Maryland Open Data

What Maryland Open Data does

Maryland Open Data exposes Maryland’s public data catalog through the Model Context Protocol. The underlying source is the Socrata Open Data API for opendata.maryland.gov, covering state-government datasets including health, transportation, budgets, and environmental information.

The workflow is resource-oriented: first locate a dataset, then use its resource_id to inspect metadata or retrieve rows. Results from row queries are returned as JSON, while catalog searches identify datasets by name, description, category, update date, and resource identifier.

This is an independent, unofficial integration and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or published by the upstream data provider.

How it works

The hosted MCP endpoint is available at https://gateway.pipeworx.io/data-maryland/mcp. An MCP client can connect to that URL directly. The endpoint also exposes shared Pipeworx gateway tools in addition to the Maryland-specific tools; the connection’s initialize response identifies the exact tool scope.

A local option is provided by @pipeworx/mcp-data-maryland. The package runs as a stdio bridge and forwards requests to the same hosted gateway, so it requires network access and has no offline mode. The full Pipeworx gateway is another connection option when an agent needs direct access to all available data packs.

The gateway also accepts HTTP tool calls. For example, the datasets operation can be invoked through /v1/tools/data_maryland_datasets with a JSON request containing a search query.

Setup and configuration

For a hosted connection, add the following MCP server entry:

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

For a local stdio connection, configure the npm package with npx:

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

Anonymous use is supported, with a limit of 50 calls per day. Setting PIPEWORX_API_KEY enables an account-backed allowance of 200 calls per day after obtaining a key from Pipeworx. Set PIPEWORX_META_TOOLS=1 for the local bridge if the shared gateway tools should also be listed.

Tools and capabilities

• datasets: Search the Maryland catalog by keyword. Each result includes a resource_id, name, description, category, and update date.
• metadata: Retrieve a dataset’s columns, data types, row count, category, and last-updated value using its resource_id.
• query: Run a Socrata SoQL query against a selected resource. It accepts where, select, group, and order clauses without the leading dollar sign, along with limit and offset.
• HTTP access: Call tools through the Pipeworx HTTP API without an MCP client.

Limitations and notes

Requests depend on network access to the Pipeworx gateway and the Maryland Socrata service. The local package does not provide offline execution. Pack-specific hosted connections include shared Pipeworx meta-tools, which increases the number of tools visible to an MCP client. Behind an HTTPS proxy, Node’s built-in fetch may require NODE_USE_ENV_PROXY=1 on Node versions that support that behavior.