SymKit

Mathematica-style symbolic computation, powered by LLMs.

🌐 English | 简体中文

What if you had Mathematica's symbolic engine, driven by natural language?

Mathematica gave us precise symbolic math. LLMs gave us natural-language reasoning. SymKit combines both.

It is an MCP server that lets AI agents perform step-by-step symbolic derivations: calculate, transform, verify, and store formulas with full provenance — all through conversation.

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│                                                                    │
│  You describe the math in plain English                              │
│        ↓                                                           │
│  SymKit executes, verifies, and records every step                 │
│        ↓                                                           │
│  You get an exact, reusable formula with an audit trail            │
│                                                                    │
└────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

Why SymKit?

What it does

SymKit is not a formula database. It is a symbolic derivation engine that creates new formulas from existing ones.

Known formulas                      New formula
┌─────────────────┐                 ┌────────────────────────────┐
│ F = -kx         │                 │                            │
│ F = ma          │  ──compose──▶   │  ω = √(k/m)                │
│ d²x/dt² = a     │                 │  (simple harmonic oscillator) │
└─────────────────┘                 └────────────────────────────┘

Use it for physics, engineering, chemistry, biology, economics — any domain where you need to combine and transform mathematical relationships.

⚡ Four superpowers

🚀 See it in action

Derive a physical law from first principles:

User: Derive the angular frequency of a simple harmonic oscillator.

SymKit:
  1. Load F = -kx  and  F = m·d²x/dt²
  2. Substitute → m·d²x/dt² = -kx
  3. Solve ODE → x(t) = A·cos(ωt + φ),  ω = √(k/m)
  4. Verify by substitution: d²x/dt² = -ω²x  ✓
  5. Store result with full derivation history

Build a custom engineering model:

User: Find the cutoff frequency of an RC high-pass filter.

SymKit:
  1. Load Q = CV and V = IR
  2. Derive capacitive reactance X_c = 1/(2πfC)
  3. Set X_c = R at cutoff
  4. Solve for f → f_c = 1 / (2πRC)  ✓

Verify a calculus result:

User: Calculate and verify ∫(x² + 3x) dx.

→ Result: x³/3 + 3x²/2 + C
→ Verify: d/dx(x³/3 + 3x²/2) = x² + 3x  ✓

🛠️ 41 MCP tools, one coherent workflow

SymKit exposes 44 MCP tools across 8 categories. Everything routes through a few high-level tools while power users can drop down to individual steps.

The math() tool alone covers ~26 symbolic operations — calculus, ODEs, matrices, vector analysis, integral transforms — and can write its result directly into a derivation session.

🔍 Formula search workflow

SymKit can pull authoritative formulas from Wikidata and physical constants from SciPy, normalize LLM queries automatically, and load the chosen formula straight into a derivation session.

Recommended workflow:

1. Search
   formula_search("Navier-Stokes equations", domain="fluid_dynamics")

2. Get and load
   formula_get("Q201321", source="wikidata", load_into_session=True)

3. Derive
   math("simplify", "...", session=True)

4. Complete
   session_complete(description="Incompressible NS momentum equation")

Query normalization: you can write queries naturally — fluid_dynamics, fluid mechanics, and cfd all resolve to the same domain; Navier–Stokes (en dash) and Navier-Stokes (hyphen) match the same Wikidata item.

MathML handling: Wikidata sometimes returns rendered MathML for search previews. Call formula_get on the result ID to retrieve the original LaTeX and a SymPy-ready string.

Function notation & results: unknown calls like v(t) parse as undefined functions (Mathematica convention), never as implicit multiplication; solve returns a bare solution / solution_latex next to the Eq(...) expression; evalf accepts substitution; and session_start / session_set_goal accept explicit target_variables so goal tracking does not depend on heuristic text extraction.

🎛️ You own every step

A derivation in SymKit is a chain of immutable, verifiable steps. You can:

• Create — session_record_step
• Read — session_get_steps, session_show
• Annotate — session_add_note
• Rollback — session_rollback
• Verify — session_verify_step, session_verify_session

Expressions are never edited in place. If something goes wrong, roll back to the last good state and continue. This keeps the entire derivation reproducible.

🌍 Works with the MCP ecosystem

SymKit is designed to extend, not replace, your scientific computing stack. It handles derivation, verification, and provenance; raw symbolic computation and base formulas are delegated to SymPy-MCP.

When to use SymKit:

• ✅ Deriving new formulas from existing ones
• ✅ Building temperature/pressure/parameter-corrected models
• ✅ Creating custom models for any quantitative domain
• ✅ Producing verified, citable derivation results

When to use something else:

• ❌ Looking up basic physics formulas → use sympy-mcp
• ❌ Fetching physical constants → use sympy-mcp or SciPy
• ❌ Clinical scoring → use medical-calc-mcp
• ❌ Reading textbook formulas → use the reference directly

📦 Get started in 60 seconds

Requirements

• Python 3.10+
• An MCP-compatible client: Claude Desktop, Claude Code, Cherry Studio, …
• uv (recommended) or pip

Step 1 — Install SymKit

Pick one of the three install paths below. Each produces a runnable
symkit-mcp command you point your MCP client at in Step 3.

