🏛️ parlament-mcp

Part of the Swiss Public Data MCP Portfolio – connecting AI models to Swiss public data sources.

An MCP server that connects AI models to the Swiss Federal Parliament via the Curia Vista OData API (ws.parlament.ch). Access motions, interpellations, votes, members, sessions, and debate transcripts – with no API key required (Phase 1 – No-Auth-First).

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🎯 Anchor Demo Query

"Welche Vorstösse zu KI in der Schule sind hängig?" → parlament_search_business(keyword="KI", keyword2="Schule", status="Eingereicht")

→ More use cases by audience →

Perfect for the KI-Fachgruppe Stadtverwaltung Zürich: find pending motions on AI in education, digitisation initiatives, or any policy topic – instantly.

<p align="center"> <img src="assets/demo.svg" alt="Demo: Claude queries pending AI motions via MCP tool call" width="720"> </p>

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🔧 Tools

Tool	Description
parlament_search_business	Search Vorstösse by keyword, type, status, council, date
parlament_get_business	Full details of a single business (texts, FC response)
parlament_search_members	Find councillors by canton (e.g. ZH), party, council
parlament_get_votes	Parliamentary votes with Ja/Nein meaning
parlament_get_sessions	List recent sessions with IDs for follow-up queries
parlament_get_transcripts	Debate excerpts by keyword or speaker (Amtliches Bulletin)

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🏗️ Architecture

┌──────────────────────────────────┐
│     MCP Host (Claude Desktop /   │
│     Claude API / IDE)            │
└─────────────┬────────────────────┘
              │ MCP Protocol (JSON-RPC 2.0)
              │ Transport: stdio (local) / SSE (cloud)
┌─────────────▼────────────────────┐
│         parlament-mcp            │
│   FastMCP · Python · Pydantic v2 │
└─────────────┬────────────────────┘
              │ HTTPS / OData v3
┌─────────────▼────────────────────┐
│  ws.parlament.ch / odata.svc     │
│  Curia Vista – No Auth Required  │
│                                  │
│  Business · Vote · MemberCouncil │
│  Session · Transcript · ParlGroup│
└──────────────────────────────────┘

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🚀 Installation

Claude Desktop (stdio)

Add to ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json:

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

Local development

git clone https://github.com/malkreide/parlament-mcp
cd parlament-mcp
pip install -e .
python -m parlament_mcp.server

Cloud / Railway (SSE)

MCP_TRANSPORT=sse MCP_HOST=0.0.0.0 PORT=8080 python -m parlament_mcp.server
# SSE endpoint: http://your-host:8080/sse

Network binding

By default the server binds to 127.0.0.1 (localhost only). Set MCP_HOST=0.0.0.0 only inside a container/cloud context (Docker, Railway, Render, Kubernetes). Never bind to 0.0.0.0 on a local dev machine – it exposes the server to your local network (NeighborJack risk); the server logs a warning if you do so outside a detected container.

Transport is selected via MCP_TRANSPORT (stdio default, or sse / streamable-http); --http is kept as an alias for streamable-http.

Authentication (optional)

The HTTP transport is open by default (public read-only data). To require a bearer token, serve via the CORS/auth app factory and set MCP_BEARER_TOKENS:

MCP_BEARER_TOKENS="alice:tok_abc,bob:tok_def" MCP_ALLOWED_ORIGINS="https://claude.ai" \
  uvicorn parlament_mcp.server:create_http_app --factory --host 0.0.0.0 --port 8080

Each request then needs Authorization: Bearer <token>; identity comes from the validated token, not a session header (see docs/security.md).

Docker

docker compose up --build          # binds 127.0.0.1:8080 only
# or build the hardened image directly (non-root, read-only FS):
docker build -t parlament-mcp .

Kubernetes manifests (hardened securityContext, resource limits, egress NetworkPolicy, Mcp-Session-Id sticky routing) live in deploy/k8s/; an HAProxy stick-table example is in deploy/haproxy.cfg.

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🔗 Synergies

Partner Server	Combination
fedlex-mcp	Law text ↔ parliamentary debate that created it
zurich-opendata-mcp	City policy ↔ cantonal/federal motions
swiss-statistics-mcp	Data backing ↔ motions citing statistics

Power query example:

"Zeige mir alle Zürcher Motionen zu KI in der Bildung
 und verlinke die relevanten Bundesgesetze aus fedlex-mcp."

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📊 Data Source

• API: ws.parlament.ch/odata.svc
• Authentication: None (Phase 1 – No-Auth-First)
• Protocol: OData v3 / JSON
• Coverage: All parliamentary businesses since 1978; votes and transcripts
• Update cycle: Real-time (official government data)

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📜 Data sources & licenses

Source	License	Attribution
Curia Vista (ws.parlament.ch)	CC BY 4.0	© Schweizer Parlament, CC BY 4.0

Every tool returns a typed structured response (FastMCP exposes the output schema) carrying source, license, provenance, match_type and count alongside typed results. Data is passed through unmodified.

🧭 Phase

This server is in Phase 1 — Read-only Wrapper (all tools readOnlyHint: true, no writes). The full phase model and transition criteria are in docs/roadmap.md.

🔖 MCP Protocol Version

Tested/targeted against MCP spec 2025-06-18 (pinned as PROTOCOL_VERSION in src/parlament_mcp/config.py). SDK updates are proposed monthly via Dependabot; spec-version bumps are recorded in CHANGELOG.md.

🧱 MCP primitives

Phase 1 uses Tools only — rationale and the Phase-2 Resources plan are in docs/adr/ADR-003-mcp-primitives.md.

🏷️ Tool annotations

All tools declare explicit annotations consistent with their behaviour:

Tool	readOnly	destructive	idempotent	openWorld
parlament_search_business	✅	—	✅	✅
parlament_get_business	✅	—	✅	✅
parlament_search_members	✅	—	✅	✅
parlament_get_votes	✅	—	✅	✅
parlament_get_sessions	✅	—	✅	✅
parlament_get_transcripts	✅	—	✅	✅

📈 Observability

Structured JSON logs go to stderr (stdout stays reserved for the stdio protocol). OpenTelemetry tracing wraps each tool call and auto-instruments outgoing HTTP; set OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_ENDPOINT (with the otel-export extra) to ship spans. See docs/security.md for the full security posture (Lethal-Trifecta assessment, egress allow-list, gateway hardening).

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🛡️ Safety & Limits

Aspect	Details
Access	Read-only (readOnlyHint: true) — the server cannot modify or delete any data
Personal data	Parliamentary businesses are public record by law (BGÖ). No private data is accessed or stored.
Rate limits	Built-in per-query caps: max. 100 results (businesses/members), 50 (votes/transcripts), 10 (sessions)
Timeout	20 seconds per API call
Authentication	No API keys required — Curia Vista is publicly accessible
Data source	Official Swiss federal government data (Schweizerische Parlamentsdienste)
Terms of Service	Subject to ToS of ws.parlament.ch — Schweizerische Parlamentsdienste

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Known Limitations

• OData substringof() filter is case-sensitive for some fields
• Transcript text search can be slow for very broad queries (use limit to control)
• Session names may be null in the API for very recent sessions – use session ID
• Language filter is mandatory; currently only DE is fully tested (FR, IT available)

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Contributing

See CONTRIBUTING.md.

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License

MIT malkreide