Kentucky Code README

@pipeworx/kentucky-code

Kentucky Revised Statutes (KRS) — state statutes by citation and by topic search, with legislative/amendment history. Keyless.

Part of Pipeworx — an MCP gateway connecting AI agents to 1764+ live data sources. This is an independent, unofficial integration — not affiliated with, endorsed by, or published by the upstream provider.

Tools

• ky_statute(citation) — the current text of a KRS section by citation ("507.020", "KRS 383.580", "§ 507.020"). Returns the catchline, the full statutory text, the effective_date, and the history line (the Acts that enacted and amended it). A prior (pre-amendment) version's text is not available anywhere online — historical_versions says so rather than silently omitting it.
• ky_search(query, limit?) — full-text topic search over the statutory body text, not just catchlines ("landlord" surfaces KRS 383.580 "Security deposits", a catchline that contains neither word). Returns matching citations and catchlines; pass a citation to ky_statute for the full text.

Auth

Keyless. No signup, no key, on either side of the call.

Data sources

• https://apps.legislature.ky.gov/LRCSearch/Home/getStatuteJSON — the Legislative Research Commission's own citation/topic search, GET with searchPhrase, statuteRange=true&startRange=1&endRange=999, and searchStatuteNumber=true for an exact-citation lookup. Needs a fresh RequestVerificationToken header, read from an inline <script> on https://apps.legislature.ky.gov/lrcsearch — NOT cookie-bound (confirmed: the search page sets no cookie), so one GET for the token followed by one GET against the API, per call, is the whole mechanism. No login.
• https://apps.legislature.ky.gov/law/statutes/statute.aspx?id= — the matched section's full text, served as a per-section PDF (content-disposition: inline;FileName="KRS507_020(K).pdf"). There is no HTML page with the statutory text anywhere on the site; the chapter index pages list only catchlines. Extracted via the new extractPdfText helper in shared/src/pdf-text.ts (see that file for what it does and does not handle) — this repo had no PDF text extraction before this pack.

The opaque-id trap, and why this isn't the two-hop resolver. The August state-law survey (docs/state-law-probe.md) flagged Kentucky's statute URLs as addressed by an opaque database id with no derivable mapping from the citation — the same shape Vermont and Connecticut solved with a two-hop fetch through the chapter index. Kentucky's chapter index pages (chapter.aspx?id=) DO carry that mapping (confirmed: Chapter 507's index lists ".020 Murder." next to its id), so the two-hop route would work — but a simpler ONE-hop route also works and is what this pack uses: the LRC's own search API resolves a citation straight to its id, because it is a real full-text search over the whole KRS rather than a title/catchline index (verified live: searching "landlord" surfaces KRS 383.580, whose catchline is just "Security deposits.").

Four capabilities, three available. Citation lookup and topic search are both the same search endpoint with a flag; amendments/history is the statute's own History: line, parsed out of the extracted PDF text. The fourth — the TEXT of a section as it read before a given amendment — is not published online anywhere: a superseded id redirects to an "Invalid Statute" page instructing the reader to e-mail the Reviser of Statutes for it. This pack reports that as historical_versions, not as a silent gap.

Division/chapter-heading rows. The search API's Type field is "K" for a real statute section, "D" for a chapter/division heading (no statutory text — ky_statute reports not_a_section rather than fetching a PDF for it), and "R" for a repealed section (text still returned; type_label says which).

Quick Start

Add to your MCP client (Claude Desktop, Cursor, Windsurf, etc.):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "kentucky-code": {
      "url": "https://gateway.pipeworx.io/kentucky-code/mcp"
    }
  }
}

What this endpoint actually serves

tools/list at https://gateway.pipeworx.io/kentucky-code/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:

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

Both URLs reach the same gateway and the same 1764+ data sources. The only difference is which pack's tools are listed directly; ask_pipeworx reaches all of them from either one.

No MCP client? Call it over HTTP

curl -X POST https://gateway.pipeworx.io/v1/tools/ky_statute \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{"citation":"507.020"}'

No account needed for the first calls. Inspect any tool: GET https://gateway.pipeworx.io/v1/tools/ky_statute. Find one: POST https://gateway.pipeworx.io/v1/tools/search_packs with {"query":"..."}.

Standalone (no gateway account)

This package also runs as a local stdio MCP server — no Pipeworx account, no gateway round-trip:

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

Or run it directly to confirm it starts:

npx -y @pipeworx/mcp-kentucky-code

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.

Using with ask_pipeworx

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:

ask_pipeworx({ question: "your question about Kentucky Code data" })

The gateway picks the right tool and fills the arguments automatically.

More

• Docs and guides
• pipeworx.io

License

MIT