The full upstream README, mirrored here for reference. Install config, tool schemas, adoption signals, and an original overview live on the Federal Appeals listing page.
Federal appellate dockets — the thirteen circuits, the Federal Circuit and the Supreme Court. 2.2 million dockets. This is the case on appeal; the written opinion that results is in the court-listener pack.
Part of Pipeworx — an MCP gateway connecting AI agents to 1679+ live data sources.
No API key.
Docket metadata: that a case exists, its parties, court, docket number, filing and termination dates, and assigned judge. It contains no filings — no complaints, motions, briefs or orders. Those are RECAP, a separate corpus that is not keyless.
An agent with this data knows a case was brought. It does not know what anyone argued.
| Tool | Returns |
|---|---|
federal_appeal_search | Dockets matching a party name |
federal_appeal_recent | Recent dockets, newest first |
snapshot_date.date_terminated is 78.3% filled, so a missing date means not recorded,
never still open. Responses say which.nature_of_suit is sparse — 14.8% corpus-wide, 30.5% in district courts.
This can tell you a company is in federal court; it often cannot tell you what
for.Data is CourtListener / Free Law Project, published under the Public Domain Mark. Free Law Project funds and maintains the corpus. If this pack is useful to you, https://free.law/donate/ is where that goes.
Add to your MCP client (Claude Desktop, Cursor, Windsurf, etc.):
tools/list at https://gateway.pipeworx.io/federal-appeals/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 1679+ 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/federal_appeal_search. 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