us-govdata-mcp

MCP server for US government data — search building permits, federal contract opportunities (SAM.gov), and the national healthcare provider registry (NPI/NPPES) from Claude, Cursor, or any Model Context Protocol client.

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All three data sources are official government publications (city open-data portals, SAM.gov's public extract, the CMS NPPES API) — no HTML scraping, no logins, no fragile selectors. The heavy lifting is done by three production Apify actors that run on your own Apify account.

Tools

Tool	What it searches	Typical filters	Price*
search_building_permits	Building permits from 10 official city/county open-data sources (NYC, Chicago, LA, Austin, SF, New Orleans, Baton Rouge, Montgomery Co. MD, Norfolk VA) — permit type, status, valuation, contractor name/license	cities, issued date range, permit type, full-text, min valuation	$0.005 / record
search_federal_contract_opportunities	Federal RFPs, solicitations, sources-sought and award notices from SAM.gov — with contracting-officer emails and phones	keyword, NAICS, notice type, set-aside (8A, WOSB, HUBZone...), agency, state, dates	$0.004 / record
search_healthcare_providers	The official CMS NPI registry of 8M+ US providers and healthcare organizations — specialty, license, practice phone/fax, authorized officials	specialty, state, city, ZIP (wildcards), provider/organization name	$0.002 / record

* Honest pricing disclosure: these tools run paid, pay-per-result Apify actors published by CBLU. Your Apify account is charged only for records actually returned — there are no subscriptions or start fees. Every tool defaults to 25 results per call, so a typical call costs a fraction of a cent (25 permits ≈ $0.13; 25 contract notices ≈ $0.10; 25 providers ≈ $0.05). Apify's free plan includes monthly platform credit, which is enough to use these tools casually at no cost. Actor pages with full pricing details:

• US Building Permits Scraper
• SAM.gov Contract Opportunities Scraper
• NPI Registry Scraper

Quick start

1. Get an Apify token (free, ~2 minutes)

1. Sign up at https://console.apify.com/sign-up (free plan works).
2. Copy your API token from https://console.apify.com/settings/integrations.

The server starts and lists its tools without a token — the token is only needed when a tool is actually called.

2. Add the server to your MCP client

Claude Desktop (claude_desktop_config.json → Settings → Developer → Edit Config):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "us-govdata": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "github:CBLU2005/us-govdata-mcp"],
      "env": {
        "APIFY_TOKEN": "your_apify_token_here"
      }
    }
  }
}

Claude Code:

claude mcp add us-govdata -e APIFY_TOKEN=your_apify_token_here -- npx -y github:CBLU2005/us-govdata-mcp

Cursor / Windsurf / other MCP clients (same shape as Claude Desktop):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "us-govdata": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "github:CBLU2005/us-govdata-mcp"],
      "env": { "APIFY_TOKEN": "your_apify_token_here" }
    }
  }
}

From a local clone:

git clone https://github.com/CBLU2005/us-govdata-mcp.git
cd us-govdata-mcp
npm install && npm run build
# then point your client at: node /path/to/us-govdata-mcp/dist/index.js

Docker:

docker build -t us-govdata-mcp .
docker run -i --rm -e APIFY_TOKEN=your_apify_token_here us-govdata-mcp        # stdio
docker run --rm -p 3000:3000 -e APIFY_TOKEN=... us-govdata-mcp --http 3000    # Streamable HTTP

3. Ask your AI agent things like

• "Find building permits for new construction over $500k issued in Austin this month, with contractor names."
• "Any active small-business set-aside cybersecurity solicitations with a response deadline after today? Include the contracting officer's email."
• "List dentists in the greater Miami area (ZIP 331) with their practice phone numbers."*

Transports

• stdio (default) — what desktop MCP clients use: us-govdata-mcp
• Streamable HTTP — stateless endpoint at POST /mcp, health check at GET /healthz: us-govdata-mcp --http 3000 (or set MCP_HTTP_PORT=3000)

Environment variables

Variable	Required	Purpose
APIFY_TOKEN	For tool calls	Your Apify API token. Server start & tool listing work without it; tool calls return a setup guide until it is set.
APIFY_DRY_RUN	No	Set to 1 to return canned sample records without any network call or charge — the response includes the exact Apify API request that would have been sent. Useful for testing and CI.
MCP_HTTP_PORT	No	Start in Streamable HTTP mode on this port instead of stdio.

How it works

Each tool validates its arguments (zod), builds the actor input, and calls the Apify API's run-sync-get-dataset-items endpoint with your token via an Authorization: Bearer header (never in the URL). The actor runs on the Apify platform under your account and the resulting dataset items are returned directly as the tool result. This server keeps no state and sees no data beyond passing it through.

Development

npm install
npm test          # builds + runs the full smoke suite (introspection, tokenless
                  # error path, dry-run request construction, HTTP transport)

The test suite needs no Apify account and no network — it uses APIFY_DRY_RUN=1.

Related

• Apify Store profile with all CBLU actors: https://apify.com/cblu
• Model Context Protocol: https://modelcontextprotocol.io

License

MIT © CBLU