congressgov-mcp-server

Congress.gov Bill Summaries

congressgov_bill_summaries

Read-onlyIdempotent

Browse recent CRS (Congressional Research Service) bill summaries — plain-language summaries of bills at each legislative stage, useful for answering "what's happening in Congress?". The fromDateTime/toDateTime filters apply to the summary's update time, not the bill's action date, so results include recently rewritten summaries of older bills. Defaults to summaries updated in the last 7 days. Each item shows both the bill's action date and the summary update date. A page stops adding rows once it reaches a fixed response-character budget, and a summary longer than the per-row window arrives as an exact character window carrying textTotalCharacters/textTruncated/textNextOffset; pagination.nextOffset continues the page and a row's textNextOffset continues its text. For summaries of one specific bill — and to read a windowed summary to the end — use congressgov_bill_lookup with operation='summaries' instead.

Input Schema

TableJSON Schema

Name	Required	Description
`limit`	No	Results per page (1-250).
`offset`	No	Pagination offset.
`billType`	No	Bill type filter. Requires 'congress'.
`congress`	No	Congress number. Optional — omit for summaries across all congresses.
`toDateTime`	No	End of date range (ISO 8601), filtered on the summary update time. Defaults to now.
`fromDateTime`	No	Start of date range (ISO 8601), filtered on the summary update time. Defaults to 7 days ago if neither date param is set.

Output Schema

TableJSON Schema

Name	Required	Description
`data`	No	Result rows. Per-tool item shape is rendered in the markdown body.
`error`	No	Present when the call failed. Absent on success.
`notice`	No	Guidance when results are empty, a page is past the end, or a caveat applies.
`pagination`	No	Pagination metadata: total count and next offset.
`totalCount`	No	Total results across all pages.
`effectiveQuery`	No	The browse scope and applied filters.

Schema Changelog

Changes observed during successful MCP inspections.

Changed2 schema fields changedOct 13, 2026

changedOutput schema / properties / error / properties / data / properties / reason / description

Previous value: -"Machine-readable failure mode. Declared by this tool: `not_found`: A requested bill, member, committee, report, vote, or nomination does not exist in Congress.gov. `rate_limited`: The Congress.gov API rate limit (5,000 requests/hour per key) was exceeded. `invalid_request`: Congress.gov rejected the request as malformed — a bad date range or an identifier with an unexpected shape. `upstream_error`: Congress.gov returned an unexpected error (5xx or another non-2xx status). Other values are possible when a failure originates below the handler."New value: +"Machine-readable failure mode. Declared by this tool: `not_found`: A requested bill, member, committee, report, vote, or nomination does not exist in Congress.gov. `rate_limited`: A process-local attempt budget or the shared upstream credential/IP quota was reached; upstream hourly limits vary and DEMO_KEY also has a daily quota. `invalid_request`: Congress.gov rejected the request as malformed — a bad date range or an identifier with an unexpected shape. `upstream_error`: Congress.gov returned an unexpected error (5xx or another non-2xx status). `upstream_timeout`: The Congress.gov request deadline expired or the upstream returned an HTTP timeout response. Other values are possible when a failure originates below the handler."

changedOutput schema / properties / error / properties / data / properties / reason / examples

Previous value: -[
-  "not_found",
-  "rate_limited",
-  "invalid_request",
-  "upstream_error"
-]New value: +[
+  "not_found",
+  "rate_limited",
+  "invalid_request",
+  "upstream_error",
+  "upstream_timeout"
+]

Changed6 schema fields changedAug 25, 2026

changedInput schema / $schema

Previous value: -"http://json-schema.org/draft-07/schema#"New value: +"https://json-schema.org/draft/2020-12/schema"

addedInput schema / additionalProperties
```
Added value: +false
```

changedOutput schema / $schema

Previous value: -"http://json-schema.org/draft-07/schema#"New value: +"https://json-schema.org/draft/2020-12/schema"

addedOutput schema / anyOf

Added value: +[
+  {
+    "not": {
+      "required": [
+        "error"
+      ]
+    },
+    "required": [
+      "data",
+      "pagination",
+      "effectiveQuery",
+      "totalCount"
+    ]
+  },
+  {
+    "required": [
+      "error"
+    ]
+  }
+]

addedOutput schema / properties / error

Added value: +{
+  "additionalProperties": {},
+  "description": "Present when the call failed. Absent on success.",
+  "properties": {
+    "code": {
+      "description": "JSON-RPC error code for this failure.",
+      "maximum": 9007199254740991,
+      "minimum": -9007199254740991,
+      "type": "integer"
+    },
+    "data": {
+      "additionalProperties": {},
+      "properties": {
+        "reason": {
+          "description": "Machine-readable failure mode. Declared by this tool: `not_found`: A requested bill, member, committee, report, vote, or nomination does not exist in Congress.gov. `rate_limited`: The Congress.gov API rate limit (5,000 requests/hour per key) was exceeded. `invalid_request`: Congress.gov rejected the request as malformed — a bad date range or an identifier with an unexpected shape. `upstream_error`: Congress.gov returned an unexpected error (5xx or another non-2xx status). Other values are possible when a failure originates below the handler.",
+          "examples": [
+            "not_found",
+            "rate_limited",
+            "invalid_request",
+            "upstream_error"
+          ],
+          "type": "string"
+        },
+        "recovery": {
+          "additionalProperties": {},
+          "description": "Actionable next step for the caller.",
+          "properties": {
+            "hint": {
+              "type": "string"
+            }
+          },
+          "required": [
+            "hint"
+          ],
+          "type": "object"
+        },
+        "retryable": {
+          "description": "Whether retrying may succeed.",
+          "type": "boolean"
+        }
+      },
+      "type": "object"
+    },
+    "message": {
+      "description": "Human-readable description of what went wrong.",
+      "type": "string"
+    }
+  },
+  "required": [
+    "code",
+    "message"
+  ],
+  "type": "object"
+}

removedOutput schema / required

Removed value: -[
-  "data",
-  "pagination",
-  "effectiveQuery",
-  "totalCount"
-]

