LABSCO SUMMARY

Find out what Congress did without going through the news.

The record is public and structured, and this puts it in the conversation: what a bill actually says, which amendments were attached, and what the committee behind it reported — read from the source rather than from someone's summary of it.

What it is

An unofficial connector to the Congress.gov API, covering the legislative record: bills and their summaries, amendments, the congresses themselves, members by bioguide ID, committees by system code, and the committee reports, prints and meetings that go with them.

What you get

Bills — by congress, by bill type within a congress, and a specific bill by number
Amendments — by congress, by amendment type, and a specific amendment by number
Summaries — by congress and by bill type
Congresses — the list, and a specific congress
Members — a specific member by bioguide ID
Committees — a committee by system code, plus committee reports, prints and meetings addressable by congress and type
The repository's roadmap doubles as a coverage map, marking which sub-resources are wired up and which are not yet

Requirements

A Congress.gov API key from their sign-up page, placed in a .env as CONGRESS_GOV_API_KEY. Install uv, clone the repository, uv sync, copy .env.template to .env, and point the client at uv run /absolute_path_to/congress_gov_mcp/server.py — Claude Desktop wants the absolute path to uv itself, which which uv gives you. It is an unofficial project, not affiliated with Congress.gov.

Setup effort

Build from source

See installation options

USE CASES

01

Reading what a bill actually contains

Fetch it by congress, type and number, then pull the summary rather than relying on coverage of it.

02

Seeing what was changed along the way

Pull the amendments for that congress and type to find what was attached to the original text.

03

Looking up a specific member

Fetch them by bioguide ID to get the record straight from the source.

04

Following a committee's output

Read the committee by system code and pull its reports, prints and meetings.

05

Fact-checking a claim about legislation

Go to the bill, its summaries and its amendments, so the check rests on the record rather than on recollection.

BEFORE YOU INSTALL

What to know first

Requires

CONGRESS_GOV_API_KEY in your environment

Where it runs

Both documented clients run the server on your machine.

INSTALLATION

Connect your client

MCP Clients

Claude Desktop

CLAUDE DESKTOP · JSON

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "congress_gov_mcp": {
      "command": "<YOUR_PATH_TO_UV>",
      "args": [
        "run",
        "<YOUR_PATH_TO_CONGRESS_GOV_MCP>/server.py"
      ]
    }
  }
}

The configuration on this page does not set CONGRESS_GOV_API_KEY; the project's instructions put it in a .env file. Check which folder the server reads that file from before you rely on it.

Claude Code

CLAUDE CODE · JSON

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "congress_gov_mcp": {
      "command": "uv",
      "args": [
        "run",
        "<YOUR_PATH_TO_CONGRESS_GOV_MCP>/server.py"
      ]
    }
  }
}