Ontology Term Search (OLS)

ols/term-search

Searches the EMBL-EBI Ontology Lookup Service, which indexes about 290 biomedical ontologies (GO, HP, MONDO, EFO, CHEBI, UBERON, NCBITaxon and more), by label, synonym or identifier. Returns a relevance-ordered page of terms: IRI, label, OBO id, short form, ontology, term type and definition text, with the total match count, up to 25 per page. Can be restricted to chosen ontologies. Use ontology-term for the full record. OLS data, EMBL-EBI, served by Eden Engine; not an official OLS product.

activeper callv1

Price

$0.0026 per call

You pay the price shown. If a call turns out to cost more than its quote, you pay the actual price, capped at twice the quote. No monthly minimum. Top-ups start at $0.50.

Data source

Ontology Lookup Service (EMBL-EBI)

Data from the Ontology Lookup Service (OLS4), EMBL-EBI (https://www.ebi.ac.uk/ols4). Each ontology keeps the licence its authors chose; see the ontology's own record. Served by Eden Engine; not an official OLS or EMBL-EBI product.

Use it

Five steps: search, inspect, learn, run, settle. No per-tool setup; your agent reaches this tool through the meta-tools it already has.

Connect once and your AI can find and run this tool, and any other it needs.

Install it Create an account

agent

// 1. search: find the tool
omnial_search({ query: "what you need" })

// 2. inspect: price and input schema
omnial_inspect({ tool: "ols/term-search" })

// 3. learn: read the usage guide at runtime
omnial_learn({ tool: "ols/term-search" })

// 4. run: price the exact call first, then run it
omnial_execute({ tool: "ols/term-search", input: { /* see input_schema */ }, dry_run: true })
omnial_execute({ tool: "ols/term-search", input: { /* ... */ } })

// 5. settle: the call is charged when it finishes, nothing to do

Not connected yet? Point your MCP client at https://mcp.eden-engine.com/mcp, then copy a config for your client.

Pricing

Every charge this tool can incur.

Charge	Price
Per call	$0.0026

Updated: Oct 25, 2026

Input and output schemas

Input schema

input_schema.json

{
  "type": "object",
  "required": [
    "q"
  ],
  "properties": {
    "q": {
      "type": "string",
      "maxLength": 100,
      "minLength": 2,
      "description": "Search text: a term label, synonym or identifier, for example diabetes, BRCA1 or GO:0008150. Two to 100 characters."
    },
    "rows": {
      "type": "integer",
      "default": 10,
      "maximum": 25,
      "minimum": 1,
      "description": "Results per page, 1 to 25. Defaults to 10."
    },
    "start": {
      "type": "integer",
      "maximum": 100000,
      "minimum": 0,
      "description": "Number of results to skip for paging. Leave out for the first page."
    },
    "ontology": {
      "type": "string",
      "pattern": "^[a-z0-9_]{1,40}(,[a-z0-9_]{1,40}){0,4}$",
      "description": "Optional: restrict to one or up to five ontologies by id, lower case, comma separated, for example go or go,hp. An unknown id returns no results."
    }
  },
  "additionalProperties": false
}

Output schema

output_schema.json

{
  "type": "object",
  "required": [
    "response"
  ],
  "properties": {
    "response": {
      "type": "object",
      "required": [
        "numFound",
        "docs"
      ],
      "properties": {
        "docs": {
          "type": "array",
          "items": {
            "type": "object",
            "properties": {
              "iri": {
                "type": "string",
                "description": "Full IRI of the term."
              },
              "type": {
                "type": [
                  "string",
                  "null"
                ]
              },
              "label": {
                "type": "string",
                "description": "Term label."
              },
              "obo_id": {
                "type": [
                  "string",
                  "null"
                ],
                "description": "Prefixed identifier such as GO:0008150; may be absent for terms without an OBO-style id."
              },
              "short_form": {
                "type": [
                  "string",
                  "null"
                ]
              },
              "description": {
                "type": [
                  "array",
                  "null"
                ],
                "items": {},
                "description": "Definition text(s); a list because ontologies may give several."
              },
              "ontology_name": {
                "type": [
                  "string",
                  "null"
                ],
                "description": "Id of the ontology that holds the term, lower case, e.g. go."
              },
              "exact_synonyms": {
                "type": [
                  "array",
                  "null"
                ],
                "items": {}
              },
              "narrow_synonyms": {
                "type": [
                  "array",
                  "null"
                ],
                "items": {}
              },
              "ontology_prefix": {
                "type": [
                  "string",
                  "null"
                ]
              },
              "related_synonyms": {
                "type": [
                  "array",
                  "null"
                ],
                "items": {}
              }
            },
            "additionalProperties": true
          }
        },
        "start": {
          "type": "integer"
        },
        "numFound": {
          "type": "integer"
        }
      },
      "description": "numFound is the total match count, start the offset, docs this page.",
      "additionalProperties": true
    },
    "facet_counts": {
      "type": "object",
      "description": "Counts per ontology, type and obsolescence for the full match set.",
      "additionalProperties": true
    },
    "highlighting": {
      "type": "object",
      "additionalProperties": true
    },
    "responseHeader": {
      "type": "object",
      "additionalProperties": true
    }
  },
  "description": "OLS search response: matching terms in `response.docs`, total in `response.numFound`.",
  "additionalProperties": true
}