Verify a contractor's current license or registration status before awarding work, signing a contract, or performing due diligence.

Call this tool when you need to:

• Confirm a contractor is currently licensed and in good standing

• Check whether a license is active, expired, suspended, or revoked

• Look up a contractor by license/registration number (preferred — exact match) or by business name (partial match, may return multiple)

• Retrieve license type, effective and expiration dates from official government records

Currently supports: WA (Washington State) via WA L&I open data (includes real bond + insurance data); CA (California) via CSLB Check-A-License. Call list_supported_jurisdictions first if unsure whether a state is supported.

Returns structured JSON with found status, normalized status enum (active|expired|suspended|revoked|unknown), license type, dates, bond/insurance notes, and the raw source record. If business_name matches multiple contractors, a "matches" array (up to 10) is returned instead of a single result.

At least one of license_number or business_name must be provided.

List all US states (jurisdictions) supported by this contractor license verification server, with their data source and availability status.

Call this tool when:

• You need to check whether a specific state is supported before calling verify_license

• You want to display available options to the user

• You need the authoritative data source URL for a jurisdiction

Returns an array of jurisdictions with code, full name, source, and status (live or coming_soon).