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mcp server

openstates-mcp-server

Search bills, legislators, committees, and events across all 50 US states, DC, and 5 US territories.

Description as published by the maintainer. Source

  • version 0.3.0
  • active
  • retrieval

active — Most recent push to the repository was 2026-07-31. Dashed tags are derived by ZBS Index from the published description, not stated by the maintainer.

What this server can do

10 functions, named and described by the server itself. Parameter names are shown because they say more about what a function does than its name usually does.

openstates_get_bill(bill_id, include, session, jurisdiction, openstates_id)
Fetch full detail for a specific state bill. Accepts either the three-part path (jurisdiction + session + bill_id) or a direct OCD bill ID (openstates_id from search results). Use include to request votes, actions, sponsorships, documents, and versions in one call rather than searching again. include=votes returns the full vote tally and per-legislator positions. include=actions returns the complete action history. Prefer openstates_id when available to avoid session identifier lookup.
openstates_get_committee(include, committee_id)
Fetch committee detail by OCD organization ID. Returns name, classification, and membership roster when include=memberships is requested. Experimental — not all states have committee data in Open States. Obtain the committee_id from openstates_search_committees. Required: committee_id.
openstates_get_event(include, event_id)
Fetch full event detail by OCD event ID. Returns agenda, participants, media links, and associated documents when requested via include. Experimental — event coverage is limited in Open States. Obtain the event_id from openstates_search_events. Required: event_id.
openstates_get_jurisdiction(include, jurisdiction_id)
Fetch full metadata for a specific jurisdiction including all legislative sessions, their identifiers, and coverage dates. Use when you need to know the exact session identifier for a state before filtering bill searches — session formats vary widely (e.g., "2025", "2025rs", "2025s1"). Jurisdiction IDs follow OCD format: ocd-jurisdiction/country:us/state:{abbr}/government (e.g., ocd-jurisdiction/country:us/state:wa/government). State names (e.g., "Washington") and two-letter abbreviations (e.g., "wa") are also accepted. Required: jurisdiction_id.
openstates_get_legislators_by_location(include, latitude, longitude)
Find every legislator representing a geographic coordinate — both tiers. Pass latitude and longitude to get the state senators and representatives for that location (and potentially governor/executive officials), plus the coordinate's two US Senators and its US Representative. jurisdiction.classification separates the tiers: "state" is a state legislature, "country" is the US Congress. current_role.org_classification does not — it is "upper"/"lower" for a US Senator exactly as for a state senator. Useful for constituent-to-representative matching, address-based policy research, and electoral boundary analysis. This server does not geocode addresses — the caller must provide decimal-degree coordinates. Use include=offices to get contact information alongside the legislator list. Required: latitude, longitude.
openstates_list_jurisdictions(page, include, per_page, classification)
List all jurisdictions covered by Open States — all 50 states, DC, and 5 US territories (American Samoa, Guam, Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, and the US Virgin Islands): 56 in total, returned complete in a single default call. Returns coverage metadata: latest bill update time, latest people update time, and optionally all legislative sessions with their identifiers. Use this when you need to discover valid session identifiers for a state before calling openstates_search_bills with a session filter. The legislative_sessions include option returns all historical and current sessions — always check valid session identifiers here before using them in bill searches, since formats vary widely by state (e.g., "2025", "2025-2026", "2025rs", "2025s1").
openstates_search_bills(q, page, sort, chamber, include, session, sponsor, subject, per_page, action_since, jurisdiction, created_since, updated_since, classification, sponsor_classification)
Search state legislative bills across all covered US jurisdictions. Supports full-text search, jurisdiction/session filtering, subject tags, sponsor lookups, and sort order. Either jurisdiction or q (full-text) is required, and pairing them is the reliable form — a q-only search spans all 56 jurisdictions and exceeds the upstream timeout for a common term, though a distinctive one still returns quickly. include=sponsorships,actions returns sponsor and action history inline. sort=latest_action_desc surfaces bills currently moving. openstates_get_jurisdiction with include=legislative_sessions returns valid session identifiers for session filtering.
openstates_search_committees(page, parent, chamber, include, per_page, jurisdiction, classification)
List committees for a jurisdiction. jurisdiction is required — a request spanning all 56 jurisdictions exceeds the upstream timeout, so scope every call to a single state; use openstates_list_jurisdictions to pick one. Experimental — Open States is actively working to restore committee support and not all states have data. Use chamber to scope to upper (senate) or lower (house) committees. Use classification=subcommittee to find subcommittees of a parent. Use include=memberships to get the full roster with member roles. The coverageNote field in the output will always note the experimental coverage limitations. Required: jurisdiction.
openstates_search_events(page, after, before, include, per_page, jurisdiction, require_bills)
Search hearings, floor sessions, and committee meetings. jurisdiction is required — the Open States events endpoint has no all-states search, so scope every call to a single state; use openstates_list_jurisdictions to pick one. Experimental — most states do not publish event data to Open States. Use after and before to scope to a date range. Set require_bills=true to filter to events with bills on the agenda, which is the most useful filter for tracking legislation through committee. Use include=agenda,participants for full meeting context. Empty results often indicate the state lacks event data rather than no events occurring. Required: jurisdiction.
openstates_search_people(id, name, page, include, district, per_page, jurisdiction, org_classification)
Search state legislators and officials by name, jurisdiction, chamber, or district, or fetch specific people by OCD person ID. Party is reported on every result but cannot be filtered on — narrow by party after the call. Either jurisdiction or id is required — a search spanning all 56 jurisdictions exceeds the upstream timeout, including a name-only one, so scope every call to a single state or to specific person IDs. Use openstates_list_jurisdictions to pick a jurisdiction, or openstates_get_legislators_by_location when you have coordinates but no state. id takes the person IDs that openstates_get_bill sponsorships and openstates_get_committee memberships hand back, and resolves any number of them in one call. Supports name substring matching (case-insensitive). org_classification targets a role type: "upper" for Senate, "lower" for House/Assembly, "executive" for governors and executive officials, and "legislature" for every legislator — both chambers merged into one paginated set (all upper members, then all lower), which excludes executive-branch officials. Omitting org_classification is not the same as "legislature": it returns every officeholder, executive officials included. include=offices adds phone, fax, and address. include=links adds website and social links.

