@pipeworx/cia-factbook

CIA World Factbook country profiles (final 2026 edition) for 261 entities, covering history, geography, people, government, economy, energy, military and transnational issues, plus side-by-side field comparison across countries.

Part of Pipeworx — an MCP gateway connecting AI agents to 1863+ live data sources. This is an independent, unofficial integration — not affiliated with, endorsed by, or published by the upstream provider.

Tools

• factbook_country(country, sections?): one entity's profile. Returns Introduction, Geography, People and Society, Government and Economy by default; sections picks others, or ["all"] for everything (~35 KB). Answers "tell me about Kenya" or "what type of government does Chile have".

• factbook_compare(countries, fields): up to 10 countries × 10 fields side by side, e.g. Population, Real GDP per capita, Life expectancy at birth. Field names match Factbook headings (case-insensitive, partial match allowed); "Economy > Exports" pins the section.

• factbook_fields(country?): the sections and field names a profile carries. Use it to find the exact field name for factbook_compare.

• factbook_entities(query?, region?, limit?): list or search the 261 entities (countries, territories, oceans, the EU, the World) with their Factbook codes and regions.

country accepts a name ("South Korea", "Myanmar", "Ivory Coast"), an ISO 3166 code ("KE", "DEU"), or a Factbook code written as gec:<code>. If a name matches nothing, the tool returns found:false and lists the closest matches.

Every response carries source, licence, data_as_of and an edition_note.

Related MCP server: nerai-mcp

Auth

Keyless.

Data sources

• Central Intelligence Agency, The World Factbook. The CIA published it in the public domain and discontinued it in February 2026. This pack reads the final edition from the open JSON archive that the factbook project maintains under CC0-1.0. The pack calls the archive on each request and stores no copy.

Things worth knowing:

• The data is frozen. The archive's last data update was 2026-01-22, and the Factbook will not be updated again, so data_as_of is always 2026-01-22. Each figure carries its own estimate year, e.g. "55,751,717 (2025 est.)".

• Factbook codes are not ISO codes. In GEC codes, au is Austria and gm is Germany. The pack reads a bare 2- or 3-letter input as ISO first and treats it as a GEC code only when no ISO country matches. Use gec:au to force the Factbook code.

• The Factbook uses its own spellings. It says "Burma", "Turkey", "DRC", "Congo (Brazzaville)", "Côte d'Ivoire" and "The Gambia". The pack maps the common alternatives to these names.

• Some profiles have fewer sections than others. Oceans have no People and Society section, and some territories have no Military section. other_sections and factbook_fields show what a given profile contains.

Quick Start

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

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "cia-factbook": {
      "url": "https://gateway.pipeworx.io/cia-factbook/mcp"
    }
  }
}

What this endpoint actually serves

tools/list at https://gateway.pipeworx.io/cia-factbook/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 1863+ 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/factbook_country \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{"country":"Kenya"}'

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

Run it from npm

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

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

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 Cia Factbook data" })

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

More

• Docs and guides

• pipeworx.io

License

MIT