🏛️ 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 — connecting AI models to Swiss public data sources.

🎯 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 →

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).
• 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

... View full README on GitHub