Nist Beacon

What Nist Beacon does

Nist Beacon provides MCP access to the NIST Randomness Beacon v2. The service publishes signed, timestamped 512-bit random values at 60-second intervals. Agents can retrieve the newest value, locate a pulse near a UTC Unix timestamp in milliseconds, or address a pulse by its chain and pulse identifiers.

The integration is intended for workflows where randomness should be independently verifiable rather than generated privately by an application. Example uses include lottery draws, audit procedures, election seed generation, and fair sampling. Nist Beacon is an independent, unofficial integration and is not affiliated with or endorsed by NIST.

How it works

The hosted MCP endpoint is served through Pipeworx at https://gateway.pipeworx.io/nist-beacon/mcp. Requests are forwarded to the NIST Beacon v2 data source at https://beacon.nist.gov/beacon/2.0. A client can connect directly to the hosted endpoint, or run the npm package as a local stdio bridge that forwards requests to the same gateway.

The pack endpoint exposes the Nist Beacon tools and also includes shared Pipeworx meta-tools. The local bridge lists only the pack tools by default; setting PIPEWORX_META_TOOLS=1 enables the gateway-wide tools as well. The gateway can also route natural-language questions through ask_pipeworx.

Setup and configuration

For an MCP client supporting a hosted endpoint, add the following server URL:

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

The npm option starts the local bridge with npx:

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

The bridge needs network access and has no offline mode. Anonymous use is capped at 50 calls per day. A Pipeworx account and PIPEWORX_API_KEY raise the allowance to 200 calls per day; the key is sent as a Bearer token. Set NODE_USE_ENV_PROXY=1 when using an HTTPS proxy with Node versions that support the related environment-proxy behavior.

Tools and capabilities

• last_pulse retrieves the most recent NIST pulse.
• pulse_at finds the pulse closest to a supplied Unix timestamp in milliseconds and returns its output plus chain and signature metadata.
• pulse_by_chain_pulse retrieves a pulse using a chain ID and pulse ID.
• latest_in_chain returns the newest pulse in a selected chain. Chain 1 is the primary chain.
• chain_info returns metadata for a chain.

The same operations can be called over HTTP through the gateway's tools API, including POST /v1/tools/last_pulse.

Limitations and notes

Results depend on network access to the Pipeworx gateway and NIST Beacon source. Hosted pack connections include shared gateway meta-tools, so the tool list is larger than the five Nist Beacon-specific tools. The integration is keyless for anonymous calls, but unauthenticated usage has a daily limit. Pipeworx access and usage limits apply to the gateway connection.