Changed5 schema fields changedMay 30, 2026

addedOutput schema / properties / effectiveQuery

Added value: +{
+  "description": "The browse scope and applied filters.",
+  "type": "string"
+}

addedOutput schema / properties / notice

Added value: +{
+  "description": "Guidance when results are empty, a page is past the end, or a caveat applies.",
+  "type": "string"
+}

removedOutput schema / properties / query

Removed value: -{
-  "description": "Echo of the applied filters for this query. Rendered as the first line of the response so the caller can confirm what was searched.",
-  "type": "string"
-}

addedOutput schema / properties / totalCount

Added value: +{
+  "description": "Total results across all pages.",
+  "type": "number"
+}

changedOutput schema / required

Previous value: -[
-  "data",
-  "pagination"
-]New value: +[
+  "data",
+  "pagination",
+  "effectiveQuery",
+  "totalCount"
+]

Changed5 schema fields changedMay 21, 2026

removedOutput schema / description

Removed value: -"Bill summary data from Congress.gov API."

addedOutput schema / properties / data

Added value: +{
+  "description": "Result rows. Per-tool item shape is rendered in the markdown body.",
+  "items": {
+    "additionalProperties": {},
+    "description": "Upstream JSON record. Per-tool item shape is rendered in the markdown body.",
+    "properties": {},
+    "type": "object"
+  },
+  "type": "array"
+}

addedOutput schema / properties / pagination

Added value: +{
+  "additionalProperties": false,
+  "description": "Pagination metadata: total count and next offset.",
+  "properties": {
+    "count": {
+      "description": "Total result count across all pages.",
+      "maximum": 9007199254740991,
+      "minimum": 0,
+      "type": "integer"
+    },
+    "nextOffset": {
+      "anyOf": [
+        {
+          "maximum": 9007199254740991,
+          "minimum": 0,
+          "type": "integer"
+        },
+        {
+          "type": "null"
+        }
+      ],
+      "description": "Offset to pass for the next page, or null when there are no more pages."
+    }
+  },
+  "required": [
+    "count"
+  ],
+  "type": "object"
+}

addedOutput schema / properties / query

Added value: +{
+  "description": "Echo of the applied filters for this query. Rendered as the first line of the response so the caller can confirm what was searched.",
+  "type": "string"
+}

addedOutput schema / required

Added value: +[
+  "data",
+  "pagination"
+]

Changed3 schema fields changedApr 21, 2026

removedOutput schema / properties / data

Removed value: -{
-  "description": "Bill summaries returned by Congress.gov. Preserves upstream item shapes instead of narrowing them.",
-  "items": {},
-  "type": "array"
-}

removedOutput schema / properties / pagination

Removed value: -{
-  "additionalProperties": false,
-  "description": "Pagination metadata for the returned summaries.",
-  "properties": {
-    "count": {
-      "description": "Total number of matching summaries.",
-      "maximum": 9007199254740991,
-      "minimum": 0,
-      "type": "integer"
-    },
-    "nextOffset": {
-      "anyOf": [
-        {
-          "maximum": 9007199254740991,
-          "minimum": 0,
-          "type": "integer"
-        },
-        {
-          "type": "null"
-        }
-      ],
-      "description": "Offset to request the next page, or null when there is no next page."
-    }
-  },
-  "required": [
-    "count",
-    "nextOffset"
-  ],
-  "type": "object"
-}

removedOutput schema / required

Removed value: -[
-  "data",
-  "pagination"
-]

Changed2 schema fields changedApr 19, 2026

changedInput schema / properties / fromDateTime / description

Previous value: -"Start of date range (ISO 8601). Defaults to 7 days ago if neither date param is set."New value: +"Start of date range (ISO 8601), filtered on the summary update time. Defaults to 7 days ago if neither date param is set."

changedInput schema / properties / toDateTime / description

Previous value: -"End of date range (ISO 8601). Defaults to now."New value: +"End of date range (ISO 8601), filtered on the summary update time. Defaults to now."

Changed3 schema fields changedApr 19, 2026

addedOutput schema / properties / data

Added value: +{
+  "description": "Bill summaries returned by Congress.gov. Preserves upstream item shapes instead of narrowing them.",
+  "items": {},
+  "type": "array"
+}

addedOutput schema / properties / pagination

Added value: +{
+  "additionalProperties": false,
+  "description": "Pagination metadata for the returned summaries.",
+  "properties": {
+    "count": {
+      "description": "Total number of matching summaries.",
+      "maximum": 9007199254740991,
+      "minimum": 0,
+      "type": "integer"
+    },
+    "nextOffset": {
+      "anyOf": [
+        {
+          "maximum": 9007199254740991,
+          "minimum": 0,
+          "type": "integer"
+        },
+        {
+          "type": "null"
+        }
+      ],
+      "description": "Offset to request the next page, or null when there is no next page."
+    }
+  },
+  "required": [
+    "count",
+    "nextOffset"
+  ],
+  "type": "object"
+}

addedOutput schema / required

Added value: +[
+  "data",
+  "pagination"
+]

First observedMar 28, 2026

TDQS

Score is being calculated.

All congressgov-mcp-server tools Inspect

Try in Browser

One endpoint for every MCP toolRayrun runs every MCP server behind one URL and holds the credentials. Each call is decided per client, tool, and argument, then recorded.ray.runAd

Glama MCP Gateway

Add one secure layer between your agents and this server.