Option A — uv (recommended)

uv is a fast Python package manager. Install
SymKit as an isolated global CLI tool — no virtualenv to manage, no clashes
with your system Python:

# 1. Install uv itself (if you don't have it yet)
# macOS / Linux:
curl -LsSf https://astral.sh/uv/install.sh | sh
# Windows (PowerShell):
powershell -c "irm https://astral.sh/uv/install.ps1 | iex"

# 2. Install SymKit as a global CLI tool
uv tool install symkit-mcp

# 3. Verify it's on your PATH
symkit-mcp --version

uv tool install places a symkit-mcp entry point on your PATH. Upgrade later
with uv tool upgrade symkit-mcp, and uninstall with uv tool uninstall symkit-mcp.

No-install alternative: uvx symkit-mcp runs the latest published
release on the fly, caching it behind the scenes. Useful for one-off runs
or for the MCP client config in Step 3 — no uv tool install required.

Option B — pip

# Install
pip install symkit-mcp

# Verify
symkit-mcp --version

Prefer pipx (pipx install symkit-mcp) if
you want each CLI tool in its own isolated environment.

Option C — From source (development or unreleased changes)

git clone https://github.com/LBurny/symkit-mcp.git
cd symkit-mcp

# Install the project + dev/test extras into a local .venv
uv sync --all-extras

# Run the server straight from the checkout — no install step needed
uv run symkit-mcp

uv run executes against the local source tree, so you can edit and re-run
immediately. Pull the latest deps after changing pyproject.toml with
uv sync.

Step 2 — Where data lives

After install, SymKit stores runtime data in a per-user directory (resolved via
platformdirs): derived formulas and session JSONs persist under
~/.local/share/symkit/ (Linux), %LOCALAPPDATA%\symkit (Windows), or
~/Library/Application Support/symkit (macOS). Set the SYMKIT_DATA_DIR
environment variable to override this location — for example, point it at a
per-project folder (via your MCP client's server env block) to keep each
project's sessions and formula library isolated. Seed formulas (Reynolds
number, Navier-Stokes, …) ship read-only inside the package; user-added
formulas via formula_add are written to the writable overlay and override
seeds by id. Formulas saved by completed sessions (formulas/derived/) are
included in formula_search.

Step 3 — Connect to your client

SymKit speaks MCP over stdio, so the same server works with every
MCP-compatible client. Below is the JSON config for Claude Desktop and Cherry
Studio.

Claude Desktop / Cherry Studio (JSON config)

Add an mcpServers entry to your client's config file (claude_desktop_config.json
for Claude Desktop; the equivalent settings panel for Cherry Studio).

Installed via uv tool / pip / pipx (the symkit-mcp command is on PATH):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "symkit": {
      "command": "symkit-mcp",
      "args": []
    }
  }
}

Run on the fly without installing (uvx pulls and caches the latest release):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "symkit": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": ["symkit-mcp"]
    }
  }
}

Running from a local source checkout (no install needed):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "symkit": {
      "command": "uv",
      "args": [
        "run",
        "--no-sync",
        "--directory",
        "<your-local-symkit-mcp-path>",
        "python",
        "-m",
        "symkit_mcp.server"
      ]
    }
  }
}

Replace <your-local-symkit-mcp-path> with the absolute path to your local
symkit-mcp clone. --no-sync skips dependency resolution on every launch;
run uv sync manually when dependencies change.

Windows PATH gotcha: if Claude Desktop fails to launch the server with a
"command not found" error, the app's process PATH may not include your
Scripts/ or uv tool directory. Switch the command to an absolute path,
e.g. "C:/Users/you/AppData/Local/uv/tools/symkit-mcp/Scripts/symkit-mcp.exe".

🏗️ Clean architecture, built to extend

symkit-mcp/
├── src/
│   ├── symkit/               # Pure domain logic (no MCP dependency)
│   │   ├── domain/          # Entities, value objects, derivation engine
│   │   ├── application/     # Use cases
│   │   └── infrastructure/  # SymPy engine, adapters, persistence
│   └── symkit_mcp/          # MCP server layer
│       ├── server.py
│       └── tools/           # 44 MCP tools
├── formulas/                # Seed formula library (source tree)
├── tests/                   # 398 tests
└── pyproject.toml

• Domain-driven design — core logic is independent of MCP and SymPy.
• Pluggable engines — swap the symbolic engine or verifier via protocols.
• File-based persistence — formulas and sessions live in readable Markdown/YAML/JSON.

🧪 Development

# Run the full test suite
uv run pytest

# Lint and type check
uv run ruff check src/ tests/
uv run mypy src/

# Start the dev server
uv run symkit-mcp

📖 Learn more

• Architecture — DDD layering and responsibilities
• SymKit Design — In-depth technical design (English)
• SymKit Design (中文) — 中文设计文档
• SymKit vs SymPy-MCP — Capability comparison
• Roadmap — What's coming next

🙏 Acknowledgments

SymKit is built on the foundation of nsforge-mcp, which pioneered the neurosymbolic formula-derivation approach. The original Chinese README of nsforge-mcp can be found here.

SymKit works alongside sympy-mcp, which provides the underlying SymPy-based symbolic computation and base formula lookup that SymKit builds upon.

📄 License

Apache 2.0 — see LICENSE.

Stop answering math questions. Start deriving new knowledge.