ntnu-api

Async Python client for NTNU course data. Wraps the three public, no-auth data sources for course information at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology behind one typed interface — built as a stepping stone toward an MCP server exposing course data to LLM agents.

See docs/api-research.md for the full survey of NTNU data sources (including the dead and auth-gated ones) and the exact upstream request shapes.

import asyncio
from ntnu_api import NTNUClient


async def main() -> None:
    async with NTNUClient() as client:
        # Server-side course search (one 500-course page)
        page = await client.courses.search(2026, "objektorientert")
        for hit in page.courses[:3]:
            print(hit.course_code, hit.course_name)

        # Full catalog iteration
        async for result_page in client.courses.search_all(2026):
            ...

        # Dated teaching activities and the summarized weekly grid
        activities = await client.courses.schedules("TDT4100", 2026)
        grid = await client.courses.timetable("TDT4100", 2026)

        # Grade distribution (accepts bare or DBH-versioned codes)
        for row in await client.grades.distribution("TDT4100", years=[2023]):
            print(row.year, row.semester_name, row.grade, row.total)

        # Terms as known by NTNU's timetable system
        current = await client.semesters.current()


asyncio.run(main())

A small ntnu command wraps every client method for quick terminal poking:

uv run ntnu search 2026 maskinlæring        # catalog search (--all, --page, --sort)
uv run ntnu schedules TDT4100 2026          # dated activities, Oslo-local times
uv run ntnu timetable TDT4100 2026          # weekly grid
uv run ntnu grades TDT4100 --years 2023     # grade distribution table
uv run ntnu versions TDT4100                # DBH course-code versions
uv run ntnu semesters --current             # terms known by TP
uv run ntnu search 2026 ai --json | jq ...  # every subcommand takes --json

All models are pydantic v2; all errors derive from ntnu_api.NTNUAPIError (with NotFoundError, RateLimitError, APITimeoutError, ... subclasses). Transient failures (429, 502–504, connection errors) are retried with exponential backoff, honoring Retry-After.

A word of caution: the ntnu.no endpoints are NTNU's own internal AJAX surface, not a documented API — treat results accordingly and be polite (the client ships a descriptive User-Agent by default).

The mcp extra ships an MCP server exposing the client as six tools (search_courses, get_course_schedule, get_weekly_timetable, get_grade_distribution, get_course_versions, get_semesters) with LLM-shaped responses: English names with Norwegian fallback, Oslo-local times, grade rows collapsed into per-term distribution tables with percentages, and an in-process TTL cache for the catalog and semester data.

uv sync --extra mcp                       # or: pip install 'ntnu-api[mcp]'
claude mcp add ntnu -- uv run ntnu-mcp    # register with Claude Code (stdio)
uv run ntnu-mcp --transport streamable-http --port 8000   # hostable HTTP service
npx @modelcontextprotocol/inspector uv run ntnu-mcp       # interactive testing UI

For Claude Desktop, add to claude_desktop_config.json:

{"mcpServers": {"ntnu": {"command": "uv", "args": ["run", "--directory", "/path/to/NTNU_python_api", "ntnu-mcp"]}}}

• uv — dependency & virtualenv management
• httpx + pydantic v2 — transport and models
• ruff — linting + formatting
• ty — static type checking
• pytest + pytest-asyncio + respx — testing
• mise — pins Python/uv and exposes task shortcuts
• Dev Container — reproducible environment

Inside the Dev Container (or after uv sync on the host):

The default test run is fully mocked (respx) against real captured payloads in tests/fixtures/. To also verify against the live endpoints:

NTNU_API_LIVE=1 uv run pytest tests/test_live.py

• MCP server exposing the client as tools (ntnu-mcp)
• Expose the remaining catalog search facets (campus, level, faculty/institute)
• Course detail scraping (description, credits, prerequisites — HTML-only upstream)
• TP emner.php semester catalog (English names, campus ids — see docs/api-research.md)
• TP iCal export as a secondary timetable source once semesters publish