Last successful function declaration observed on . Source: https://openstates.caseyjhand.com/mcp. We list what the server declared; we do not call any of these functions.

Endpoint status observed on . Source: https://openstates.caseyjhand.com/mcp.

Signals

These are separate measurements of different things. They are deliberately not combined into one score, because a popularity number that mixes website traffic with saves and stars cannot be checked or acted on.

Signal Value What it measures Window Observed Source
GitHub stars 1 Number of GitHub accounts that bookmarked this repository since it was created. It is a bookmark count, not installs, not active users and not quality. cumulative, all time GitHub
Last commit 2026-07-31 Date of the most recent push to any branch. This is the strongest cheap indicator of whether the project is still maintained. point in time GitHub
Open issues 1 Open issues plus open pull requests, as GitHub counts them together. A high number can mean an active project or an abandoned one. as of fetch GitHub
Latest published version 0.3.0 Latest version string the maintainer published to the registry. as of fetch Model Context Protocol
Registry record last updated 2026-07-31 When the registry record was last updated by its maintainer. point in time Model Context Protocol
License Apache-2.0 Licence GitHub detected in the repository. Detection can be wrong; the LICENSE file is authoritative. as of fetch GitHub
First listed in the MCP Registry 2026-07-31 Date this server was first published to the official MCP Registry. Not a usage or quality measure. point in time Model Context Protocol
repository status active The repository exists on GitHub and is not archived. This says nothing about how recently it was worked on. as of fetch GitHub
mcp tools declared 10 tools Number of functions the server itself declared when asked to list them. This is what the server offers an agent, not a measure of how well any of them work. as of probe openstates.caseyjhand.com
mcp endpoint status ok The server listed 10 functions when asked. as of probe openstates.caseyjhand.com

Where to get it

Related, by what their authors tagged them

These share tags the maintainers applied themselves, such as bills, cyanheads, legislation, bun. Common tags like "mcp" or "ai" are ignored for this: agreeing with six hundred other projects is not a similarity.

This is not a recommendation and not a test result. It is a map of what the authors said their work is about.

Also from cyanheads

How the author describes it

Topics the maintainer set on GitHub: ai, bills, bun, cyanheads, legislation, legislators, mcp, mcp-server, model-context-protocol, open-states, openstates, state-legislature, typescript.

This record as data

Every field on this page, with its source and observation date, is in the catalog JSON. Fetch the whole kind at once instead of parsing this HTML.

GET /api/v1/entries/mcp_server.json

Sources

  1. cyanheads/openstates-mcp-server on GitHub — GitHub, observed , trust tier 3.
  2. Tools declared by the MCP server at https://openstates.caseyjhand.com/mcp — openstates.caseyjhand.com, observed , trust tier 4.
  3. Official MCP Registry — Model Context Protocol, observed , trust tier 1.