MCP Simple Timeserver

One of the strange design decisions Anthropic made was depriving Claude of timestamps for messages sent by the user in claude.ai or current time in general. Poor Claude can't tell what time it is! mcp-simple-timeserver is a simple MCP server that fixes that.

Available Tools

This server provides the following tools:

Tool	Description
get_local_time	Returns the current local time, day of week, and timezone from the user's machine
get_utc	Returns accurate UTC time from an NTP time server
get_current_time	Returns current time with optional location, timezone, and calendar conversions
calculate_time_distance	Calculates duration between two dates/times (countdowns, elapsed time)
get_holidays	Returns public holidays (and optionally school holidays) for a country
is_holiday	Checks if a specific date is a holiday in a given country or city

All tools (except get_local_time) use accurate time from NTP servers. If NTP is unavailable, they gracefully fall back to local server time with a notice.

Location Support via get_current_time

The get_current_time tool supports location parameters to get local time anywhere in the world:

Parameter	Description	Example
city	City name (primary use case)	"Warsaw", "Tokyo", "New York"
country	Country name or ISO code	"Poland", "JP", "United States"
timezone	IANA timezone or UTC offset	"Europe/Warsaw", "+05:30"

Priority: timezone > city > country. When location is provided, the response includes local time, timezone info, UTC offset, and DST status.

If today is a public holiday at the specified location, it will be shown in the output.

Calendar Support via get_current_time

The get_current_time tool also accepts an optional calendar parameter with a comma-separated list of calendar formats:

Calendar	Description
unix	Unix timestamp (seconds since 1970-01-01)
isodate	ISO 8601 week date (e.g., 2026-W03-6)
hijri	Islamic/Hijri lunar calendar
japanese	Japanese Era calendar (returns both English and Kanji)
hebrew	Hebrew/Jewish calendar (returns both English and Hebrew, includes holidays)
persian	Persian/Jalali calendar (returns both English and Farsi)

Example: get_current_time(city="Tokyo", calendar="japanese") returns Tokyo local time with Japanese Era calendar.

Time Distance Calculation via calculate_time_distance

Calculate duration between two dates or times:

Parameter	Description	Example
from_date	Start date (ISO 8601 or "now")	"2025-01-15", "now"
to_date	End date (ISO 8601 or "now")	"2025-12-31", "2025-06-01T17:00:00"
unit	Output format	"auto", "days", "weeks", "hours", "minutes", "seconds"
business_days	Count only Mon-Fri (date-based, inclusive)	true
exclude_holidays	Also exclude public holidays (requires country/city)	true

Location parameters (city, country, timezone) can also be used to specify timezone context.

When business_days=true, time-of-day is ignored and dates are counted as full days (inclusive endpoints). The unit parameter is ignored in this mode. Holidays are excluded only when they fall on weekdays.

Example: calculate_time_distance(from_date="now", to_date="2025-12-31") returns a countdown to New Year's Eve. Example: calculate_time_distance(from_date="2026-01-26", to_date="2026-01-30", business_days=true, exclude_holidays=true, city="Sydney") returns the number of business days in that range.

Holiday Information via get_holidays and is_holiday

Get public and school holiday information for ~119 countries:

get_holidays parameters:

Parameter	Description	Example
country	Country name or ISO code (required)	"Poland", "DE", "United States"
year	Year to get holidays for (default: current year)	2026
include_school_holidays	Include school vacation periods	true

is_holiday parameters:

Parameter	Description	Example
country	Country name or ISO code	"Poland", "US"
city	City name for region-specific info	"Warsaw", "Munich"
date	Date to check in ISO format (default: today)	"2026-01-01"

Regional School Holidays: When using the city parameter with is_holiday, school holidays are filtered to show only those affecting the specific region. This is particularly useful in countries where school holidays vary by region (e.g., Polish voivodeships, German Bundesländer, Spanish autonomous communities).

Example: is_holiday(city="Warsaw", date="2026-01-19") returns school holiday information specific to the Mazowieckie voivodeship.

Data Sources:

• Public holidays: Nager.Date API (119 countries)
• School holidays: OpenHolidaysAPI (36 countries, mostly European)

Installation

Installing via Smithery

To install Simple Timeserver for Claude Desktop automatically via Smithery:

npx -y @smithery/cli install mcp-simple-timeserver --client claude

Manual Installation

First install the module using:

pip install mcp-simple-timeserver

Then configure in MCP client - the Claude desktop app.

Under Mac OS this will look like this:

"mcpServers": {
  "simple-timeserver": {
    "command": "python",
    "args": ["-m", "mcp_simple_timeserver"]
  }
}

Under Windows you have to check the path to your Python executable using where python in the cmd (Windows command line).

Typical configuration would look like this:

"mcpServers": {
  "simple-timeserver": {
    "command": "C:\\Users\\YOUR_USERNAME\\AppData\\Local\\Programs\\Python\\Python311\\python.exe",
    "args": ["-m", "mcp_simple_timeserver"]
  }
}

Web Server Variant

This project also includes a network-hostable version that can be deployed as a standalone web server. For instructions on how to run and deploy it, please see the Web Server Deployment Guide.

Or you can simply use my server by adding it under https://mcp.andybrandt.net/timeserver to Claude and other tools that support MCP.