Boj

What Boj does

Boj exposes two Japan-focused economic data tools through MCP:

• boj_policy_rate returns the latest Bank of Japan short-term policy rate, also described as the Monetary Policy-Related Interest Rate, in percent per annum. The response includes the observation month and recent monthly values.
• boj_inflation returns Japan’s all-items consumer price inflation. It provides the latest year-over-year inflation percentage, the corresponding CPI index level, the observation month, and recent monthly history.

Both tools are sourced from IMF International Financial Statistics (IMF IFS). They are suited to factual lookups and short time-series context rather than broad economic research. The integration is independent and unofficial, and is not affiliated with the Bank of Japan.

How it works

The hosted MCP endpoint is available at https://gateway.pipeworx.io/boj/mcp. Add that URL to an MCP client that supports remote server connections. A connection to this scoped endpoint lists the Boj tools along with shared Pipeworx gateway tools. Those shared tools include routing and discovery functions such as ask_pipeworx, which can direct broader questions across the Pipeworx catalog.

The same gateway also provides a full endpoint at https://gateway.pipeworx.io/mcp. The full endpoint lists the catalog’s tools directly, while the Boj endpoint lists the Boj pack directly. Both can reach the broader Pipeworx catalog through the gateway’s routing capability.

For clients that use local processes, the @pipeworx/mcp-boj npm package acts as a stdio bridge. It forwards MCP calls to the hosted Boj endpoint, so the local process still needs network access and has no offline mode.

Setup and configuration

For a remote connection, add an entry such as:

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

The npm-based configuration uses npx:

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

Anonymous use is supported. The anonymous allowance is capped at 50 calls per day. A free Pipeworx account increases the allowance to 200 calls per day; set PIPEWORX_API_KEY in the server entry to use the account key. The key is sent as a Bearer token, and calls are metered and billed in the same way as hosted usage.

The npm bridge lists the Boj pack’s tools by default. Set PIPEWORX_META_TOOLS=1 to include the shared gateway tools as well. The hosted endpoint can also be called through HTTP, for example by sending a POST request to /v1/tools/boj_policy_rate with a JSON body such as {"months":12}.

Tools and capabilities

boj_policy_rate supports questions about the Bank of Japan rate, Japan’s policy rate, and recent rate history. boj_inflation supports Japan inflation and CPI questions, including comparisons with the BOJ’s 2% target. Both tools return recent monthly data in addition to the latest reported value, which lets an agent provide limited trend context without another data source.

The gateway’s ask_pipeworx tool can accept a question in plain English and choose a tool and arguments automatically. This is useful when an agent needs to route a broader request rather than invoke one of the two Boj tools explicitly.