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Programmatic access to cross-linked political data from eight federal sources. REST API and MCP server for AI agents.
All requests require an API key passed via the x-api-key header.
100 requests per minute on the free tier.
curl -H "x-api-key: ps_your_key_here" \
"https://api.poliscope.org/v1/politicians?q=warren&limit=3"const res = await fetch(
"https://api.poliscope.org/v1/politicians?q=warren&limit=3",
{ headers: { "x-api-key": "ps_your_key_here" } }
);
const { data, meta } = await res.json();import requests
r = requests.get(
"https://api.poliscope.org/v1/politicians",
params={"q": "warren", "limit": 3},
headers={"x-api-key": "ps_your_key_here"}
)
data = r.json()["data"]{
"data": [ ... ],
"meta": {
"limit": 3,
"offset": 0,
"source": "poliscope"
}
}106 endpoints across 19 data areas. All GET, all authenticated via API key.
FEC candidates with fundraising totals, top donors, and industry breakdown
/v1/politiciansCongressional members with bioguide IDs, committee assignments, and voting records
/v1/legislatorsCampaign donors ranked by total contributions with recipient details
/v1/donorsFEC political committees — PACs, party committees, campaign committees
/v1/committeesUnified company profiles linking SEC filings, contracts, and lobbying
/v1/companiesLDA lobbying disclosures — clients, firms, spending, and issue areas
/v1/lobbying/clientsCongressional legislation with sponsors, status tracking, and subject tags
/v1/billsUSAspending government contracts and grants by recipient and agency
/v1/contracts/recipientsElection analytics — races, state totals, spending trends, outside spending
/v1/elections/overviewCross-source search across politicians, companies, lobbying, and bills
/v1/searchCongressional stock trades from STOCK Act periodic transaction reports
/v1/tradesPolitical vendor disbursements — top payees, spending by cycle, and summaries
/v1/spending/vendorsSEC EDGAR filings, parsed text sections, and semantic search via BGE-M3 embeddings
/v1/sec/filingsExecutive branch OGE 278e financial disclosures — assets, positions, transactions, liabilities
/v1/disclosures/appointeesCongressional gift and travel disclosures from the House Clerk and Senate Gift Rule Database
/v1/giftsPublic pension plans — funded ratios, investment returns, asset allocations, and membership data
/v1/pensionsPolitically relevant nonprofits (501c4/c5/c6/527) with IRS BMF data, 990 filings, and dark money grant flows
/v1/nonprofits501(c)(4) grant flows into political committees — traced source-to-destination with amounts and EINs
/v1/dark-moneyRaw FEC filings — Schedule B disbursements, Schedule E independent expenditures, loans (Sched C), and debts (Sched D)
/v1/filings/disbursementsConnect AI tools directly to Poliscope data.
The default Poliscope MCP connection is a curated research interface for AI assistants. It includes capability discovery, workflow guidance, structured source-backed results, and the tools needed for common investigations. Setup is client-specific: Claude Code and Cursor can send the API key directly, while Claude Desktop needs a local bridge because its native remote connectors only support authless or OAuth servers.
Get an API key from Settings, then add one of these configs. Rate limits are shared across API and MCP usage (100 req/min free tier).
{
"mcpServers": {
"poliscope": {
"command": "npx",
"args": [
"-y",
"mcp-remote@0.1.38",
"https://api.poliscope.org/mcp",
"--header",
"x-api-key:${POLISCOPE_API_KEY}",
"--transport",
"http-only",
"--silent"
],
"env": {
"POLISCOPE_API_KEY": "ps_your_key_here"
}
}
}
}Requires Node.js 18 or newer. Save this in ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json on macOS or %APPDATA%\Claude\claude_desktop_config.json on Windows, then completely quit and reopen Claude Desktop. Claude Desktop does not accept a remote url entry in that file. This tested API-key setup uses the community-maintained mcp-remote bridge; do not add Poliscope through Settings > Connectors until Poliscope supports OAuth.
Required in each Claude chat
Open the + menu, choose Connectors, then Tool access and select Tools already loaded. (Some Claude releases label the same mode differently.) This makes all 25 Poliscope tool definitions available to the chat. Claude may still ask permission the first time it executes an individual read-only tool; an approval prompt is not evidence that the tool is absent. Tool access is a per-conversation setting.
For open-ended legislative and lobbying questions, capability discovery returns source-backed starter evidence. Claude should use it even if a follow-up tool is waiting for approval, and must not retry a namespaced tool as an unqualified local tool.
claude mcp add --transport http --scope user poliscope https://api.poliscope.org/mcp --header "x-api-key: ps_your_key_here"Verify the connection with claude mcp get poliscope, then open /mcp inside Claude Code to see the tools.
{
"mcpServers": {
"poliscope": {
"url": "https://api.poliscope.org/mcp",
"headers": {
"x-api-key": "ps_your_key_here"
}
}
}
}Save this as ~/.cursor/mcp.json for all projects or .cursor/mcp.json inside one project. Reload Cursor, then confirm Poliscope appears under MCP tools.
For open-ended work, the capability navigator tells the assistant which tools to use, in what order, and where the evidence stops.
discover_poliscope_capabilitiesUse the default profile for general research. Focused profiles keep domain-heavy work easy for an assistant to navigate. The full profile exposes every REST operation for advanced clients.
https://api.poliscope.org/mcphttps://api.poliscope.org/mcp/legislationhttps://api.poliscope.org/mcp/lobbyinghttps://api.poliscope.org/mcp/moneyhttps://api.poliscope.org/mcp/corporatehttps://api.poliscope.org/mcp/fullMCP responses include structured output schemas and read-only safety annotations. The server also publishes reusable prompts for policy, person, company, bill-money, and claim-verification research, plus capability and methodology resources.
100 requests per minute on the free tier. Get an API key from Settings.
All endpoints return { data, meta } envelope. Pagination via limit and offset.
FEC bulk data updated with each official release. Congressional data synced daily. Contracts and lobbying updated quarterly.
29M cross-source match candidates link people and organizations across FEC, lobbying, contracts, SEC, and congressional records.
Honest accuracy disclosures: what's verified against FEC, what's documented as a limitation, and what's still being investigated. Read the coverage page.