Reginfo MCP Server

@pipeworx/reginfo

The Unified Agenda of Federal Regulatory and Deregulatory Actions — every RIN (Regulation Identifier Number) a federal agency has told OIRA it intends to propose, finalize, or has completed, published biannually since Fall 1995. This is the LEADING record ahead of ecfr/federal-register's trailing one: an agency's "planning to propose X" shows up here, edition by edition, often years before the same rule actually publishes or takes effect.

Part of Pipeworx — an MCP gateway connecting AI agents to 1866+ live data sources. This is an independent, unofficial integration — not affiliated with, endorsed by, or published by the upstream provider.

Tools

• reg_agenda_search(agency?, keyword?, stage?, edition?, limit?) — search RINs by agency, free-text keyword, and/or rulemaking stage. Defaults to the newest edition on file.
• reg_rin(rin) — full detail for one RIN across EVERY edition it has appeared in, showing how its stage/status changed over time.
• reg_agency_agenda(agency, edition?, limit?) — one agency's full regulatory agenda for an edition, grouped by rule_stage.
• reg_agenda_coverage() — which editions are currently loaded (oldest/newest, total rows).

Auth

Keyless — no operator key needed. Backed by reginfo_rins, refreshed monthly by workers/data-pipeline (dataset reginfo).

Data sources

• https://www.reginfo.gov/public/do/XMLReportList — the Unified Agenda report index.
• https://www.reginfo.gov/public/do/XMLViewFileAction?f=REGINFO_RIN_DATA_202504.xml — one biannual edition's full XML (~16.5MB, ~3,800 RIN_INFO records). Editions run REGINFO_RIN_DATA_199510.xml .. present, April(04)/October(10) each year.

A missing edition answers HTTP 200, not 404. reginfo.gov serves a ~50KB HTML "no such report" page (Content-Type: text/html) for an edition that was never published — a real edition answers Content-Type: application/xml. The ingest HEAD-probes content-type before ever GETting a file, so a not-yet- published edition (or a genuine off-cycle gap in the pre-2000 grid) costs a cheap HEAD request rather than leaking an HTML page into the data.

One row PER (rin, publication_id), not per RIN. A RIN's rule_stage changes edition to edition ("Proposed Rule Stage" → "Final Rule Stage" → "Completed Actions") — that history is the whole point of this dataset, so a newer edition never overwrites an older one. reg_rin returns every edition a RIN has appeared in, newest first.

Coverage grows in gradually, not all at once. The backfill drains in edition by edition rather than loading all ~60 editions back to 1995 in one pass; reg_agenda_coverage reports exactly which editions are loaded right now, so a caller can tell "not backfilled yet" apart from "genuinely never published".

Agency matching covers name, acronym, AND code, and matches on either the direct agency or its PARENT — asking for "Interior" also surfaces its sub-agencies' (e.g. Fish & Wildlife) rules, since the source records both levels per RIN.

The abstract is HTML wrapped in CDATA in the source XML. The ingest strips tags and decodes entities before writing the abstract column, so callers only ever see plain text.

Quick Start

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

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

What this endpoint actually serves

tools/list at https://gateway.pipeworx.io/reginfo/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 1866+ 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/reg_agenda_search \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{"agency":"EPA","limit":25}'

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

Run it from npm

@pipeworx/mcp-reginfo 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/reginfo/mcp endpoint shown above. It needs network access; there is no offline mode.

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

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 Reginfo data" })

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

More

• Docs and guides
• pipeworx.io

License

MIT