Congressgov MCP Server

@cyanheads/congressgov-mcp-server Access U.S. congressional data (bills, votes, members, committees) via MCP. STDIO or Streamable HTTP. 12 Tools • 6 Resources • 2 Prompts • 1 Skill

Public Hosted Server: https://congressgov.caseyjhand.com/mcp

Overview

US congressional data from Congress.gov and the Senate's official vote feed: bills, amendments, enacted laws, members, committees, roll call votes, nominations, CRS and committee reports, and the Congressional Record. Browse legislative activity, read bill and report text, and follow nominations through Senate confirmation.

Tools

Resources

Bill, member, and committee data is also reachable through congressgov_bill_lookup, congressgov_member_lookup, and congressgov_committee_lookup (operation get), since many MCP clients are tool-only and never surface resources.

Prompts

Agent skill

congressgov-guide guides research across bills, laws, members, committees, votes, and floor debate. It covers identifier provenance, discovery limits, and version-specific document evidence. The guide ships with plugin installs, npm, MCPB, and Docker, and is served over MCP through the Skills extension and its skill:// resource.

Capability reference

congressgov_bill_lookup tool

• list browses one congress, narrowed by billType and a fromDateTime/toDateTime range on the record's update date, newest first unless order: 'oldest'; get, actions, amendments, cosponsors, committees, subjects, summaries, text, titles, related, and content need congress + billType + billNumber
• type and number from a bill row are accepted as billType and billNumber; bill type codes are case-insensitive. Send one name per field, since canonical and alias keys together are rejected
• content reads the text version at textVersionIndex (0 is the most recent) and returns one character window in content.text with totalCharacters, truncated, and nextOffset
• summaries takes an optional versionCode (00 introduced, 49 public law) and pages like congressgov_bill_summaries, using characterOffset/characterLimit
• fromDateTime/toDateTime apply to list only; other operations are served with a notice naming them as ignored
• An actions row that records exactly one roll call vote carries rollVote, the congressgov_roll_votes arguments for it (House votes from the 115th Congress, Senate from the 101st)

congressgov_amendment_lookup tool

• An amendment is congress + amendmentType (hamdt, samdt, or suamdt, in any letter case; suamdt, Senate unprinted amendments, exists only in the 97th and 98th Congresses) + amendmentNumber (a number or a digit string). Those identifiers come from congressgov_bill_lookup amendments rows, House congressgov_roll_votes rows (amendmentType/amendmentNumber), and congressgov_member_lookup sponsored/cosponsored rows, which carry the number and the type only in the row's url
• list browses one congress, optionally one amendmentType, newest update first unless order: 'oldest', with fromDateTime/toDateTime on the record's update date; it refuses amendmentNumber (incompatible_identity). Other operations are served with a notice naming a date bound as ignored
• get returns the sponsor, purpose, description, the bill or amendment amended, and the latest action; actions, cosponsors, amendments (amendments to this amendment), and text page the sub-resources
• An actions row that records exactly one roll call vote carries rollVote, the congressgov_roll_votes arguments for it
• text lists the published text versions, each a Congressional Record page; content reads the HTML of the version at textVersionIndex as one characterOffset/characterLimit window. The page prints the amendment amid the surrounding floor proceedings, so it is often far longer than the amendment

congressgov_enacted_laws tool

• list browses one congress, optionally by lawType (pub or priv), the enactment filter congressgov_bill_lookup lacks; get needs lawType + lawNumber, taken from a list row's laws[].number (118-90) or its bare number (90)
• get returns the origin bill record, with the law citation on its laws[] array

congressgov_member_lookup tool

• No name search: list filters by stateCode (plus district, 0 for at-large, which requires stateCode), congress, and currentMember
• get returns the profile for a bioguideId (e.g. P000197); sponsored and cosponsored return that member's legislation

congressgov_committee_lookup tool

• committeeCode is a chamber prefix (h/s/j), letters, and a 2-digit suffix (e.g. hsju00); get, bills, reports, and the Senate-only nominations infer chamber from the prefix, and read it from the committee roster when the prefix's chamber doesn't hold the code (jsat00 is a Senate committee); chamber is accepted in any letter case, as committee rows carry it (Senate)
• A committee name in committeeCode resolves when exactly one committee matches, and otherwise returns candidate rows with a notice. With chamber set, only that chamber's committees are searched, so a name unique within one chamber (judiciary with chamber: 'senate') resolves in one step, and a lone fuzzy match there comes back as a candidate row; without chamber, a lone fuzzy match resolves and the notice says it is approximate. The resolved committee is read in the chamber its roster row names. list with filter name-matches every committee in scope, and fuzzy hits carry approximate: true
• bills is newest first by default (order), and its rows carry no titles, so chain congressgov_bill_lookup get per row

congressgov_roll_votes tool

• chamber is house (default, Congress.gov API) or senate (the Senate's LIS feed), in any letter case; every call needs congress + session (1 or 2), and get/members add voteNumber, which resets each session and is specific to one chamber
• members filters by bioguideId (House only), stateCode, and party, all applied before paging: pagination.count counts the matches and memberFilter.rosterCount is the roster size. A Senate call with bioguideId fails unsupported_filter, whichever source answers, since the Senate feed identifies senators by its own IDs; filter senators by stateCode
• list and get serve the call and name any of those filters as ignored
• A congress's first year is session 1 and its second year session 2, but a second session can run into January 1–3 of the following year (the 116th Congress's second session voted on 2021-01-01)
• list is newest first unless order: 'oldest'; get returns the question, result, tallies, and party breakdown, and members returns each member's position
• House votes are covered from the 115th Congress (2017) and Senate votes from the 101st (1989), and Senate rows pair the feed's year-less voteDate with a derived voteDateIso (rows Voteview serves carry voteDateIso alone)
• A House get or members call below the 115th Congress fails not_found before any request, naming that coverage and pointing at the Clerk's vote XML in a bill action's recordedVotes
• When the Senate LIS feed can't answer a list, get, or members call (senate.gov refusing automated clients with HTTP 403 or its firewall page, another 4xx, a 5xx or timeout after retries, an empty body), Voteview's per-congress files an