Cbs Nl

What Cbs Nl does

Cbs Nl gives MCP clients access to the Statistics Netherlands (CBS) StatLine open-data catalogue. StatLine contains several thousand official tables covering areas including population, labour, energy, prices, and trade. Tables may provide Dutch or English labels: identifiers ending in eng or ENG use English labels, while other identifiers use Dutch labels.

The integration is an independent connection to CBS data. The catalogue is available through CBS's OData services, and the data is published under the CC BY 4.0 licence.

How it works

The recommended workflow starts with search_tables, which finds tables related to a topic and returns identifiers, titles, time coverage, frequency, and language. Use table_dimensions next to learn the table-specific column keys, meanings, units, and decimal information. Dimension keys vary between tables, so inspecting them before requesting observations avoids guessing filter fields.

After identifying the relevant codes with dimension_values, call get_data to retrieve observations. That tool supports OData $select, $filter, $top, and $skip parameters for choosing fields, filtering results, and controlling pagination.

Setup and configuration

The gateway endpoint can be added to an MCP client as a remote server:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "cbs-nl": {
      "url": "https://gateway.pipeworx.io/cbs-nl/mcp"
    }
  }
}

Claude Desktop, Cursor, and Windsurf are shown as supported client examples. The same gateway also exposes a full Pipeworx endpoint at https://gateway.pipeworx.io/mcp.

For a local installation, run the package with npx and configure it as a stdio server:

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

The local process communicates over standard input and output and does not require a Pipeworx account. The gateway also offers HTTP tool calls, such as a POST request to https://gateway.pipeworx.io/v1/tools/cbs_nl_search_tables.

Tools and capabilities

• search_tables finds StatLine tables by topic.
• table_info returns a table's title, summary, time span, frequency, and update status.
• table_dimensions describes a table's columns, units, keys, and decimal settings.
• dimension_values lists valid values for a selected dimension, including periods or regional codes.
• get_data retrieves observations using OData selection, filtering, and pagination options.

Limitations and notes

The gateway endpoint includes the five CBS-specific tools alongside shared Pipeworx meta-tools such as ask_pipeworx, discover_tools, search_within, and memory functions. A local stdio process exposes only the CBS tools. The gateway can route broader questions through ask_pipeworx, while the local server has no cross-catalog routing.

No API key, registration, or quota management is required. Gateway requests may use a relay when CBS refuses Cloudflare egress addresses; direct requests from another network can therefore behave differently from gateway requests.