# @pipeworx/alaska-code

Alaska Statutes (Alaska Code) — current statutory text by citation, and
topic/keyword search over official chapter catchlines, sourced live from
www.akleg.gov.

Part of [Pipeworx](https://pipeworx.io) — an MCP gateway connecting AI agents to 1861+ live data sources. This is an independent, unofficial integration — not affiliated with, endorsed by, or published by the upstream provider.

## Tools

- `ak_statute({citation})` — full text of one section by citation (e.g.
  `"4.11.010"` / `"AS 04.11.010"`, alcohol-license requirements; `"11.41.100"`,
  murder), with the official catchline and title/chapter context.
- `ak_search({query, limit?})` — topic/keyword search over the 942 live
  chapter catchlines across all 47 titles, e.g. `"alcohol license"`,
  `"murder"`. Not full-text search, and not section-level — akleg.gov
  exposes neither keylessly (see "Data sources").

## Auth

Keyless. No signup, no activation gate.

## Data sources

`https://www.akleg.gov/basis/statutes.asp` — the Alaska State Legislature's
own public statute viewer. It is driven as a GET AJAX endpoint (the page's
own `scripts/statutes.js` calls it this way):

- `?media=print&secStart={citation}&secEnd={citation}` — statute text for
  the half-open citation range `[secStart, secEnd)`. Citation shape is
  `title.chapter.section`, e.g. `4.11.010`. `ak_statute` always requests a
  single section (`secEnd` = the next section number) and gets back exactly
  one statute `div` block with no preceding Article/Chapter heading markup.
- `?media=js&type=TOC&title={N}` — the chapter list (number + official
  catchline) for Title N. Baked once into `src/ak-index-data.ts` by
  `scripts/bake-index.mjs` (47 requests, one per title).

Verified live from both a laptop and a `wrangler dev --remote` Worker on the
prod account on 2026-10-07 — identical byte lengths from both origins.
Keyless, `access-control-allow-origin: *`.

### The "not found" signal

A `secStart`/`secEnd` range that matches nothing — a nonexistent title, a
nonexistent chapter, or a genuine gap number inside a real chapter — always
comes back HTTP 200 with a **zero-length body** and no `FirstSec`/`LastSec`
response headers (all three cases verified live). A real section returns a
non-empty body. `ak_statute` branches on body length, not status code — a
non-200 status, or a non-empty body that does not parse as a statute
fragment, is thrown loud (`httpError` / a parse-error `Error`), never folded
into `found: false`.

### Not the same wall as Arkansas or Mississippi

Both of those states' own legislature sites link their code out to
`lexisnexis.com/hottopics/<state>code/`, which redirects to an
`advance.lexis.com/container?config=...` SPA shell requiring a Lexis
session — confirmed live and at the edge (same destination host, same
3,696-byte shell, for both states). Alaska's own site serves the statute
text itself, server-side, with no redirect to any third-party platform.

### Two capabilities available, two not

- Citation lookup — `ak_statute`.
- Topic/keyword search — `ak_search`, over official CHAPTER catchlines only
  (942 of them). akleg.gov's `type=TOC` call returns `"No Sections"` for a
  dotted (title.chapter) argument rather than a per-section listing
  (verified live) — unlike Idaho, there is no section-level catchline feed
  to bake.
- Amendment history — **NOT AVAILABLE**. Unlike Idaho, the statute fragment
  this endpoint returns carries no trailing history citation (checked
  against AS 11.41.100, a frequently amended section with multiple
  `[Repealed, ...]` sub-paragraphs and nothing after them).
- Historical version (text as it read before an amendment) — **NOT
  AVAILABLE**, for the same reason as idaho-code and north-dakota-code:
  Session Laws are organized by session chapter number, not by Code
  citation.

### Encoding

akleg.gov declares `charset=ISO-8859-1` and means it literally — the one
non-ASCII byte observed in testing (`0xA7`, the section sign `§` in a
`"[Repealed, § 44 ch 102 SLA 1980.]"` note) decodes correctly as Latin-1.
`src/index.ts` decodes the raw response bytes with `TextDecoder('iso-8859-1')`,
not UTF-8.

### Baked index refresh

`src/ak-index-data.ts` is GENERATED by `scripts/bake-index.mjs` from the 47
title TOC pages (942 chapters captured, ~70KB raw — small enough to stay a
plain module import rather than going through the `pack-baked-indexes.json`
/ KV path south-dakota-code and idaho-code use for multi-MB tables). Re-run
it after a legislative session's codification pass:

```
node scripts/bake-index.mjs > src/ak-index-data.ts
```

## Quick Start

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

```json
{
  "mcpServers": {
    "alaska-code": {
      "url": "https://gateway.pipeworx.io/alaska-code/mcp"
    }
  }
}
```

### What this endpoint actually serves

`tools/list` at `https://gateway.pipeworx.io/alaska-code/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:

```json
{
  "mcpServers": {
    "pipeworx": {
      "url": "https://gateway.pipeworx.io/mcp"
    }
  }
}
```

Both URLs reach the same gateway and the same 1861+ 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

```bash
curl -X POST https://gateway.pipeworx.io/v1/tools/ak_statute \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{"citation":"4.11.010"}'
```

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

## Run it from npm

`@pipeworx/mcp-alaska-code` 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/alaska-code/mcp` endpoint shown above. It needs network access;
there is no offline mode.

```json
{
  "mcpServers": {
    "alaska-code": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@pipeworx/mcp-alaska-code"]
    }
  }
}
```

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 Alaska Code data" })
```

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

## More

- [Docs and guides](https://pipeworx.io/docs)
- [pipeworx.io](https://pipeworx.io)

## License

MIT