openemis-mcp — AI bridge for OpenEMIS school management

Free, read-only MCP bridge between AI agents and any OpenEMIS school.

OpenEMIS is a free, open-source school management information system developed by UNESCO and KORDIT. It runs the day-to-day administration of every kind of educational institution — kindergartens, primary schools, secondary schools, secondary vocational institutions, technical colleges, and universities — managing students, staff, attendance, assessment, infrastructure, meals, scholarships, examinations, training, and ministry-level reporting. This MCP gives AI agents read-only access to the data in any OpenEMIS school so you can ask questions in plain English and get answers in seconds.

Built on the published OpenEMIS Core API (reference: api.openemis.org/core) and verified against the public demo at demo.openemis.org/core.

What this is: openemis-mcp is a free MCP server that connects AI assistants (Claude, Cursor, Codex) to the OpenEMIS school management system. It exposes 678 resources — students, student attendance, student risks, staff, exams, infrastructure — across 26 curated read-only playbooks, plus 14 redirect stubs for write operations.

Ask in plain English:

"How many current students are at Avory Primary?"

The agent plans the calls, this MCP delivers the data:

"Avory Primary School has 97 currently enrolled students across 6 classes."

No code. No JSON. Just ask.

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What's included (free, MIT)

Tool	What it does
openemis_health	Ping the configured instance — real login round-trip
openemis_list_domains	List the 9 curated domains (Attendance, Assessment, Staff, Student…)
openemis_discover	Topic → up to 30 scoped endpoints. Keeps conversations small
openemis_list_playbooks	List all 40 playbooks — 26 read-only here, 14 stubs that redirect to mcp-pro
openemis_get_playbook	Load a playbook by id — full steps, resources, gotcha notes
openemis_get	Unified read: list or singleton, any resource, any filter

26 read-only playbooks covering attendance, assessment, student profiles, staff profiles, infrastructure, meals, risk dashboards, class reports, timetables, audit logs, school accreditation / registration, admission and enrolment queue state, and a primer on how the OpenEMIS workflow plugin powers every multi-step approval — each verified against the v5 manifest at 100% resource coverage. 14 additional playbook stubs are discoverable here but redirect to openemis-mcp-pro for the actual write/auth steps.

Translations: Русский · Español · हिन्दी · العربية — the original 17 view playbooks also translated in all four languages; 9 newer playbooks (added in v1.1.0 for Core 5.10.0, plus the two workflow playbooks) are English-only for now.

✏️ Write operations (creating/updating records in OpenEMIS) require openemis-mcp-pro. This free server is intentionally read-only — post, put, and delete are not available.

What's in Pro

openemis-mcp-pro adds write tools, remote hosting, and ChatGPT compatibility on top of this free read-only server.

	Free	Individual Pro	Institution Pro	Country Pro
Read tools (all 678 resources, Core 5.13.0)	✅	✅	✅	✅
26 read playbooks (17 × 5 languages + 9 EN)	✅	✅	✅	✅
14 write / auth playbooks (mark-attendance, enrol, set-accreditation…)	stub	✅	✅	✅
stdio mode (Claude Code, Cursor, Cline)	✅	✅	✅	✅
HTTP server mode (Oracle / VPS — install once, connect by URL)	—	✅	✅	✅
OpenAPI adapter (ChatGPT Custom GPT, any REST client)	—	✅	✅	✅
Direct write — single record	—	✅	✅	✅
Institution audit trail	—	—	✅	✅
Workflow route execution	—	—	✅	✅
Institution-admin approval gate	—	—	✅	✅
Batch ops within one institution	—	—	✅	✅
Multi-institution batch ops	—	—	—	✅
Ministry approval gates	—	—	—	✅
Cross-institution oversight	—	—	—	✅

HTTP server mode lets you install Pro once on an Oracle Always Free ARM instance and connect from any device — no per-machine setup. The built-in OpenAPI adapter means teachers can use ChatGPT (or any AI assistant) to mark attendance and look up student records by importing a single schema URL. See the ChatGPT Teacher Guide for step-by-step setup.

