@pipeworx/treasury-tic

Foreign holdings of U.S. securities, by country and month, from the U.S. Treasury's Treasury International Capital (TIC) System — the capital-flows survey behind "China holds $X of US Treasuries" headlines. This is a different Treasury system from the daily fiscal ledger the treasury-fiscal pack covers, and a series FRED does not carry.

Part of Pipeworx — an MCP gateway connecting AI agents to 1857+ live data sources. This is an independent, unofficial integration — not affiliated with, endorsed by, or published by the upstream provider.

Tools

• tic_foreign_holdings(country?, month?, limit?) — foreign holdings of U.S. long-term securities (Treasury, agency bonds, corporate bonds, corporate equity) by country and month. Pass country for one country's recent history; omit it for a ranking of the largest foreign holders in a given month.

• tic_major_treasury_holders(country?, month?, limit?) — the "Major Foreign Holders of Treasury Securities" ranking: the ~20 largest individual foreign holders of U.S. Treasury securities plus an "All Other" bucket, the grand total, and the foreign-official-sector (central bank/government) split. This is the specific number financial press quotes per country.

Related MCP server: fred-mcp

Auth

Keyless. The upstream answers without a credential, and no _apiKey is accepted.

Data sources

• U.S. Department of the Treasury, Treasury International Capital (TIC) System — the monthly survey of foreign holdings of U.S. long-term securities, broken out by country and security type, and the Major Foreign Holders of Treasury Securities ranking derived from it. U.S. federal government data; no reuse restriction.

Cadence and coverage

• Monthly, published roughly 6 weeks after the reference month (e.g. August data in mid-October).

• tic_foreign_holdings covers essentially every country and a set of regional/institutional-sector aggregates (totals, "Of Which:" breakouts), back to 2011 or earlier for most countries.

• tic_major_treasury_holders only names the ~20 largest individual holders; everyone else is folded into "All Other". Asking it for a smaller country returns found: false with a pointer to tic_foreign_holdings instead, which does cover that country.

Common pitfalls

• These two tools answer different questions. tic_foreign_holdings's treasury_holdings_usd_mil for a country and tic_major_treasury_holders's holdings_usd_bil for the same country/month should be close (same underlying survey) but are not guaranteed byte-identical — the Major Foreign Holders ranking is Treasury's own derived table, not a mechanical re-slice of Table 1.

• Units differ: tic_foreign_holdings reports USD millions, tic_major_treasury_holders reports USD billions — each response carries its own unit field, read it rather than assuming.

• A country name has to resolve to the publisher's own label. "China" resolves to "China, Mainland" via a small alias table; an unresolvable name returns found: false with suggestions rather than an empty result.

• Revisions happen. Both files are refetched live on every call, so a mid-month correction to a prior month's figure shows up immediately rather than being frozen at whatever we first saw.

Quick Start

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

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

What this endpoint actually serves

tools/list at https://gateway.pipeworx.io/treasury-tic/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 1857+ 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/tic_foreign_holdings \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{"limit":5}'

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

Run it from npm

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

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

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 Treasury Tic data" })

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

More

• Docs and guides

• pipeworx.io

License

MIT