Connect your AI to the commons

NTLSN operates a hosted Model Context Protocol (MCP) server. Any MCP-capable AI client — Claude Code, Claude Desktop, or any other compliant tool — can query the national teaching-and-learning commons directly: upcoming sector events, the rescued ALTC/OLT archive, and the Learning & Teaching landscape across 42 Australian universities. It is read-only, uses only the open data already published on this site, and requires no account or key.

What is the Model Context Protocol?

The Model Context Protocol is an open standard, originally released by Anthropic in 2024, that lets AI assistants call external tools and data sources in a structured, auditable way. Where a chatbot ordinarily answers from its training data — which may be stale or wrong — an MCP-connected assistant can put a live, verifiable question to a real data source and cite what comes back. For an academic audience the useful analogy is interlibrary loan rather than memory: the assistant requests the record, receives it, and works from the actual document. NTLSN publishes its commons data through MCP so that the sector's increasingly AI-mediated workflows draw on curated, current, openly published information rather than approximation.

The endpoint

https://ntlsn.com/.netlify/functions/mcp

The server speaks JSON-RPC 2.0 over HTTPS. A POST carries MCP requests (initialize, tools/list, tools/call, ping); a plain GET returns a machine- and human-readable description of the server and its tools, so the URL is self-documenting. Responses are JSON. Cross-origin requests are permitted.

Try it now from a terminal

These three commands work today, unchanged, from any machine with curl. They are the ground truth for this server: if a particular client's configuration ever gives trouble, what these commands return is what the server actually does.

1. Initialise a session

curl -s -X POST https://ntlsn.com/.netlify/functions/mcp \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":1,"method":"initialize","params":{"protocolVersion":"2024-11-05","capabilities":{},"clientInfo":{"name":"curl","version":"0.0.1"}}}'

Returns the server identity: {"serverInfo":{"name":"ntlsn","version":"1.0.0"}} with protocol version 2024-11-05.

2. List the available tools

curl -s -X POST https://ntlsn.com/.netlify/functions/mcp \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":2,"method":"tools/list"}'

Returns the three tools documented below, with their full input schemas.

3. Call a tool — the next two sector events

curl -s -X POST https://ntlsn.com/.netlify/functions/mcp \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":3,"method":"tools/call","params":{"name":"upcoming_events","arguments":{"limit":2}}}'

At the time of writing this returns HERDSA Conference 2026 and the ACODE Benchmarking Summit 2026, drawn live from the same curated events dataset that powers this site. Your result will reflect the calendar on the day you run it.

Connect an AI client

Claude Code (terminal)

Claude Code supports remote HTTP MCP servers directly. One command:

claude mcp add --transport http ntlsn https://ntlsn.com/.netlify/functions/mcp

Or, for a project-scoped setup, add this to the project's .mcp.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "ntlsn": {
      "type": "http",
      "url": "https://ntlsn.com/.netlify/functions/mcp"
    }
  }
}

Claude Desktop and claude.ai

Claude Desktop's configuration file (claude_desktop_config.json) accepts only locally launched servers — it does not take a remote URL directly. Two documented routes work for a remote server such as this one:

1. Custom connector (no installation). In Claude's settings, open Connectors, choose "Add custom connector", and paste the endpoint URL above. No authentication is required — leave the OAuth fields empty.
2. The mcp-remote bridge (requires Node.js). Add the following to claude_desktop_config.json; it launches a small community-maintained proxy that speaks HTTP to this server on the client's behalf:
   Copy

   {
     "mcpServers": {
       "ntlsn": {
         "command": "npx",
         "args": ["mcp-remote", "https://ntlsn.com/.netlify/functions/mcp"]
       }
     }
   }

Any other MCP client

Any client that supports remote MCP servers over HTTP can use the endpoint URL as-is. The server implements initialize, tools/list, tools/call, and ping, accepts standard MCP notifications, and returns conventional JSON-RPC errors for anything else.

What the server offers

Three read-only tools, each drawing on data openly published on this site.

upcoming_events

Upcoming Australian higher-education teaching-and-learning events — conferences, showcases, workshops and webinars — from NTLSN's curated events dataset (each record carries a verified flag).

search_archive

Searches the rescued archive of 1,431 ALTC- and OLT-funded teaching-scholarship works (1994–2025) by title or author. This is the national grant-funded teaching-scholarship record that NTLSN preserves and republishes as open data.

universities

Returns the 42 Australian universities in the commons, each with its central Learning & Teaching team page and alliance-group membership. Takes no arguments.

Things worth asking, once connected

• "What teaching and learning conferences are coming up in Australia in the next two months?"
• "Search the ALTC/OLT archive for work on peer review of teaching."
• "Which universities' Learning & Teaching teams should I look at, and where are their pages?"

The data behind the tools

Both source datasets are published open access: /data/events.json (the curated national events calendar) and /data/ltr.json (the ALTC/OLT archive metadata). A formal licence statement for these datasets is in progress; until it is published, they are offered for scholarly and educational use, and we ask that you contact us before large-scale redistribution.