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help

help

MCP tools for Houdini's shipped documentation.

Search and retrieval over the manual that ships inside the RUNNING Houdini install — always version-exact, available offline, and served on demand so it costs no context until a question actually comes up.

Functions:

Name Description
get_help_page

Fetch one page of Houdini's shipped documentation by path.

get_workflow_guide

The server's written guide for a subject: what to build, in what order,

search_help

Search the running Houdini's own documentation — concepts,

Functions:

get_help_page async

get_help_page(ctx: Context, path: str) -> dict

Fetch one page of Houdini's shipped documentation by path.

Read the real reference instead of writing from memory — especially the VEX function pages (vex/functions/...) before any justified wrangle, and expression pages (expressions/...) before channel expressions.

Parameters:

Name Type Description Default
path
str

As returned by search_help — e.g. "nodes/sop/scatter", "vex/functions/noise", "expressions/ch".

required

get_workflow_guide async

get_workflow_guide(ctx: Context, topic: str, description: str = '') -> dict

The server's written guide for a subject: what to build, in what order, which mistakes it exists to prevent, and the shipped help pages to read.

Call this BEFORE designing a setup you have not built this session, and again the moment two attempts at the same symptom have failed. Each guide is distilled from that subject's SideFX manual.

Parameters:

Name Type Description Default
topic
str

Help scope name or common alias: pyro, fluid (flip, water, whitewater), vellum (cloth), destruction (rbd), mpm (sand, snow), ocean, solaris, tops, model, copy, render, shade, character, crowds, heightfields, copernicus, assets, troubleshooting, dyno.

required
description
str

What you are trying to build, for the guide's framing.

''

search_help async

search_help(
    ctx: Context, query: str, scope: str | None = None, limit: int = 10
) -> dict

Search the running Houdini's own documentation — concepts, workflows, VEX functions, expression functions, HOM API, and every effects manual SideFX ships. Version-exact, straight from the install.

Use this BEFORE improvising: when unsure how a workflow is meant to be done ("pyro shaping", "vellum constraints"), what a VEX or expression function does, or what a Solaris/TOPs concept means. Follow up with get_help_page on a result path.

Parameters:

Name Type Description Default
query
str

Search words (all must match a page).

required
scope
str | None

Optional corpus, named after the archive. Every help archive in the install is searchable, which on a full 22.0 is 47 of them. The ones worth knowing by name: "nodes", "vex", "expressions", "hom", "solaris", "tops", plus the workflow manuals "pyro", "fluid", "vellum", "destruction", "grains", "crowds", "model", "copy", "assets", "render", "shade", "anim", "character", "ref", "shelf". Omit to search all.

None
limit
int

Max results.

10