U.S. Census Bureau Data API MCP

Bringing official Census Bureau statistics to AI assistants everywhere.

The U.S. Census Bureau Data API MCP is a Model Context Protocol (MCP) server that connects AI assistants with data from the Census Data API and other official Census Bureau sources. This project is built using the MCP Typescript SDK.

Contents

• Getting Started
• Using the MCP Server
• How the MCP Server Works
• Development
• MCP Server Architecture
• Available Methods
• Available Tools
• Available Prompts
• Helper Scripts
• Additional Information

Getting Started

To get started, you will need:

• A valid Census Bureau Data API key
• Docker (i.e. Docker Desktop)
• Node 18+

Using the MCP Server

To use the U.S. Census Bureau Data API MCP server:

1. Clone or download the project locally.
2. In a terminal window, navigate to the project’s root directory and run docker compose --profile prod run --rm census-mcp-db-init sh -c "npm run migrate:up && npm run seed" to pull data from the Census Data API into the local database. This is only required on first-time setup.
3. Configure your AI Assistant to use the MCP Server (see below).
4. Start your AI Assistant.

Here is an example configuration file that includes the appropriate scripts for launching the MCP Server:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "mcp-census-api": {
      "command": "bash",
      "args": [
        "/Path/To/Server/us-census-bureau-data-api-mcp/scripts/mcp-connect.sh"
      ],
      "env": {
        "CENSUS_API_KEY": "YOUR_CENSUS_API_KEY"
      }
    }
  }
}

Note that the CENSUS_API_KEY variable is required. This defines the env variable in the MCP Client and passes it to the MCP server via the mcp-connect script.

Be sure to update the path to the us-census-bureau-data-api-mcp directory in args and provide a valid CENSUS_API_KEY.

Updating the MCP Server

When a new version of this project is released, you will need to rebuild the production environment for the latest features. From the mcp-db/ directory, run the following:

npm run prod:down
npm run prod:build

After that, you can relaunch your MCP Client and it should connect to the server again.

How the MCP Server Works

The U.S. Census Bureau Data API MCP server uses data from the Census Da

... View full README on GitHub