@pipeworx/sba-loans

U.S. Small Business Administration loan data — "did this business get an SBA loan, from whom, how much, and did it pay it off" — from SBA's own FOIA CSV extracts.

Part of Pipeworx — an MCP gateway connecting AI agents to 1856+ live data sources. This is an independent, unofficial integration — not affiliated with, endorsed by, or published by the upstream provider.

• 7(a) + 504 (fleet #1921), refreshed quarterly.

• PPP (fleet #2869): business borrowers only, as of 2024-09-30.

Tools

• sba_loan_lookup(borrower_name, state?, program?, limit?) — a borrower's loan(s): amount, lender, approval date, status, charge-off detail.

• sba_largest_loans(program?, naics_code?, state?, lender_name?, limit?) — largest loans by any combination of filters.

• sba_lender_league_table(program?, state?, naics_code?, limit?) — lenders ranked by loan count and dollar volume.

• sba_charge_off_aggregate(group_by, program?, state?, naics_code?, limit?) — charge-off rate/amount grouped by naics | state | lender | program.

• ppp_loan_lookup(borrower_name, state?, zip?, limit?) — a business's PPP loan(s): amount, jobs_reported, NAICS, servicing/originating lender, approval date, first or second draw, forgiveness amount and date. Names match from their FIRST word ("Sumter Coatings" finds SUMTER COATINGS, INC.); with zip, a word inside the name matches too.

• ppp_aggregate(group_by, state?, order_by?, limit?) — PPP totals by naics | state | lender (servicing lender), nationally or within one state.

Every PPP response carries data_as_of and a coverage line stating how many loans were excluded as individual borrowers. If the mirror is not loaded (or mid-reload) the PPP tools fail with ppp_not_loaded — they never answer "no loan found" from an empty table.

Related MCP server: fac-mcp

Auth

Keyless. The gateway supplies data access to this pack automatically. No caller-facing key. The PPP tools work only through the hosted gateway; a standalone build says so (ppp_unavailable) rather than returning nothing.

PERSONAL-DATA RULE (mandatory, harris-county precedent)

Many 7(a)/504 (and, when built, PPP) borrowers are sole proprietors — individual humans, not companies. Street addresses (borrower AND lender-side: BorrStreet, BankStreet, CDC_Street, ThirdPartyLender_Street) are dropped at ingest — scripts/sba-loans-transform.py never reads those source columns into the row it emits, so they cannot reach a stored row or a response no matter what the source CSV contains. Kept: business/borrower name, city, state, ZIP, NAICS, lender identity, amounts, dates, status. This is the same rule applied to Harris County civil dockets (supabase/migrations/dockets_005_harris_drop_pii.sql): the standing public-data sourcing rule covers bulk public loan records, not bulk redistribution of individuals' home addresses.

PPP adds two rules (fleet #2869)

scripts/ppp/transform.py reads a whitelist of columns, so the PPP file's street columns AND its owner-demographic columns (Race, Ethnicity, Gender, Veteran) are never read. It then DROPS individual borrowers: SBA-redacted names (Exemption 6), sole proprietors / self-employed / independent contractors / single-member LLCs whose name carries no business marker, <person> DBA <business>, and any other borrower whose name is person-shaped and starts or ends with a given name. Measured on 413,167 sampled rows: 70% kept, 120,362 individual + 3,601 person-shaped + 33 redacted dropped. Every run prints its own counts.

Data sources

• https://data.sba.gov/dataset/7a-504-foia — dataset page. Portal trap: the CKAN root /dataset/7-a-504-foia (with the hyphen) 404s; the real slug has no hyphen between "7" and "a".

• Direct CSV downloads (quarterly asof_YYMMDD stamp in the filename): https://data.sba.gov/sites/default/files/uploaded_resources/FOIA_7a_FY2020_Present_asof_<stamp>.csv, ..._FY2010_FY2019_..., and FOIA_504_FY2010_Present_asof_<stamp>.csv. Two more decades exist (7(a) FY1991-1999, FY2000-2009; 504 FY1991-2009, ~520MB more) — not ingested in phase 1 to keep the first load disciplined; easy to add later via the same transform script if demand shows up.

