congressMCP

CongressMCP exposes a set of tools to access live Congress.gov data through any MCP client. Once you have an API key for the hosted CongressMCP service, you can configure your MCP client to point at the congressmcp package via npx. This server provides six toolsets for Bills & Legislation, Members & Committees, Voting Records, Congressional Records & Hearings, Committee Reports & Intelligence, and Research & Analysis, totaling dozens of operations that let you search, filter, and retrieve official congressional data in natural language queries. After configuring your client with the API key, restart your MCP client and begin asking questions like which climate-related bills are active in the current Congress, who sits on a given committee, or how a particular vote was recorded across states. The integrated tools offer capabilities to search by topic, track legislative status, and fetch official records and transcripts as part of your research workflow.

Prerequisites:

• Node.js and npm installed on your machine
• An API key from the hosted CongressMCP service (or your self-hosted endpoint)

Installation steps:

1. Install the CongressMCP CLI globally:

npm install -g congressmcp

2. Obtain your API key from the hosted service at https://congressmcp.lawgiver.ai and keep it handy.
3. Configure your MCP client to use CongressMCP by adding the server block below to your MCP client configuration (replace your-api-key-here with your actual key):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "congressional-mcp": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "congressmcp"],
      "env": {
        "CONGRESSMCP_API_KEY": "your-api-key-here"
      }
    }
  }
}

4. Start or restart your MCP client and begin querying Congress data through the available tools.

Tips and notes:

• The API key is required to access the official data. Store it securely and do not share publicly.
• The recommended command is npx -y congressmcp to fetch and run the latest package without global installs; you can also adapt this to your environment if you manage dependencies differently.
• If you choose to self-host, you can run the server using your preferred environment (see self-hosting guidance in the README). Ensure that environment variables align with your configuration (for hosted vs self-hosted setups, the API key variable name may differ: CONGRESSMCP_API_KEY for hosted, CONGRESS_API_KEY in some self-hosted examples).
• The service provides 6 data categories with 92 operations; use targeted queries to leverage the most relevant data (e.g., by bill number, committee, or voting record).
• For best results, keep your MCP client updated and consult the official documentation linked in the README for any feature updates or new endpoints.