Lobbywatch MCP

🏛️ lobbywatch-mcp

An MCP server that connects AI models to Lobbywatch.ch, the largest lobby database of the Swiss Federal Parliament — conflicts of interest, lobby groups, access badges, and transparency scores.

🇩🇪 Deutsche Version

Part of the [Swiss Public Data MCP Portfolio](https://github.com/malkreide) — connecting AI models to Swiss public data sources.

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🎯 Anchor Demo Query

*"Welche Mitglieder der WBK-N haben Interessenbindungen zu Bildungsverlagen oder privaten Bildungsträgern, und wie ist ihre Transparenz-Bewertung?"*

Which members of the National Council's Education Commission have declared conflicts of interest with educational publishers or private education providers, and how does their compensation transparency score compare?

→ More use cases by audience →

Demo

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Overview

Lobbywatch.ch maintains the largest public database on Swiss federal parliamentarians and their connections to lobby organisations: 245 parliamentarians, ~7'800 interessenbindungen (declared mandates), 139 lobby groups, 368 access-badge holders, updated weekly, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.

lobbywatch-mcp exposes this data to Large Language Models via the Model Context Protocol. It is designed to be used alongside parlament-mcp (the official Swiss Parliament's Curia Vista data): the pair makes it possible to ask *what* a parliamentarian did officially and *who* they are connected to — in a single conversation.

Features

• Dump-first, API-fallback architecture. The weekly JSON dump is the primary source (stable, verified in production); the live dataIF REST API is used only where it returns reliable data (lobby groups, search).
• Stale-cache fallback, never silent. If the dump cannot be refreshed, a cached copy up to 7 days old answers instead, and every dump-backed response then carries a stale block with its download time, age and the reason the refresh failed. The source is retried every 15 minutes; lobbywatch_refresh_dump never falls back.
• Seven Phase 1 tools — parliamentarian lookup, conflict-of-interest listing, branche search, lobby group fetch, rankings, transparency quota, cache control.
• CC BY-SA 4.0 attribution baked into every response via Pydantic envelopes.
• Dual transport — stdio for Claude Desktop, streamable-http / sse for cloud deployments.
• Fuzzy name matching via rapidfuzz for natural LLM input like "Jositsch" or "Wehrli".
• No authentication required (Phase 1 — No-Auth-First).

Architecture

                    ┌─────────────────────────────┐

LLM client │ LobbywatchClient │ (Claude Desktop, │ │ Inspector, …) │ ┌───────────────────┐ │ │ │ │ Dump cache │ │ cms.lobbywatch.ch │ MCP │ │ (24 h TTL, │ │ ┌──────────────────┐ ▼ stdio / │ │ ~80 MB resident)├─────┼─────►│ weekly JSON │ ┌─────────┐ HTTP │ └───────────────────┘ │ │ export (~17 MB) │ │ FastMCP │◄────►│ │ └──────────────────┘ │ server │ │ ┌───────────────────┐ │ ┌──────────────────┐ └─────────┘ │ │ dataIF REST ├─────┼─────►│ /interface/v1/ │ │ │ (live fallback) │ │ │ json/… │ │ └───────────────────┘ │ └──────────────────┘ └─────────────────────────────┘

Outbound HTTP runs through a single httpx.AsyncClient with follow_redirects=False, an SSRF guard that blocks RFC1918 / link-local / metadata IPs, and an httpx event hook that re-resolves on every request. The dump path is the primary source of truth for parliamentarian queries; dataIF is only used for lobby group lookups and the search endpoint.

Prerequisites

• Python 3.11 or newer
• Internet access to download the weekly Lobbywatch JSON export (~17 MB zipped)

Installation

From PyPI (after first release):

pip install lobbywatch-mcp

From source:

git clone https://github.com/malkreide/lobbywatch-mcp.git

cd lobbywatch-mcp pip install -e ".[dev]"

Usage

Standalone

lobbywatch-mcp

This starts the server in stdio mode. For HTTP:

LOBBYWATCH_MCP_TRANSPORT=http LOBBYWATCH_MCP_PORT=8000 lobbywatch-mcp

Container

A hardened multi-stage Dockerfile ships with the repo (non-root, read-only-rootfs compatible). See docs/deployment.md and deploy/docker-compose.example.yml for resource limits, sticky-LB guidance and egress hardening.

docker build -t lobbywatch-mcp:0.2.0 .

docker run --rm -p 127.0.0.1:8000:8000 lobbywatch-mcp:0.2.0

Claude Desktop

Add to your claude_desktop_config.json:

{

"mcpServers": { "lobbywatch": { "command": "uvx", "args": ["lobbywatch-mcp"] } } }

A full example is provided in claude_desktop_config.json.

Example Queries

Once connected, try prompts such as:

• *"Give me the top 10 parliamentarians by number of interessenbindungen in the SP party."*
• *"Which WBK-N members have mandates in the publishing or education industry?"*
• *"Look up the lobby group 'economiesuisse' and list its connected parliamentarians."*
• *"What is the compensation-transparency score distribution for the finance commission (FK-N)?"*

Tools

All tool names use the lobbywatch_ namespace prefix (since 0.2.0) to avoid collisions with sibling portfolio servers.

Configuration

All behaviour is controlled via environment variables:

Project Structure

lobbywatch-mcp/

├── src/lobbywatch_mcp/ │ ├── init.py │ ├── main.py # CLI + transport selection │ ├── config.py # URLs, cache paths, attribution │ ├── client.py # Dump download + dataIF client │ ├── models.py # Pydantic v2 response envelopes │ └── server.py # FastMCP tool registrations ├── tests/ │ ├── conftest.py # Fixture parliamentarians │ ├── test_client.py # Respx-mocked unit tests │ ├── test_server.py # Tool integration tests │ └── test_live.py # @pytest.mark.live — excluded from CI ├── .github/workflows/ │ ├── ci.yml # Test matrix + ruff │ └── publish.yml # PyPI OIDC Trusted Publisher ├── claude_desktop_config.json ├── pyproject.toml └── ...

Data License & Attribution

The code is released under the MIT License.

The data served through this MCP is © Lobbywatch.ch and licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Every response envelope includes the attribution string. Downstream users must:

1. Credit Lobbywatch.ch as the data source.
2. Share derivative datasets under the same CC BY-SA 4.0 terms.
3. Understand that Lobbywatch is a community-researched database — not an official register. It is authoritative for transparency research but should not be confused with the Federal Parliament's own declarations.

Known Limitations

• The upstream /table/parlamentarier/... dataIF REST endpoint currently returns empty result sets. The server works around this by using the weekly JSON dump instead.
• zutrittsberechtigungen (access badges) are not populated in the "essential" dump variant used here. A future release will add a dedicated tool using the non-essential dump.

Contributing

See CONTRIBUTING.md.

Security

See SECURITY.md for the security posture, accepted-risk decisions, and how to report a vulnerability.

MCP Protocol Version

This server speaks two protocol eras over the same endpoint. The client's first request on a connection decides which one applies; a later claim from the other era is refused.

Both revisions are pinned in tests/test_protocol_version.py and asserted against the installed SDK, so a Dependabot bump of mcp cannot move either one silently. The constants alone are the weaker form, so tests/test_spec_2026_07_28.py measures both eras through the assembled ASGI app: server/discover without a session, an initialize asking for a future revision capped at 2025-11-25, and every tool called over a 2026-07-28 connection with SDK deprecations raised as errors.

Native to `2026-07-28`. lobbywatch_refresh_dump reports its progress as notifications/progress, which both eras deliver to any client that sends a progressToken. It used to log via `notifications/message