Command documentation

diff

Show exact textual changes between two aligned sources or witnesses.

Purpose

This command is available over HTTP, MCP and the local CLI. HTTP responses use the compact public response shape with summaries, warnings and bounded tables.

MCP connection

Use endpoint https://bible.grod.es/mcp with tool bible_diff. The MCP Server Card is /.well-known/mcp/server-card.json.

Parameters

Name	Required	Description
`target`	yes	Reference or textual unit where left and right sources should be aligned and diffed. Target grammar: natural Bible reference, or prefix:value. Examples: Deut 32:8, John 1, ref:Deut 32:8, strong:H7225, entity:Paul, source:LXX, variant:<id>, resource:<id>.
`limit`	no	Maximum diff operations and support rows. Diff output follows alignment/text order rather than relevance ranking, so limit controls payload length, not quality scoring. Default 20, max 100.
`left`	yes	Left source or witness code for diff. It is the baseline side of the textual comparison.
`right`	yes	Right source or witness code for diff. It is compared against left after the selected normalization.
`normalize`	no	Diff normalization mode. none compares raw forms, light reduces harmless orthographic noise, and strong is more aggressive; default light balances signal and readability.
`include`	no	Optional diff support layers, such as alignment, alignment-ops, token states, or overrides. Use alignment-ops when you need machine-readable edit operations.

Required option sets: [["target","left","right"]]

Examples

HTTP

curl -s 'https://bible.grod.es/api/diff?include=alignment-ops&left=MT&normalize=light&right=LXX&target=Deut+32%3A8'

MCP

{
  "arguments": {
    "include": [
      "alignment-ops"
    ],
    "left": "MT",
    "normalize": "light",
    "right": "LXX",
    "target": "Deut 32:8"
  },
  "name": "bible_diff"
}

CLI

bible diff --left MT --right LXX --normalize light --include alignment-ops Deut 32:8

Caveats for this command

Textual variants and witness signals are source-backed but coverage varies by passage and tradition.
DSS material is fragmentary.
LXX GreekResources data is lemma-level and not a full critical apparatus.
The runtime does not call LLM or embedding APIs.