Openstates MCP Server

@cyanheads/openstates-mcp-server Search bills, legislators, committees, and events across all 50 US states, DC, and 5 US territories via MCP. STDIO or Streamable HTTP. 10 Tools • 1 Resource • 2 Prompts

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

Overview

US state legislatures from Open States: all 50 states, DC, and 5 US territories. Search bills, legislators, committees, and events, and find who represents any location.

Tools

Resources

All resource data is also reachable via tools. Use openstates_get_jurisdiction for programmatic jurisdiction lookups; the resource is useful for injecting jurisdiction context as stable reference material.

Prompts

Skills

Plugin installs and the .mcpb bundle pick it up from skills/; MCP clients that support the Skills extension receive it from the server.

Capability reference

openstates_search_bills tool

• Either jurisdiction or q is required by the schema — a q-only search spans all 56 jurisdictions and exceeds the upstream timeout for a common term, so pairing them is the reliable form
• Filters: session, chamber (upper/lower), classification, subject tags, sponsor, sponsor_classification, and action_since/updated_since/created_since ISO 8601 date filters
• include inlines sponsorships, actions, votes, abstracts, versions, documents, and related bills — avoids follow-up openstates_get_bill calls
• sort defaults to updated_desc; sort=latest_action_desc surfaces bills currently moving; pagination up to 20 per page (default 10)
• Empty-result notice echoes every applied filter and names the jurisdiction by name when it isn't recognized

openstates_get_bill tool

• Lookup by openstates_id (preferred) or the three-part path jurisdiction + session + bill_id; a call missing both fails with missing_lookup_params
• openstates_id is ocd-bill/ copied from openstates_search_bills (case and surrounding whitespace are normalized); a / / path is also accepted. Any other value fails locally with invalid_openstates_id, with no upstream call
• Accepts legislature-format bill identifiers (e.g., HB 1000, SB 42)
• include inlines sponsorships, actions, votes, versions, documents, abstracts, other titles/identifiers, and related bills
• not_found when a well-formed ID or a three-part path resolves to nothing

openstates_search_people tool

• Either jurisdiction or id (OCD person IDs) is required — an unscoped search exceeds the upstream timeout even for a name-only query
• id resolves any number of specific OCD person IDs in one call — the IDs that bill sponsorships and committee memberships hand back — and needs no jurisdiction alongside it
• org_classification: upper/lower/executive/legislature (every legislator — both chambers, or the single body in Nebraska and DC; executive officials excluded); omitting it returns every officeholder including executives
• Case-insensitive substring name match, plus district; include adds offices, links, other_names, other_identifiers, sources
• Party is reported on every result but cannot be filtered on
• Pagination up to 20 per page

openstates_get_legislators_by_location tool

• Pass decimal-degree latitude/longitude; does not geocode addresses
• Returns both government tiers in one call: state legislators plus the coordinate's two US Senators and one US Representative
• jurisdiction.classification (state vs country) is the tier discriminator — current_role.org_classification is not, since it's upper/lower for a US Senator exactly as for a state senator
• stateCount/federalCount enrichment fields report the tier split
• Out-of-range coordinates fail as invalid_coordinate; a location with no coverage returns an empty-result notice

openstates_search_committees tool

• jurisdiction is required — the schema rejects an all-states request
• Filter by classification (committee/subcommittee) and chamber (a chamber filter omits joint committees); parent scopes to one committee's subcommittees
• include=memberships returns the full roster with member roles
• Experimental: Open States is working to restore committee support and not all states have coverage — the output's coverageNote field always documents this
• Pagination up to 20 per page

openstates_get_committee tool

• Fetch by OCD committee_id (from openstates_search_committees)
• include=memberships returns the roster; include=links/sources add reference URLs
• Experimental — not all states have committee data; not_found when the ID doesn't exist

openstates_search_events tool

• jurisdiction is required — the events endpoint has no all-states search
• after/before scope to an ISO 8601 date range; require_bills=true filters to events with a bill on the agenda
• include=agenda,participants returns full meeting context
• Experimental: most states don't publish event data — an empty unfiltered result may mean no coverage, not no events; an empty filtered result (require_bills, after, before) names those filters in its notice
• Pagination up to 20 per page

openstates_get_event tool

• Fetch by OCD event_id (from openstates_search_events)
• include adds agenda, participants, links, media, and documents
• Experimental — event coverage is limited; not_found when the ID doesn't exist

openstates_list_jurisdictions tool

• Returns all 56 jurisdictions (50 states, DC, and 5 US territories) in one default call — pages are merged server-side, since the upstream per_page ceiling of 52 no longer covers the full set
• classification filter defaults to state
• include=legislative_sessions returns every historical and current session identifier — required before filtering bill searches by session, since formats vary by state (e.g., 2025, 2025-2026, 2025rs, 2025s1)
• include=organizations/latest_runs add chamber/executive-body and scraper-run metadata

openstates_get_jurisdiction tool

• Fetch one jurisdiction by OCD-ID, state name, or two-letter abbreviation
• include=legislative_sessions returns all session identifiers with date ranges
• not_found when the identifier doesn't resolve

openstates://jurisdiction/{+jurisdiction_id} resource

• jurisdiction_id accepts the raw OCD ID (slashes intact) as openstates_list_jurisdictions returns it, a state name (multi-word allowed), or a two-letter abbreviation; percent-encoded forms are decoded once, and a malformed escape is a validation error
• Returns jurisdiction metadata as application/json: current legislative sessions, coverage dates, bill/people update timestamps
• Always includes legislative_sessions — use to prime session identifiers without a tool call
• not_found when the identifier doesn't resolve; rate_limited when the shared key's request cap is reached

openstates_bill_research prompt

• Arguments: jurisdiction, session, bill_id — all required
• Returns one user message directing a structured research brief: overview, sponsors, legislative history, vote record, related legislation, bill text, and a passage assessment

openstates_legislator_profile prompt