eCFR

federal-contracting-mcps

Free and open source MCP servers for federal contracting data and policy tracking. SAM.gov, USASpending, GSA CALC+, BLS OEWS, per diem, eCFR, Federal Register, Regulations.gov, and Acquisition.gov are exposed through deterministic tool calls.

Your assistant queries the real APIs instead of recalling what it thinks the FAR says. Same input, same output, every time.

Website: 1102tools.com

Most users should start with an agent

The packaged 1102tools agents include the source integrations required by each guided job. Some federal providers still require a free account or API key. The beginner-facing HTML setup instructions and downloadable Agent Setup Guide cover Codex and Claude Code.

Use this repository when you specifically want standalone source servers or custom MCP configurations. Follow each selected server's README and testing record; standalone setup is advanced and self-supported. The MCP-oriented request library remains available as a repository, not a maintained PDF product.

Credential-readiness correction (August 2026)

SAM.gov 1.0.11, BLS OEWS 1.0.8, GSA Per Diem 1.0.8, and Regulations.gov 1.0.7 expose the same read-only get_access_status tool. It checks credential presence locally and never displays, transmits, logs, or validates the value.

Expected missing, rejected, authorization, rate-limit, network, malformed-response, and sanitized upstream failures return actionable MCP ToolError messages. A missing key is never retried or described as a provider outage. Configure credentials outside chat, restart the client, and rerun get_access_status.

• SAM.gov setup: SAM.gov Help
• BLS setup: BLS registration
• Per Diem and Regulations.gov setup: api.data.gov signup

Safety release v1.0.9 (August 2026)

Every package enforces a provisional, cross-process anti-burst gate before every upstream request. SAM.gov, BLS OEWS, USASpending, GSA CALC+, eCFR, Federal Register, and Acquisition.gov default to one request every 3 seconds. GSA Per Diem and Regulations.gov default to 4 seconds and share one api.data.gov bucket when they use the same key.

This is a 1102tools safety safeguard, not a statement that every provider requires that exact interval. It protects independently launched MCP and agent processes on the same computer, honors Retry-After without automatically retrying, and never writes a raw credential to pacing state. It cannot coordinate the same key running on another computer or create additional daily quota.

Set FEDERAL_API_MIN_INTERVAL_SECONDS to a different finite, non-negative number when you have a documented reason. Setting it to 0 deliberately disables the local gate. FEDERAL_API_PACING_DIR overrides the per-user state directory for managed or temporary environments.

The release also makes PyPI publication depend on the complete offline test matrix and wheel inspection. Current package versions are listed in each server's changelog and README.

1.0.0 stable baseline (August 2026)

The original eight servers first reached 1.0.0 together. That was the first stable suite release and the largest update since launch. Acquisition.gov joined at 1.0.0 with the same safety contract. Packages now version independently so a correction to one server does not force no-op releases of the others.

Rebuilt on v2 of the MCP Python SDK

The MCP Python SDK, the library every one of these servers is built on, released version 2.0 in July. It renamed its high-level server class from FastMCP to MCPServer and removed the old module entirely. Every server uses it.

The original eight retained the same 124 data tools at the stable baseline. Acquisition.gov added five source-specific tools, bringing that baseline to 129. Four later local readiness tools bring the current catalog to 133. The dependency is bounded at mcp>=2.0.0,<3, so the next major SDK release produces a clean error at install time instead of a crash at startup.

Two problems this release fixes, and both were affecting people

BLS wage lookups were returning empty results. When BLS published its May 2025 OEWS estimates this spring, it withdrew the 2024 series. bls-oews-mcp still defaulted to 2024, so any wage query that did not pass an explicit year came back with no values, which is indistinguishable from a privacy-suppressed cell. There was no error and no warning. The default is now 2025, and detect_latest_year() will confirm the current year at any time.

If you pulled wage figures for an IGCE between roughly April and August 2026, re-check them.

Fresh installs were failing outright. Every 0.x package declared mcp>=1.0.0 with no upper limit. When SDK 2.0.0 published on July 28, new installs resolved to it and died immediately with ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'mcp.server.fastmcp'. Existing installs were unaffected, but anyone installing for the first time in that window hit a wall. Bounding the requirement fixes it permanently.

Apologies to anyone who lost time to either one.

Claude Desktop .mcpb bundles are discontinued

The double-click bundles are gone. They could not be signed in a way Claude Desktop recognizes, so every install showed an untrusted-developer prompt with no way to clear it, and the bundle re-resolved its dependencies on every launch rather than pinning them, which made it the install path most exposed to the failure above. The config block in Install does the same job with fewer moving parts. Existing bundle installs keep working until removed, but will not receive updates.

