Texas Open Data

What Texas Open Data does

Texas Open Data exposes the data.texas.gov catalog to MCP clients through the Socrata SoQL API. It is intended for discovering and querying public datasets published by Texas government organizations, including agency, lottery, health, licensing, transportation, and finance data.

The server is an independent, unofficial integration. It is part of the Pipeworx gateway, which provides access to many data sources. The Texas-focused endpoint lists the pack's own tools and also includes shared Pipeworx meta-tools in its MCP tool list.

How it works

A typical workflow starts with datasets, which searches the catalog by keyword and returns dataset identifiers, names, descriptions, categories, and update dates. Use the returned resource_id with metadata to inspect the available columns, their types, row count, category, and last-updated information. Then pass that identifier to query to retrieve rows.

Queries use Socrata SoQL clauses supplied without the leading dollar sign. Supported query controls include where, select, group, and order, along with limit and offset. Results are returned as JSON, making the server suitable for agents that need to discover a dataset before constructing a structured query.

The hosted MCP endpoint is available at https://gateway.pipeworx.io/data-texas/mcp. The full Pipeworx gateway is also available at https://gateway.pipeworx.io/mcp; both routes reach the same gateway and data sources, while the pack endpoint determines which tools are listed directly. The endpoint also supports direct HTTP tool calls under the gateway's /v1/tools/ path.

Setup and configuration

For a hosted connection, add the endpoint as an MCP server in a compatible client:

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

A local npm bridge is available through @pipeworx/mcp-data-texas. Configure the client to start it with npx:

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

The bridge forwards requests to the hosted gateway and therefore requires network access. Anonymous use is available with a daily call limit. Setting PIPEWORX_API_KEY enables an account-backed allowance; the key is sent as a Bearer token. Set PIPEWORX_META_TOOLS=1 if the local bridge should also list the shared gateway tools. When using an HTTPS proxy, newer Node.js releases may require NODE_USE_ENV_PROXY=1 for the built-in fetch implementation to honor proxy settings.

Tools and capabilities

• datasets: Search the Texas Open Data catalog by keyword.
• metadata: Retrieve a dataset's schema and catalog details by resource ID.
• query: Execute a SoQL query with filtering, selection, grouping, ordering, pagination, and JSON results.
• Shared Pipeworx meta-tools are available on the hosted pack endpoint; ask_pipeworx can route natural-language requests across the wider catalog.
• The tools can also be called over HTTP without an MCP client.

Limitations and notes

The integration requires access to the network and has no offline mode. The npm bridge forwards calls to the Pipeworx gateway rather than querying Texas Open Data locally. Anonymous calls are capped at 50 per day, while a free Pipeworx account raises the allowance to 200 per day. The gateway's shared tools increase the number of tools shown by the hosted pack endpoint beyond the three Texas-specific tools. The project is unofficial and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or published by the upstream Texas Open Data provider.

The package is released under the MIT license.