amurshak/congressMCP

**Live U.S. Congressional data for any MCP client — Claude Code, ChatGPT, Copilot, Codex, Cursor, OpenCode, Gemini CLI, Grok Build, and more.**
Bills, full bill text, votes, members, committees, hearings, nominations, and the Congressional Record — queried in natural language through the Model Context Protocol. Runs locally on your machine against the free Congress.gov and GovInfo APIs. No account, no hosted service, no telemetry.
Quick Start
1. Get a free Congress.gov API key
Sign up at **api.congress.gov/sign-up** — takes 30 seconds. The same key also works for GovInfo (full bill text).
2. Install uv
CongressMCP is published on PyPI and launched with uvx, which ships with uv:
(brew install uv, winget install astral-sh.uv, and pipx install uv also work.) Prefer pip? pip install congressmcp gives you a congressmcp command you can use in place of uvx congressmcp below.
3. Connect your client
Every client needs the same three facts: **command** uvx, **args** ["congressmcp"], **env** CONGRESS_API_KEY. Clients are listed roughly by how many professional developers use them today (JetBrains Developer Ecosystem survey, mid-2026, then Pragmatic Engineer's 2026 tooling survey), so the one you want is probably near the top:
| Client | Where it's configured | Notes |
|--------|-----------------------|-------|
| Claude Code | claude mcp add … or .mcp.json | |
| ChatGPT | Developer mode → connector URL | remote only — needs HTTP mode |
| VS Code / GitHub Copilot | .vscode/mcp.json | uses servers + inputs |
| OpenAI Codex CLI | codex mcp add … or ~/.codex/config.toml | TOML |
| Cursor | ~/.cursor/mcp.json or .cursor/mcp.json | |
| JetBrains AI Assistant / Junie | Settings → AI Assistant → MCP | paste the Claude Desktop JSON |
| OpenCode | opencode.json → mcp | command is a single array |
| Gemini CLI | gemini mcp add … or ~/.gemini/settings.json | |
| Claude.ai | Connectors → custom connector URL | remote only — needs HTTP mode |
| Claude Desktop | claude_desktop_config.json | |
| Windsurf | ~/.codeium/windsurf/mcp_config.json | |
| Zed | settings.json → context_servers | |
| Cline / Roo Code | MCP settings panel → edit JSON | |
| Goose | goose configure or ~/.config/goose/config.yaml | YAML |
| Grok Build | grok mcp add … or ~/.grok/config.toml | TOML; also auto-imports Claude Code / Cursor config |
| Hermes Agent | hermes mcp add … or ~/.hermes/config.yaml | YAML |
| OpenClaw | openclaw mcp add … or ~/.openclaw/openclaw.json | JSON5 |
| Continue | ~/.continue/config.yaml | YAML, agent mode only |
| Open WebUI | Admin → Integrations → MCP server URL | remote only — needs HTTP mode |
| LM Studio | Program tab → mcp.json | Cursor-style JSON |
Anything not listed that speaks MCP over stdio will work with the same three values.
Claude Code
Put the server name *before* --env as shown — if --env comes first, the CLI tries to parse the name as another KEY=value pair. Equivalent .mcp.json:
${VAR} / ${VAR:-default} are expanded from your environment, so the key never has to be committed.
VS Code / GitHub Copilot
Workspace: .vscode/mcp.json (or Command Palette → **MCP: Add Server** / **MCP: Open User Configuration** for user-level). VS Code uses servers rather than mcpServers, and inputs lets it prompt for the key and store it securely instead of writing it to disk:
VS Code shows a trust prompt the first time the server starts.
OpenAI Codex CLI
Or in ~/.codex/config.toml (also read by the Codex IDE extension and the ChatGPT desktop app; project-level .codex/config.toml works in trusted projects):
To inline the key instead, replace the env_vars line with a [mcp_servers.congressmcp.env] table containing CONGRESS_API_KEY = "…". Check with codex mcp list or /mcp inside a session.
Cursor
Global: ~/.cursor/mcp.json. Per-project: .cursor/mcp.json.
${env:NAME} reads from your shell environment; a literal key string works too.
JetBrains AI Assistant / Junie
**AI Assistant**: Settings → **Tools → AI Assistant → Model Context Protocol (MCP) → Add → As JSON** and paste the Claude Desktop block (there's also an *Import from Claude* button that reads claude_desktop_config.json).
**Junie**: Settings → **Tools → Junie → MCP Settings**, which edits ~/.junie/mcp/mcp.json (global) or .junie/mcp/mcp.json (project) — same mcpServers shape.