraph. The dedicated /audio/:paragraphId endpoint returns just the audio data for a given paragraph.

Caching

Responses include Cache-Control headers. Cloudflare's CDN caches at the edge via s-maxage:

Route	CDN (s-maxage)	Browser (max-age)
/toc, /papers/*, /paragraphs/:ref, /audio/*	24 hours	1 hour
/search	1 hour	5 minutes
/paragraphs/random	no-store	no-store
/, /docs, /openapi.json	1 hour	5 minutes

For AI Agents

Recommended flow:

1. GET /toc — understand the book structure
2. POST /search — find relevant passages
3. GET /paragraphs/:ref/context?window=3 — get surrounding context
4. GET /papers/:id — read a full paper

MCP Server

The API includes a built-in MCP server at https://api.urantia.dev/mcp — connect Claude Desktop, Cursor, or any MCP client to access:

• 19 tools — search, paragraph lookup, paper navigation, entity browsing, audio, Bible (WEB) lookup + semantic search, and UB↔Bible / UB↔UB cross-reference enrichment
• 2 resource templates — urantia://paper/{id} (markdown) and urantia://entity/{id}
• 2 prompt templates — study_assistant, comparative_theology

One-click install via Smithery.

Authentication

Public endpoints require no auth. User endpoints (/me/*) require a JWT. OAuth flow:

1. Register an app via POST /auth/apps (admin) or self-service at accounts.urantiahub.com/developer
2. User signs in at accounts.urantiahub.com
3. Exchange authorization code for access token via POST /auth/token
4. Pass token as Authorization: Bearer <token>

Access tokens are HS256 JWTs with 7-day expiry. PKCE is supported for browser-based apps.

Observability

• Logging: BetterStack via @logtail/edge — structured JSON logs with request metadata
• Error tracking: Global error handler sends stack traces to BetterStack
• Health check: GET /health — verifies DB connectivity
• Uptime: BetterStack uptime monitor

Tech Stack

• Runtime: Bun (dev) / Cloudflare Workers (production)
• Framework: Hono + @hono/zod-openapi
• Database: Supabase (PostgreSQL + pgvector)
• ORM: Drizzle
• Observability: BetterStack (logging, uptime)

Development

# Install dependencies
bun install

# Set up environment
cp .env.example .env
# Edit .env with your Supabase DATABASE_URL

# Push schema to database
bun run db:push

# Set up full-text search (run after db:push)
bun scripts/run-fts-setup.ts

# Generate audio manifest (requires ../urantia-hub-api)
bun run generate-manifest

# Seed database from urantia-papers-json
bun run seed

# Start dev server (hot reload)
bun run dev

The server runs at http://localhost:3000 by default.

Deployment

Deployed to Cloudflare Workers. First-time setup:

npx wrangler login
npx wrangler secret put DATABASE_URL
# paste your Supabase connection string (use pooler port 6543)

npx wrangler secret put APP_JWT_SECRET
# paste a 64-byte hex secret: node -e "console.log(require('crypto').randomBytes(64).toString('hex'))"

npx wrangler secret put ADMIN_USER_IDS
# comma-separated Supabase user UUIDs for admin access

Deploy:

bun run deploy

Data

Content sourced from urantia-papers-json — 197 papers, 1,626 sections, 14,500+ paragraphs with audio narration via audio.urantia.dev.

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License.

Disclaimer

This is an independent community project by Adams Technologies LLC. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected with Urantia Foundation. The original English text of The Urantia Book is in the public domain (Michael Foundation v. Urantia Foundation, 10th Cir. 2003). All use of "Urantia" is nominative fair use to identify the subject matter.