LABSCO SUMMARY

Goes past bill metadata into the text of the bill itself, indexed locally so you can find the clause rather than the document.

Most congressional data tools hand back the same API records everyone else has; the distinctive part here is the local full-text index, which turns "where in the NDAA is the icebreaker funding" into a section id you can retrieve. It also flags whether a hit lands in operative or quoted text — the difference between what a bill enacts and the language it strikes, which is exactly where a fast reading goes wrong.

What it is

A local server over the free Congress.gov and GovInfo APIs, grouped into seven toolsets, with full bill text fetched and indexed on your own machine.

What you get

Bills end to end: search, details, actions, text, amendments, cosponsors and subjects, with natural-language identifiers like HR 1234 accepted
Members located the way people ask for them — by name, by state, by district, by Congress — plus their sponsored and cosponsored legislation
Committees browsed or searched, with the bills referred to them, their reports, communications and nominations
House and Senate votes, roll calls and presidential nominations
The Congressional Record, hearings, committee prints and CRS reports
Enacted public and private laws for a Congress, and treaties with their actions, committees and text alongside bill summaries
Full bill text you can actually search: the bill XML is parsed locally into a per-version index, so you get ranked, addressable sections with snippets instead of multi-megabyte XML
A navigation tree for a bill and retrieval of any section by id, with a byte cap on what comes back
Search results that mark whether a match sits in operative, quoted or header text, so amendatory language that a bill is removing is not mistaken for what it enacts

Requirements

A free Congress.gov API key set as CONGRESS_API_KEY — the same key covers GovInfo, so full bill text needs no second key. Published on PyPI as congressmcp and normally launched with uvx over stdio; a streamable-http transport is available for URL-based clients such as ChatGPT and Claude.ai, and it has no authentication of its own, so anything beyond localhost belongs behind a proxy, tunnel or VPN. The bill-text index is written to a local cache capped at 500 MB by default and administered from the command line rather than through a tool.

Setup effort

One command plus a key — uvx congressmcp, then supply credentials

See installation options

USE CASES

Finding the provision inside a very long bill

Search the full text for the language you expect, read the table of contents to place it, then retrieve that section by id.

search_bill_textget_bill_tocget_bill_section

Tracking what is happening to a bill

Look up the bill by its everyday name, then read its latest actions, amendments and cosponsors.

billsamendments

Seeing how your delegation voted

Find the members for the state or district, then pull the roll call on the measure in question.

get_members_by_stateget_members_by_districtvoting_and_nominations

Following a committee's work

Find the committee, then read the bills referred to it, the reports it issued and the communications it received.

search_committeesget_committee_billsget_committee_reportsget_committee_communications

Building a picture of one member's record

Pull their details, then the legislation they sponsored and cosponsored.

get_member_detailsget_member_sponsored_legislationget_member_cosponsored_legislation

Researching a topic across the record

Work through the Congressional Record, hearings and CRS reports, then check which bills on the subject actually became law.

records_and_hearingsresearch_and_professionallaws

21 tools

Counted once with only startup setup. Other versions, modes or optional credentials may expose a different list.

`amendments`

Comprehensive Amendments Tool - All amendment operations in one focused interface.

CORE OPERATIONS:

Search & Discovery: get_amendments, search_amendments
Details & Metadata: get_amendment_details, get_amendment_sponsors
Legislative Process: get_amendment_actions, get_amendment_amendments
Content: get_amendment_text

SEARCH OPERATIONS:

get_amendments: Core amendments API access with filtering
search_amendments: Search amendments by keywords and parameters

DETAILS OPERATIONS:

get_amendment_details: Complete amendment information and status
get_amendment_sponsors: Sponsor and cosponsor information

PROCESS OPERATIONS:

get_amendment_actions: Legislative actions and history
get_amendment_amendments: Amendments to amendments (sub-amendments)

CONTENT OPERATIONS:

get_amendment_text: Full amendment text and purpose

Args: operation: Specific operation to perform (see list above) congress: Congress number (118 for current, 119 for next) amendment_type: hamdt (House) or samdt (Senate) amendment_number: Specific amendment number within type and congress keywords: Search keywords for amendment content limit: Results limit (max 250 for API compliance) sort: updateDate+desc (newest first) or updateDate+asc fromDateTime/toDateTime: Date range (YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SSZ)

Returns: Formatted results specific to requested operation

INSTALLATION

Connect your client

Server setup

Setup

TERMINAL

curl -LsSf https://astral.sh/uv/install.sh | sh

uvx

TERMINAL

uvx congressmcp

MCP Clients

Claude Code

CLAUDE CODE · JSON

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "congressmcp": {
      "type": "stdio",
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": [
        "congressmcp"
      ],
      "env": {
        "CONGRESS_API_KEY": "${CONGRESS_API_KEY}"
      }
    }
  }
}

Claude Code fills in ${CONGRESS_API_KEY} from your environment, so the key never sits in the file: set CONGRESS_API_KEY to your Congress.gov key before you start it.

