nyc-record-mcp

An MCP (Model Context Protocol) server for NYC City Record notices, powered by the NYC Open Data dataset.

The City Record is the official publication of the City of New York — procurement solicitations, contract awards, public hearings, and agency notices, all in one place.

Vibe coded with Claude by BetaNYC.

API key

No API key is required. The City Record dataset is public and this server works out of the box — no signup, no token.

Optionally, you can set a free NYC Open Data (Socrata) app token to get higher rate limits under heavy use. It is not needed for normal use. To use one, set it as the SOCRATA_APP_TOKEN environment variable:

export SOCRATA_APP_TOKEN="your-app-token"

Related MCP server: CivicDataForge

What it does

Exposes 7 tools over MCP:

Tools reference

search_notices

Full-text search across notice titles, descriptions, and agency names.

search_notices("affordable housing")
search_notices("cybersecurity", limit=50)

get_notices_by_agency

Get notices from a specific city agency. Accepts partial name matches.

get_notices_by_agency("DCAS")
get_notices_by_agency("Department of City Planning")
get_notices_by_agency("Parks")

get_notices_by_type

Filter notices by type.

get_notices_by_type("Solicitation")
get_notices_by_type("Public Hearings")
get_notices_by_type("Award", limit=50)

get_procurement_notices

Returns recent solicitations, awards, intent-to-award, and vendor list notices — the full procurement lifecycle.

get_procurement_notices()
get_procurement_notices(limit=100)

get_public_hearings

Returns recent public hearings, public comment periods, agency meetings, and general notices.

get_public_hearings()

get_open_solicitations

Returns active solicitations where the due date has not yet passed, sorted by soonest deadline first.

get_open_solicitations()
get_open_solicitations(limit=50)

get_notices_by_date_range

Get all City Record notices published within a date range.

get_notices_by_date_range("2026-05-01", "2026-05-19")
get_notices_by_date_range("2026-01-01", "2026-03-31", limit=200)

Common workflows

Track open RFPs before they close

get_open_solicitations()        → sorted by due date — soonest first
search_notices("technology")    → filter by topic to narrow scope

Monitor a specific agency's procurement activity

get_notices_by_agency("DOITT")           → all recent notices
get_notices_by_type("Solicitation")      → open bids from any agency

Research recent contract awards

get_notices_by_type("Award")             → recent contract awards
search_notices("cybersecurity award")    → keyword-filtered awards

Find public comment opportunities

get_public_hearings()                    → hearings, meetings, comment periods
get_notices_by_date_range("2026-05-01", "2026-05-31")   → by month

Prerequisites

• Node.js 18 or later

• No API key required — the dataset is public

• Optional: NYC Open Data app token for higher rate limits (set as SOCRATA_APP_TOKEN)

Installation

From v1.1.1 the server is also published to the official MCP Registry as io.github.BetaNYC/nyc-record-mcp.

Option 1 — npx (no install required)

npx @betanyc/nyc-record-mcp

Option 2 — global install

npm install -g @betanyc/nyc-record-mcp
nyc-record-mcp

Option 3 — build from source

git clone https://github.com/BetaNYC/nyc-record-mcp.git
cd nyc-record-mcp
npm install
npm run build
npm start

Run the test suite (builds first, then runs the Node test runner against test/*.test.mjs):

npm test

Configuration

Claude Desktop

Add to your claude_desktop_config.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "nyc-record": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@betanyc/nyc-record-mcp"]
    }
  }
}

With an optional app token:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "nyc-record": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@betanyc/nyc-record-mcp"],
      "env": {
        "SOCRATA_APP_TOKEN": "your_token_here"
      }
    }
  }
}

Claude Code

Add it with the CLI:

claude mcp add nyc-record -- npx -y @betanyc/nyc-record-mcp

Or add to your project's .mcp.json (checked in, shared with your team):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "nyc-record": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@betanyc/nyc-record-mcp"]
    }
  }
}

Example usage

Once connected, you can ask your AI assistant things like:

• "What RFPs are currently open from the Department of City Planning?"

• "What contracts did DCAS award this month?"

• "Are there any public hearings about zoning this week?"

• "What solicitations related to cybersecurity are still open?"

• "Show me all City Record notices from Parks Department in April 2026."

Data source

All data comes from the NYC City Record Online dataset on NYC Open Data, published by the NYC Department of Citywide Administrative Services (DCAS). The dataset is updated daily and includes notices published in the official City Record since 2015.

Related projects

If you're looking for broader access to NYC Open Data — or Socrata-powered portals in other cities — check out Nathan Storey's socrata-mcp-server. It connects AI assistants to any Socrata portal with tools for dataset discovery and SoQL queries, including NYC, Chicago, San Francisco, and New York State's open data portal (data.ny.gov), among hundreds more. The SODA API pattern in this project was informed by Nathan's work.

About BetaNYC

This project is built and maintained by BetaNYC, New York's civic technology and open-data community. We work to improve lives in New York through civic design, technology, data, and public-interest technology.

Come do civic tech with us. We run public events, meetups, and hands-on data classes throughout the year — including NYC School of Data and CityCamp NYC, and we host frequent civic-tech gatherings. See what's coming up on our events calendar.

Sustain this work. These MCP servers are free and open source. To help keep this work going and find BetaNYC's tools, please consider donating and becoming a Beta Builder.

Building on this? Tell us!

If you build something with this project, we'd love to hear about it. We can help other New Yorkers find it. BetaNYC publishes a weekly newsletter, This Week in NYC's Civic Technology and Open Data.

• Subscribe to the newsletter to keep up with NYC civic tech, open data, and public-interest technology.

• Built something, or found a story worth sharing? Submit a link for the newsletter and we'll consider it for an upcoming issue.

Related BetaNYC MCP servers

BetaNYC maintains a suite of open-source MCP servers for NYC and NYS civic data. See the full directory, with install details for each, at beta.nyc/ai-tools.

This server pairs directly with:

• nyc-checkbook-mcp: move from a procurement solicitation or award notice to the resulting registered contract, payments, and agency spending in Checkbook.

Working with the wider NYC Open Data portal? This server reads the City Record dataset on NYC Open Data. To search the full catalog or run ad-hoc SoQL queries across other datasets, pair it with socrata-mcp-server (socrata-mcp-server on npm), a third-party MCP by Nathan Storey.

Contributing

Issues and pull requests welcome at github.com/BetaNYC/nyc-record-mcp.

Releases

Releases are automated. Pushing a tag matching v* (e.g. v1.0.2) runs tests, verifies the tag matches the package.json version, publishes to npm with provenance, and creates a GitHub Release with generated notes. See CHANGELOG.md for version history. Requires the NPM_TOKEN repository secret.

Support our work

Freedom isn't free. Support BetaNYC.

License

MIT License

Copyright (c) 2026 BetaNYC

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.