• No developer API — this is a bulk-CSV-only source.

• PPP: https://data.sba.gov/dataset/ppp-foia — .../distribution/SBA-OCA-2022-07-001/public_150k_plus_<stamp>.csv and public_up_to_150k_{1..12}_<stamp>.csv (5.33 GB total, stamp 240930).

Ingest harness

• supabase/migrations/195_sba_loans.sql — unified sba_loans table (both programs; 504's CDC and 7(a)'s bank are normalized into lender_name/lender_city/lender_state, with 504's separate ThirdPartyLender kept in its own columns rather than forced into the same slot) + RPC functions the tools above call.

• scripts/sba-loans-transform.py — per-program CSV → unified-schema CSV, computing a deterministic loan_key (there is no natural unique loan id in the source — LocationID is a lender/office code reused across unrelated loans, confirmed live 2026-09-13, not a loan identifier). loan_key hashes the fields that identify a specific loan (program, location_id, borrower, approval date, amount, NAICS) and excludes the fields SBA revises over a loan's life (status, PIF/charge-off dates, charge-off amount) — so a quarterly re-ingest updates a loan's outcome in place via ON CONFLICT (loan_key) DO UPDATE, instead of duplicating the row.

• scripts/sba-loans-upsert.sh — download → transform → batched staging-table drain into sba_loans (same crash-safe, disk-safe shape as scripts/usaspending-upsert.sh: batches commit independently, a failed run drops its staging table rather than leaving it to grow Supabase disk forever).

• .github/workflows/sba-loans-refresh.yml — quarterly cron (workflow_dispatch for manual/backfill runs) on a GH-hosted runner, because this needs a pooler connection string held as a GitHub Actions secret for the psql \copy, not a Cloudflare Worker.

• PPP: .github/workflows/ppp-refresh.yml (manual; mode=build is a dry run, mode=load replaces the PPP tables) runs scripts/ppp/refresh.sh: download → derive-given-names.py → transform.py → build-sqlite.py (schema.sql, pre-computed ppp_agg) → chunked import and row-count verification. scripts/ppp/test_transform.py runs first and stops the ingest if the personal-data rule regresses.

Gotchas

• 7(a) and 504 spell "paid in full" differently in the source: "P I F" (7(a), with spaces) vs "PIF" (504, no spaces). sba_charge_off_aggregate only depends on the CHGOFF code, which IS consistent across both programs (verified live 2026-09-13: 300/2,050/751/3,313 for CHGOFF/EXEMPT/CANCLD/"P I F" in a 7(a) sample; 177/1,036/926/3,790 for the 504 equivalents) — but don't assume other status strings line up between programs.

• 504 has no SBAGuaranteedApproval, InitialInterestRate, FixedorVariableInterestInd, RevolverStatus, or SoldSecMrktInd — those columns are NULL for every 504 row by design (7(a)-only fields), not a data-quality issue.

• Do not fold this pack into finra, sec-adv, or any other financial-data pack — it is a different agency, different licence-free public-domain data, and its own table.

• PPP jobs_reported is self-reported on the 2020-21 application. It is a dated headcount claim, not a current or audited figure.

• PPP lookups are prefix matches on a normalized name (accents folded, & → AND, leading THE and trailing Inc/LLC/Co removed). The same normalization lives in transform.py and src/ppp.ts; scripts/ppp/name-norm-fixtures.json pins both.

Quick Start

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

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "sba-loans": {
      "url": "https://gateway.pipeworx.io/sba-loans/mcp"
    }
  }
}

What this endpoint actually serves

tools/list at https://gateway.pipeworx.io/sba-loans/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 1856+ 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/sba_loan_lookup \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{"borrower_name":"Ameripro Construction","state":"PA"}'

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

Run it from npm

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

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

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 Sba Loans data" })

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

More

• Docs and guides

• pipeworx.io

License

MIT