GameDev.net MCP Server

Endpoint

The server speaks the MCP Streamable HTTP transport (JSON-RPC 2.0 over POST). Protocol version 2025-03-26.

https://gamedev.net/mcp/

It is anonymous and read-only over public content. Single-query grounding with a visible citation back to gamedev.net is permitted; bulk retrieval requires a license. See our Terms and machine-readable licensing terms.

Available tools

• search_site — Unified full-text search across all public GameDev.net content — forum discussions, tutorials, blogs, projects, portfolios, and game-industry news. Filter to specific kinds with content_types (e.g. ["forum_topic","forum_post"] for forums, or ["news","news_item"] for news) and order by relevance or date. Returns titles, URLs, excerpts, authors, and ids for follow-up with get_content.
• get_thread — Fetch one GameDev.net forum thread with its posts (plain text), including which reply is the accepted answer.
• get_content — Fetch the full public text of a specific item (tutorial, blog, news, project, portfolio, ShaderLab project, forum topic, canonical answer, or thread digest) using the content_type + id from a search result. Use this to ground deeply after a search. For news_item (aggregated news) this returns GameDev.net's own AI summary and enrichment with a citation link, not the source's full article text.
• list_recent — List the most recent GameDev.net content of a given kind. Useful for "what is new" / roundup queries. Includes the curated canonical answers and "best of" thread digests.
• search_shaders — Search public, published ShaderLab projects with structured runtime, topic, difficulty, license, and explanation filters.
• get_shader_project — Fetch one public, published ShaderLab project as structured passes, channel bindings, parameters, annotations, provenance, and confirmed techniques. Source defaults to 20,000 characters and can be bounded up to 100,000.
• list_shader_topics — List the human-curated ShaderLab topic taxonomy with optional public project counts and representative examples.
• get_shader_portability_report — Run ShaderLab deterministic E1 portability analysis for a public project and optional three.js, Godot, Unity, or WebGL target.
• list_trending_content — What is currently trending in game-industry news on GameDev.net. mode="stories" (default) returns deduplicated multi-source story clusters (with aggregated tags, source count, and when the story broke/last updated — use get_story for the full timeline); mode="items" returns individual trending articles. Each result carries GameDev.net's owned AI summary and a source citation. Optionally filter by tag.
• get_story — Fetch one story cluster: its AI summary and key facts, plus a source-by-source timeline of every article covering the story (each with its source and a citation link). Good for "how did this story develop / who reported it".

Usage tiers & API keys

Anonymous use is free within fair-use limits, intended for agents answering individual user queries with citation back to gamedev.net:

• Anonymous (free): per-IP rate limits and a small daily allowance — enough for a real session. Large AI providers additionally share a per-provider daily allowance; past it, requests receive HTTP 402 Payment Required.
• GameDev Pro: members get a personal API key with a generous monthly tool-call allowance — see below.
• Commercial / partner: higher volume under a license. Email licensing@gamedev.net with your use case and expected volume.

Send your key as a bearer token:

Authorization: Bearer gdnet_mcp_<your-key>

Response semantics: 429 means slow down (rate limit, includes Retry-After); 402 means the free tier or your quota is exhausted — see licensing; 401 means a missing or revoked key where one is required.

Connect from Claude Desktop

Add this to claude_desktop_config.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "gamedev-net": {
      "type": "streamable-http",
      "url": "https://gamedev.net/mcp/"
    }
  }
}

Connect from Cursor

Add this to .cursor/mcp.json (project) or your global Cursor MCP settings:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "gamedev-net": {
      "url": "https://gamedev.net/mcp/"
    }
  }
}

Connect from VS Code

Add this to .vscode/mcp.json:

{
  "servers": {
    "gamedev-net": {
      "type": "http",
      "url": "https://gamedev.net/mcp/"
    }
  }
}

If you have an API key, all three clients accept a headers object alongside url — add "headers": {"Authorization": "Bearer gdnet_mcp_<your-key>"}.

Call it directly

List the available tools:

curl -s https://gamedev.net/mcp/ \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":1,"method":"tools/list"}'

Search the forums (filter with content_types):

curl -s https://gamedev.net/mcp/ \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":2,"method":"tools/call",
       "params":{"name":"search_site","arguments":{"query":"fixed timestep game loop","content_types":["forum_topic","forum_post"]}}}'

Discovery

A machine-readable manifest is published at /.well-known/mcp/server.json, and the endpoint is referenced from /llms.txt.

Notes & limits

• Request/response only — the SSE (GET) stream is not currently served.
• Results are public content; private, draft, and members-only data are excluded.
• Rate limits and quotas apply per the tiers above. For higher-volume or commercial use, contact us.