Tamil Lexicon

A Tamil etymology and word-coinage tool built as a Model Context Protocol (MCP) server for Claude Desktop. Claude's own linguistic reasoning acts as the lexicon engine; the server shapes its output into structured results rendered as interactive cards inside Claude Desktop via the MCP Apps iframe UI.

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Features

• Word coinage (English → Tamil) — give it any English phrase and it coins an etymologically honest Tamil equivalent, working from the spirit of the phrase rather than translating words literally. The pipeline enforces a rejection test: each candidate root is discarded until one a Sangam poet would have reached for survives.

• Etymology analysis (Tamil → English) — paste Tamil script to get the English meaning, morpheme-by-morpheme breakdown, and classical sources.

• Tier-classified morpheme breakdown — every word is decomposed into its constituent roots, each tagged:

  • 🟢 Sangam — attested in pre-600 CE literature (Tolkāppiyam, Purananuru, Tirukuṟaḷ, Akananuru…)
  • 🟡 Medieval — emerged in the Bhakti / Siddhar period (600–1800 CE)
  • 🔴 Coined — modern technical neologism

  The overall word inherits the tier of its newest morpheme.

• Interactive morpheme drill-down — click any morpheme chip in the card to fetch its classical attestations (specific quotes with source and period) and related Tamil words that share the same root.

• Example sentence generation — generates a grammatically valid Tamil sentence in an appropriate register (formal / literary / modern technical), delivered as a card with Tamil text, English translation, and register label.

• Results as interactive cards, not chat text — all structured output renders in an MCP Apps iframe embedded inside Claude Desktop. The chat stays clean.

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Prerequisites

Requirement	Version
Claude Desktop	1.x (MCP Apps support)
.NET SDK	8.0 or later
Node.js	18 or later (for UI builds only)

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Setup

1. Clone the repository

git clone <repo-url>
cd tamil-lexicon

2. Build the UI

cd ui
npm install
npm run build
cd ..

This produces server/UI/index.html — a self-contained React bundle that gets embedded in the server binary.

3. Publish the server

cd server
dotnet publish -c Release -r win-x64 --self-contained true -p:PublishSingleFile=true -o publish

The output is a single executable: server/publish/TamilLexiconMcp.exe.

Other platforms: replace win-x64 with osx-arm64, osx-x64, or linux-x64 as needed.

4. Register with Claude Desktop

Open %APPDATA%\Claude\claude_desktop_config.json (Windows) or ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json (macOS) and add:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "tamil-lexicon": {
      "command": "C:\\path\\to\\tamil-lexicon\\server\\publish\\TamilLexiconMcp.exe"
    }
  }
}

Adjust the path to match your clone location.

5. Restart Claude Desktop

The Tamil Lexicon tools will appear in Claude's tool list on next launch.

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Usage

What to say	What happens
"Coin a Tamil word for algorithm"	Spirit analysis in chat → word card with morpheme breakdown
"What does கணினி mean?"	Etymology card with meaning, morphemes, and attestations
"Give me an example sentence"	Example sentence card (Tamil + English translation + register)
Click a morpheme chip	Drill-down card with classical attestations and related words

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Development

To rebuild after making changes:

# UI changes
cd ui && npm run build

# Server changes (or after UI rebuild)
cd server
dotnet publish -c Release -r win-x64 --self-contained true -p:PublishSingleFile=true -o publish

Then restart Claude Desktop to pick up the new binary.

Project structure

tamil-lexicon/
├── ui/                        # React + TypeScript MCP Apps card
│   └── src/App.tsx            # Card component (ontoolinput, morpheme chips, detail panel)
└── server/                    # C# .NET 8 MCP server
    ├── Program.cs             # Tool registration + MCP host bootstrap
    ├── Tools/                 # Tool handlers (find, report, generate)
    ├── Prompts/               # Prompt builders (FindWordPrompt, ExampleSentencePrompt)
    └── Resources/             # Embedded UI resource endpoint