→ Pricing: khindol.madraimov@gmail.com

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Install

Requires Node 22+.

git clone https://github.com/tixuz/openemis-mcp.git
cd openemis-mcp
npm install
npm run build
cp .env.example .env
$EDITOR .env

Configure

OPENEMIS_BASE_URL=https://demo.openemis.org/core
OPENEMIS_USERNAME=admin
OPENEMIS_PASSWORD=your_password
OPENEMIS_API_KEY=your_api_key

Smoke test

set -a && source .env && set +a
node scripts/smoke-login.mjs

Register with Claude Code

claude mcp add openemis \
  --env OPENEMIS_BASE_URL="https://your-instance/core" \
  --env OPENEMIS_USERNAME="…" \
  --env OPENEMIS_PASSWORD="…" \
  --env OPENEMIS_API_KEY="…" \
  -- node "$(pwd)/dist/server.js"

Works with any MCP-compatible client: Claude Code, Cursor, Cline, Codex (via gemmy-and-qwenny), or any stdio MCP client.

Verbose logging (optional)

Capture every tool call and its response as JSONL — useful for debugging, tuning playbooks, or sharing a bug report.

# stderr (visible in your MCP client's log panel)
OPENEMIS_LOG_VERBOSE=1 node dist/server.js

# write to a file
OPENEMIS_LOG_VERBOSE=1 OPENEMIS_LOG_FILE=/tmp/openemis.jsonl node dist/server.js

Each line is a JSON object: {ts, type:"tool_call"|"tool_result"|"tool_error", tool, args?, result?, latency_ms, ...}. Credential-shaped keys (password, authorization, api_key, token, secret) are redacted automatically.

⚠️ Privacy: tool_result entries contain the actual OpenEMIS data returned to the agent — student names, staff IDs, enrollment details. Enable only on instances you own, or with explicit consent. Default is OFF.

🌐 Remote / server install: openemis-mcp-pro adds an HTTP server mode — install once on Oracle Always Free and every AI assistant (Claude Code, Cursor, ChatGPT) connects by URL with no per-machine setup. See the ChatGPT Teacher Guide for how to let teachers mark attendance via ChatGPT.

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Playbooks

24 read-only workflow guides — see docs/playbooks/. Write-side playbooks (mark attendance, enrol a student, set school accreditation, etc.) are discoverable here as stubs that point at openemis-mcp-pro.

Read playbooks (school data lookups)

#	Playbook	Domain	Translations
1	Count Vacant Positions	Staff	RU · ES · HI · AR
2	View Student Timetable	Schedule	RU · ES · HI · AR
3	Student Dashboard	Student	RU · ES · HI · AR
4	Institution Summary	Institution	RU · ES · HI · AR
5	View Latest Attendance	Attendance	RU · ES · HI · AR
6	View Student Profile	Student	RU · ES · HI · AR
7	View Student Marks	Assessment	RU · ES · HI · AR
8	View Class Report	Report	RU · ES · HI · AR
9	View Timetable	Schedule	RU · ES · HI · AR
10	View Full Institution Profile	Institution	RU · ES · HI · AR
11	View Full Class Profile	Student	RU · ES · HI · AR
12	View a Staff Member's Full Profile	Staff	RU · ES · HI · AR
13	Enhance Student Profile	Student	RU · ES · HI · AR
14	View Institution Infrastructure	Institution	RU · ES · HI · AR
15	View Institution Meals	Institution	RU · ES · HI · AR
16	View Student Risk Profile and Welfare Cases	Student	RU · ES · HI · AR
17	View Institution Risk Summary and Alert Rules	Institution	RU · ES · HI · AR

New in v1.2.0 (OpenEMIS Core 5.13.0)

• List-filtering via the native IN operator (POCOR-9660). _conditions=<field>:IN(1,2,3) filters any field by a value list — including non-PK and composite-PK resources — so a class roster is one call: query institution-class-students by institution_class_id, then security-users with _conditions=id:IN(101,102,103). params.ids="1,2,3" now collapses to a single ?id=1,2,3 round-trip by default (set OPENEMIS_CORE_IN_OPERATOR=off only for pre-5.10 cores).
• Stricter filter validation (POCOR-9697). Filtering on a field that does not exist on a resource now returns HTTP 400 instead of being silently ignored — use exact field names from the Resource Reference.
• 3 new read-only Runtime resources (POCOR-9694): tasks, task-jobs, task-failures — the OpenEMIS Runtime queue / job / failure projection. 678 resources · 3,361 endpoints total.

