Ebsa MCP Server

@pipeworx/ebsa — EBSA civil-penalty enforcement

Closed US Department of Labor Employee Benefits Security Administration civil-penalty enforcement actions since 2000 — deficient-filer, late-filer and non-filer penalty assessments against ERISA benefit-plan sponsors for their Form 5500 filings. form5500 already covers the filings themselves (what sponsors reported); this is EBSA's own enforcement record against sponsors who filed deficiently, late, or not at all — distinct from dol-whd (Wage & Hour back-wage/overtime cases) and osha (safety citations), both of which already live on this same DOL API gateway.

Part of Pipeworx — an MCP gateway connecting AI agents to 1863+ live data sources. This is an independent, unofficial integration — not affiliated with, endorsed by, or published by the upstream provider.

This is a civil-penalty / filing-compliance enforcement record, not a fiduciary-breach litigation docket — EBSA does not publish a bulk dataset of individual fiduciary-breach case outcomes. This is the enforcement dataset that actually exists in structured, bulk-queryable form.

Tools

Auth

Platform key (PLATFORM_DOL_KEY, already set on the gateway for dol-whd and osha) with BYO override via _apiKey. A free key from https://dataportal.dol.gov covers every DOL dataset on this gateway. A live sibling call (dol_whd whd_search) confirmed the platform key is valid right now (2026-10-17) — no new key needed.

Live proxy, same gateway as dol-whd and osha

This pack calls apiprod.dol.gov/v4 — the identical gateway, auth shape and query grammar dol-whd already documents in full in its own README and src/index.ts header. Every trap there applies verbatim here and is not re-derived:

• The catalog endpoint (/v4/datasets/10361) takes an X-API-KEY header or no key at all; the row endpoint (/v4/get/EBSA/ocats/json) rejects a header and needs the key as a query parameter.
• A zero-match query answers HTTP 204 with an empty body, not a 200 with {"data":[]}.
• The upstream throttles by source IP, not by key, and sends no Retry-After — this pack backs off twice, then returns { found: false, reason: "upstream_rate_limited" }.
• filter_object keywords (field, operator, value, and, or) must be lowercase; a wrong dataset name and a malformed filter both answer a generic HTTP 500.

Fields (from the live dataset, not guessed)

Verified live 2026-10-17 against the dataset's own 10-row preview (no key needed to read it): case_type, ein, pn (plan number), plan_year, plan_name, plan_admin, plan_admin_state, plan_admin_zip_code, final_close_reason, final_close_date, penalty_amount, load_dt.

penalty_amount is a DOL-assigned STRING BUCKET, not an exact dollar figure — observed live values include "over $100,000", "$50,001 - $100,000", "$0-$10,000". This pack passes it through verbatim as penalty_amount_bucket and never parses it into a number.

case_type values observed live: "Deficient Filer" (the only value in the 10-row preview sample); the dataset's own description also names "late filers" and "non-filers" among the enforcement focus. case_type is matched with like (substring), not an exact enum, since the precise casing of every value was not exhaustively observed.

No individual PII

plan_admin identifies the plan administrator/sponsor — almost always a business entity making a mandatory public filing (e.g. "Shell USA, Inc.", "Veeva Systems Inc.", "Spectrum Brands, Inc." in the live preview), not a private person. Unlike the LCA/PERM record layouts, OCATS carries no point-of-contact or attorney name/email/phone columns at all — there is nothing to drop because the dataset never collected it.

Data sources

• U.S. Department of Labor, Employee Benefits Security Administration — Office of the Chief Accountant Case Tracking System (OCATS). Closed enforcement cases with a penalty assessment since 2000, published quarterly.
• https://dataportal.dol.gov — key registration and the API Query Builder (same portal dol-whd documents).

Gotchas

• ebsa_coverage's close-date sample needs a key (same as whd_coverage); the catalog half (name/description/frequency/published_at) does not.
• A sponsor query matches both plan_admin and plan_name with like, and the response says which field matched (matched_fields) — a plan's own name sometimes names the sponsor (e.g. "Shell USA, Inc. Health & Wellbeing Plan") when the administrator field alone would miss it.

Quick Start

Add to your MCP client (Claude Desktop, Cursor, Windsurf, etc.):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "ebsa": {
      "url": "https://gateway.pipeworx.io/ebsa/mcp"
    }
  }
}

What this endpoint actually serves

tools/list at https://gateway.pipeworx.io/ebsa/mcp returns the tools in the table above plus the shared Pipeworx meta-tools — ask_pipeworx, discover_tools, search_within, remember/recall and the rest of the gateway-wide set. So the tool count you see is larger than this table: a single-pack endpoint currently lists roughly 30 shared tools alongside the pack's own. The connection's initialize response states its exact scope, and is the authoritative answer for a given day.

This is deliberate, not multiplexing by accident. The meta-tools are what let a scoped connection answer a question this pack does not cover — via ask_pipeworx, which routes across the whole catalog — without you adding a second MCP server. There is currently no way to mount a pack endpoint without them; if the extra schemas cost you more context than the routing is worth, connect to the full gateway once rather than to several pack endpoints.

Or connect to the full Pipeworx gateway to get every pack's tools listed directly, instead of just this one's:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "pipeworx": {
      "url": "https://gateway.pipeworx.io/mcp"
    }
  }
}

Both URLs reach the same gateway and the same 1863+ data sources. The only difference is which pack's tools are listed directly; ask_pipeworx reaches all of them from either one.

No MCP client? Call it over HTTP

curl -X POST https://gateway.pipeworx.io/v1/tools/ebsa_search \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{"sponsor":"Shell"}'

No account needed for the first calls. Inspect any tool: GET https://gateway.pipeworx.io/v1/tools/ebsa_search. Find one: POST https://gateway.pipeworx.io/v1/tools/search_packs with {"query":"..."}.

Run it from npm

@pipeworx/mcp-ebsa is a local stdio bridge to the Pipeworx gateway: your MCP client starts it with npx, and it forwards every call to the same https://gateway.pipeworx.io/ebsa/mcp endpoint shown above. It needs network access; there is no offline mode.

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "ebsa": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@pipeworx/mcp-ebsa"]
    }
  }
}

Without a key it calls anonymously, capped at 50 calls a day. A free account raises that to 200 a day: get a key at https://pipeworx.io/signup and add "env": { "PIPEWORX_API_KEY": "<your key>" } to the server entry. The key is sent as a Bearer token, the same way a hosted connection sends it, so calls are metered and billed exactly as they are there.

It lists only this pack's tools by default. Set PIPEWORX_META_TOOLS=1 to also list ask_pipeworx and the other gateway-wide tools.

Behind an HTTPS proxy: Node's built-in fetch does not read HTTPS_PROXY by default. Newer Node releases honour it when NODE_USE_ENV_PROXY=1 is set; check your Node version's documentation.

Using with ask_pipeworx

Instead of calling tools directly, you can ask questions in plain English — this works on the pack endpoint above as well as on the full gateway:

ask_pipeworx({ question: "your question about Ebsa data" })

The gateway picks the right tool and fills the arguments automatically.

More

• Docs and guides
• pipeworx.io

License

MIT