legislens

legislens gives you a window onto US state lawmaking: bills moving through legislatures in all 50 states and DC, and what was actually said about them in committee hearings, attributed to the person who said it. One binary serves a command-line interface and a stdio MCP server.

legislens does not hold the archive itself. It is a forwarding client for a hosted API: each request is sent to that service and its answer is returned. The bills, testimony segments, transcripts, and coverage are the hosted service's; if it is unavailable or its coverage changes, legislens reflects that.

An API key is required. Set GAVELIN_API_KEY before use; when it is missing or blank, every tool fails with an error naming it before any request is made. The key is sent as Authorization: Bearer <key>. The API base URL can be overridden with LEGISLENS_API_URL; when it is not set, calls go to https://api.gavelin.ai (a reconstruction of the wire address, labelled as such).

Install

npx @reneturcios/legislens list_available_states

Or run the container image:

docker run -i ghcr.io/cloudcorprecords/legislens

The container defaults to the MCP server (see below). Pass CLI arguments to use it as a CLI instead.

Related MCP server: Gavelin

CLI

The subcommands mirror the MCP tool names:

export GAVELIN_API_KEY=<your key>

legislens search_bills --query housing --state CA --status passed
legislens search_bills --sponsor Lee --committee Housing --chamber assembly
legislens search_hearing_testimony --query "rent control" --speaker Lee
legislens get_bill_detail --bill-id CA-AB1
legislens get_speaker_activity --speaker "Jane Lee"
legislens search_committee_hearings --topic housing --from-date 2026-01-01 --to-date 2026-02-01
legislens get_hearing_transcript --hearing-id h-9
legislens list_available_states

legislens --version

Results print the upstream JSON payload. Exit codes: 0 on success, 1 when a call fails (including a missing key or an upstream API error), 2 for usage errors.

MCP server

One bin serves both faces. The mcp subcommand starts a stdio MCP server:

npx -y @reneturcios/legislens mcp

MCP client configuration:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "legislens": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@reneturcios/legislens", "mcp"],
      "env": { "GAVELIN_API_KEY": "..." }
    }
  }
}

Tools

Dates use YYYY-MM-DD form as from_date / to_date. All inputs are strings.

Development

npm install
npm run build   # tsc -> dist/
npm test        # node test runner over test/*.test.ts, no network (fake fetch fixtures)
npm run dev     # run the CLI from source via tsx

License

MIT — see LICENSE.