New in v1.1.0 (OpenEMIS Core 5.10.0)

Loaded via openemis_get_playbook — full English content in data/playbooks.json. Translations and per-playbook markdown docs land in a follow-up release.

#	Playbook	Domain	What it does
18	diagnose-alert-delivery	Alerts	Answer "did this alert actually go out?" — walks the POCOR-9509 dispatch pipeline.
19	view-school-accreditation	Institution	Read institution-accreditations records (POCOR-9610), derive Active/Expired/Future status.
20	view-school-registration	Institution	Read institution-registrations history with valid_from..valid_to windows.
21	view-institution-budget	Institution	List institution-budgets per academic period, resolve budget types.
22	query-student-absence-history	Attendance	Aggregate absences via institution-student-absences + absence-days.
23	query-user-activity-audit-log	Security	Query the POCOR-9697 user_activities per-field audit trail.
24	view-class-roster	Institution	Walk institution-classes → institution-class-students → student details.
25	view-admission-and-enrolment-queue-state	Workflow	Answer "where is this future student in the admission/enrolment queue?" — resolves status_id → workflow_step name, current assignee, full transition history.
26	explain-workflow-system	Workflow	Primer for "why does this approval take 4 steps?" — explains workflow_models, steps, statuses, transitions, role-based assignees, and why the plugin makes approval chains configurable per tenant.

Write / auth playbooks (stubs — install mcp-pro)

mark-student-attendance, mark-staff-attendance, enroll-new-student, record-behavior-incident, submit-exam-marks, generate-student-report-card-pdf, generate-institution-statistics-pdf, add-institution-asset, record-infrastructure-repair, add-meal-programme, resolve-my-identity, set-school-accreditation, set-school-registration, mark-student-meal-participation — all redirect agents to openemis-mcp-pro, which ships openemis_create / openemis_update / openemis_delete and per-user authentication.

Core compatibility

Tested against OpenEMIS Core 5.13.0 (master, June 2026). 5.7 – 5.12 deployments are also supported — the public REST surface is backwards-compatible.

Capability flag — POCOR-9660 multi-id GET

openemis_get accepts params.ids = "1,2,3" for batch lookups. Core 5.10+ carries POCOR-9660 (?id=1,2,3 support in CrudApiController), so the handler collapses the batch into a single round-trip by default. Pointing at an older Core (5.7 – 5.9) that lacks the native operator? Force the legacy parallel fan-out:

OPENEMIS_CORE_IN_OPERATOR=off

For composite-PK or view resources — where ids does not apply — use _conditions=<field>:IN(1,2,3) instead; it filters any field by a value list and works regardless of this flag.

Architecture

Agent (Claude / Cursor / Codex / …)
        │ MCP stdio
openemis-mcp  ←  6 read tools + 26 read playbooks + 14 redirect stubs
        │ HTTPS + Bearer JWT
OpenEMIS Core API  /api/v5/{resource}   (3,361 endpoints across 678 resources)

Domain-scoped discovery keeps conversations small — openemis_discover("attendance") returns the 20–30 endpoints relevant to attendance, not all 3,361.

🖥️ Server / HTTP mode (install once on Oracle, connect from anywhere including ChatGPT) is available in openemis-mcp-pro.

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Docs

• Resource Reference — all 678 resources with method availability (Core 5.13.0)
• Playbooks — 17 view playbooks in 5 languages + 9 newer English-only playbooks (translations follow)
• GLOSSARY.md — key terms: OpenEMIS, MCP, attendance, student risks, and more
• FAQ.md — common questions about school management with OpenEMIS MCP
• ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS.md — the AI team that built this

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Licence

MIT © 2026 Khindol Madraimov

Not affiliated with OpenEMIS or its maintainers. Third-party bridge to the public Core API. Credentials stay on your machine.