The full upstream README, mirrored here for reference. Install config, tool schemas, adoption signals, and an original overview live on the Cornell Wex listing page.
Cornell LII's Wex legal encyclopedia: plain-English definitions of 5,600+ US legal terms and doctrines, with each entry's related terms, topic categories and last-reviewed date, read live from law.cornell.edu.
Part of Pipeworx — an MCP gateway connecting AI agents to 1683+ live data sources.
wex_define(term) — the definition of one term ("tort", "adverse
possession", "res judicata"): definition text, related Wex terms, categories,
keywords, last-reviewed date and the entry URL. A miss returns
found:false, reason:"no_such_term" with suggestions from the same letter
of the index.wex_search(query, limit?) — entries whose titles contain the query words,
ranked by how many words match. Looks under the first letter of each query
word (up to three index pages, fetched in parallel).wex_browse(letter, offset?, limit?) — the entries under one letter of the
A–Z index, with the per-letter counts for the whole index.Keyless.
LII's terms (https://www.law.cornell.edu/lii/terms/documentation) place all content LII creates, which Wex is, under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 2.5: "you may copy, distribute, and display this work, or make derivative works, so long as a) you give the LII credit; b) you do not use this work for commercial purposes; and c) you distribute any works derived from this one under the same licensing terms." So:
zeroRated: true — 0 credits on every tier, no
volume-bracket slot — because NC forbids charging for it;attribution, license (id CC-BY-NC-SA-2.5,
url, obligations) and license_note, via attachLicense in
@pipeworx/shared, because BY means the credit must be shown and SA binds
the caller downstream too;Bruce ruled this in decision #1973 (2026-09-14): "it's not commercial redistribution, it's just redistribution, for free." Fleet #1974.
adverse_possession); a few carry
dots or slashes (a.k.a., a/r). The article body sits in
#main-content after the <h1>; the trailing [Last reviewed in … by the Wex Definitions Team] paragraph is split out as last_reviewed, and the
Keywords / Wex category lists that follow are returned separately./wex/all redirects to /wex/all/a. Counts per
letter are in the letter nav (5,608 entries on 2026-09-14)./wex/search?keys=… renders no results server-side, which is why search is
built over the index pages instead.?_format=json on an entry answers 200 with HTML, not JSON.Add to your MCP client (Claude Desktop, Cursor, Windsurf, etc.):
tools/list at https://gateway.pipeworx.io/cornell-wex/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:
Both URLs reach the same gateway and the same 1683+ data sources. The
only difference is which pack's tools are listed directly; ask_pipeworx
reaches all of them from either one.
No account needed for the first calls. Inspect any tool: GET https://gateway.pipeworx.io/v1/tools/wex_define. Find one: POST https://gateway.pipeworx.io/v1/tools/search_packs with {"query":"..."}.
This package also runs as a local stdio MCP server — no Pipeworx account, no gateway round-trip:
Or run it directly to confirm it starts:
It speaks MCP over stdin/stdout and answers initialize/tools/list/tools/call
for only this pack's tools — none of the shared meta-tools the gateway
connection above adds. Same source, same tools, no ask_pipeworx routing.
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:
The gateway picks the right tool and fills the arguments automatically.
MIT