Verified before shipping

The original eight recorded 5,078 collected regression tests during the v1.0.9 safety validation. Acquisition.gov adds 21 collected tests: 20 deterministic checks pass and one serialized live gate remains opt-in. Its 2026-08-22 release check passed against the index, one model part, one indexed agency PDF, and the FAQ. Per-server detail is in each testing.md and changelog.md.

Server catalog

All source lives under servers/<name>/. Each server is self-contained: code, tests, per-server README with a copy-paste config block.

Procurement data

• sam-gov-mcp: SAM.gov entity registration, exclusions, opportunities, contract awards (FPDS replacement), federal hierarchy, FFATA subawards
• usaspending-gov-mcp: federal contract, award, FFATA subaward, recipient, agency, and Treasury federal account data
• gsa-calc-mcp: GSA CALC+ awarded NTE hourly rates from MAS contracts (230K+ records)
• bls-oews-mcp: BLS OEWS market wage data across ~830 occupations and 530+ metros
• gsa-perdiem-mcp: federal travel lodging and M&IE rates for all CONUS

Regulatory and policy tracking

• ecfr-mcp: current CFR text updated daily, FAR / DFARS / agency supplement lookups
• federal-register-mcp: proposed rules, final rules, notices, executive orders, FAR cases
• regulations-gov-mcp: federal rulemaking dockets, public comments, comment period tracking
• acquisition-gov-mcp: RFO model-part pages, the official posted agency-deviation index, indexed deviation PDFs, and approved RFO guidance

Combined: 133 deterministic tools. The Acquisition.gov live source gate passed on 2026-08-22; future releases must repeat it because upstream content and availability can change.

Install

Requires Python 3.10+ and uv. MCP is an open standard, but standalone client setup is outside the beginner support path. Use the exact configuration and current evidence in the selected server directory.

1. Register the free API keys you need. BLS, api.data.gov (covers Per Diem and Regulations.gov), and SAM.gov Help. USASpending, GSA CALC+, eCFR, Federal Register, and Acquisition.gov need no key. Never paste a key into chat.

2. Add the servers you want to your client config. Configuration surfaces differ by client. Use the selected server's README as the source of truth, verify the server starts, and confirm its tools are actually visible before relying on it.

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "ecfr": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": ["--refresh-package", "ecfr-mcp", "--from", "ecfr-mcp", "ecfr-mcp"]
    },
    "sam-gov": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": ["--refresh-package", "sam-gov-mcp", "--from", "sam-gov-mcp", "sam-gov-mcp"],
      "env": { "SAM_API_KEY": "your-key-here" }
    }
  }
}

The --refresh-package flag tells uv to check PyPI for a newer release each time your client launches the server, so fixes and new tools arrive automatically. Without it, uv keeps serving whatever version it first cached. It adds a moment of network time at startup; if your platform enforces a short MCP startup timeout, raise it (the setup guide covers this per platform).

3. Restart the client. Each server's README has its own block with the correct package name and environment variable.

Docker images and a Smithery config ship with each server for hosted or containerized setups.

If you are pinned to mcp 1.x and cannot move, stay on the 0.x line of each package.

Repo layout

federal-contracting-mcps/
├── servers/
│   ├── bls-oews-mcp/
│   ├── acquisition-gov-mcp/
│   ├── ecfr-mcp/
│   ├── federal-register-mcp/
│   ├── gsa-calc-mcp/
│   ├── gsa-perdiem-mcp/
│   ├── regulations-gov-mcp/
│   ├── sam-gov-mcp/
│   └── usaspending-gov-mcp/
├── license
└── readme.md

Each server directory ships its own pyproject.toml, source, regression tests, Dockerfile, and testing record.

Companion repo

federal-contracting-skills: portable skills that orchestrate these MCPs into acquisition deliverables and evidence workflows, including SOW/PWS, three IGCE methods, OT scope and cost, market research, GovCon growth, and acquisition policy.

MCPs handle data. Skills handle deliverables.

Why MCPs (and not skills for the API calls)

• Deterministic. MCP servers execute tested Python. Claude does not generate API-call code on the fly. Same input, same output.
• Low context cost. Tool schemas are ~100 tokens each. The deprecated API-data skills cost 500-1000 lines of context per run.
• Production-hardened. Each MCP went through 3-6 audit rounds with live testing against its production API.
• Portable protocol. MCP is an open standard, so the same source server can be configured in multiple compatible clients. Current support claims remain bounded by each server's testing record.

Website

1102tools.com

License

MIT

Author

Built by James Jenrette, lead systems analyst and contracting officer. Independently developed and not endorsed by any federal agency.