VS Code

VS CODE · JSON

{
  "inputs": [
    {
      "type": "promptString",
      "id": "congress-api-key",
      "description": "Congress.gov API key",
      "password": true
    }
  ],
  "servers": {
    "congressmcp": {
      "type": "stdio",
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": [
        "congressmcp"
      ],
      "env": {
        "CONGRESS_API_KEY": "${input:congress-api-key}"
      }
    }
  }
}

Cursor, Windsurf

JSON

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "congressmcp": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": [
        "congressmcp"
      ],
      "env": {
        "CONGRESS_API_KEY": "${env:CONGRESS_API_KEY}"
      }
    }
  }
}

${env:CONGRESS_API_KEY} is read from your shell environment: set CONGRESS_API_KEY to your Congress.gov key before you start the editor. Writing the key itself as the value also works.

JetBrains IDEs — AI Assistant

JETBRAINS IDES — AI ASSISTANT · JSON

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "congressmcp": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": [
        "congressmcp"
      ],
      "env": {
        "CONGRESS_API_KEY": "<YOUR_CONGRESS_API_KEY>"
      }
    }
  }
}

Settings → Tools → AI Assistant → Model Context Protocol (MCP) → Add → As JSON, and paste this block (there is also an Import from Claude button that reads claude_desktop_config.json).

Junie

JUNIE · JSON

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "congressmcp": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": [
        "congressmcp"
      ],
      "env": {
        "CONGRESS_API_KEY": "<YOUR_CONGRESS_API_KEY>"
      }
    }
  }
}

Settings → Tools → Junie → MCP Settings, which edits ~/.junie/mcp/mcp.json (global) or .junie/mcp/mcp.json (project); add this block there.

OpenCode

OPENCODE · JSON

{
  "$schema": "https://opencode.ai/config.json",
  "mcp": {
    "congressmcp": {
      "type": "local",
      "command": [
        "uvx",
        "congressmcp"
      ],
      "environment": {
        "CONGRESS_API_KEY": "<YOUR_CONGRESS_API_KEY>"
      },
      "enabled": true
    }
  }
}

Gemini CLI

GEMINI CLI · JSON

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "congressmcp": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": [
        "congressmcp"
      ],
      "env": {
        "CONGRESS_API_KEY": "$CONGRESS_API_KEY"
      }
    }
  }
}

Gemini CLI fills in $CONGRESS_API_KEY from your environment: set CONGRESS_API_KEY to your Congress.gov key before you start it.

Claude Desktop

CLAUDE DESKTOP · JSON

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "congressmcp": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": [
        "congressmcp"
      ],
      "env": {
        "CONGRESS_API_KEY": "<YOUR_CONGRESS_API_KEY>"
      }
    }
  }
}

Zed

ZED · JSON

{
  "context_servers": {
    "congressmcp": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": [
        "congressmcp"
      ],
      "env": {
        "CONGRESS_API_KEY": "<YOUR_CONGRESS_API_KEY>"
      }
    }
  }
}

Cline, Roo Code

JSON

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "congressmcp": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": [
        "congressmcp"
      ],
      "env": {
        "CONGRESS_API_KEY": "<YOUR_CONGRESS_API_KEY>"
      },
      "disabled": false,
      "autoApprove": []
    }
  }
}

LM Studio

LM STUDIO · JSON

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "congressmcp": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": [
        "congressmcp"
      ],
      "env": {
        "CONGRESS_API_KEY": "<YOUR_CONGRESS_API_KEY>"
      }
    }
  }
}

Program tab → Install → Edit mcp.json; LM Studio follows Cursor's format — use a literal key string rather than ${env:…}

CongressMCP

Goes past bill metadata into the text of the bill itself, indexed locally so you can find the clause rather than the document.

What it is

What you get

Requirements

Setup effort

Finding the provision inside a very long bill

Tracking what is happening to a bill

Seeing how your delegation voted

Following a committee's work

Building a picture of one member's record

Researching a topic across the record

21 tools

amendments

bills

committee_intelligence

get_committee_bills

get_committee_communications

get_committee_nominations

get_committee_reports

get_member_cosponsored_legislation

get_member_details

get_member_sponsored_legislation

get_members_by_congress

get_members_by_congress_state_district

get_members_by_district

get_members_by_state

laws

records_and_hearings

research_and_professional

search_committees

search_members

treaties_and_summaries

voting_and_nominations

What to know first

Tools you get

Requires

Where it runs

Connect your client

Server setup

Setup

uvx

MCP Clients

Claude Code

VS Code

Cursor, Windsurf

JetBrains IDEs — AI Assistant

Junie

OpenCode

Gemini CLI

Claude Desktop

Zed

Cline, Roo Code

LM Studio

Same category

Congress.gov Records

Seoul Public Data

OpenTK

Congress.gov

`amendments`

`bills`

`committee_intelligence`

`get_committee_bills`

`get_committee_communications`

`get_committee_nominations`

`get_committee_reports`

`get_member_cosponsored_legislation`

`get_member_details`

`get_member_sponsored_legislation`

`get_members_by_congress`

`get_members_by_congress_state_district`

`get_members_by_district`

`get_members_by_state`

`laws`

`records_and_hearings`

`research_and_professional`

`search_committees`

`search_members`

`treaties_and_summaries`

`voting_and_nominations`