regulations-mcp

An MCP server that gives AI assistants live access to U.S. federal regulations — Federal Register, Code of Federal Regulations (eCFR), and Regulations.gov.

Works with any LLM via the built-in regs CLI (Claude, GPT-4o, Gemini, Mistral, Llama via Groq/Ollama, Cohere, and more).

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What it can do

Tool	Source	Auth needed
Search Federal Register documents	federalregister.gov	None
Get a specific FR document	federalregister.gov	None
List open public comment periods	federalregister.gov	None
Get pre-publication inspection documents	federalregister.gov	None
List all 50 CFR titles	ecfr.gov	None
Full-text search the CFR	ecfr.gov	None
Read a specific CFR section	ecfr.gov	None
Browse CFR title structure	ecfr.gov	None
Search regulatory dockets	regulations.gov	Free API key
Search regulations.gov documents	regulations.gov	Free API key

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Quick start

pip install regulations-mcp
cp .env.example .env   # add your LLM key

Interactive chat

# Claude (default)
regs chat

# GPT-4o
regs chat --provider gpt4o

# Gemini 1.5 Pro
regs chat --provider gemini

# Llama 3 via Groq (free tier)
regs chat --provider groq-llama

# Local Ollama
regs chat --provider ollama-llama3

# Any litellm model string
regs chat --provider "bedrock/anthropic.claude-3-5-sonnet-20241022-v2:0"

One-shot questions

regs ask "What EPA rules have open comment periods right now?"
regs ask "What does 21 CFR Part 11 say about electronic signatures?" --provider gpt4o
regs ask "Find all OSHA rules published in the last 30 days" --provider gemini-flash
regs ask "Summarize the most recent FDA food safety final rules" --provider groq-llama

List all providers

regs providers

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Use as an MCP server (Claude Desktop / any MCP client)

Add to your MCP client config:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "regulations": {
      "command": "regulations-mcp",
      "env": {
        "REGULATIONS_GOV_API_KEY": "your_key_here"
      }
    }
  }
}

Claude Desktop config location:

• macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json
• Windows: %APPDATA%\Claude\claude_desktop_config.json

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Diff CFR sections across dates

Compare exactly what regulatory text changed between any two dates:

# What changed in 21 CFR § 11.1 between 2020 and 2024?
regs diff 21 11 1 2020-01-01 2024-01-01

# With LLM summary of the regulatory impact
regs diff 21 11 1 2020-01-01 2024-01-01 --llm

# Use a different LLM for the summary
regs diff 40 122 1 2018-01-01 2024-01-01 --llm --provider gpt4o

# Show full text of both versions side by side
regs diff 29 1910 95 2015-01-01 2024-01-01 --full

The diff_cfr_section tool is also available in the MCP server — AI assistants can call it directly to answer questions like "what exactly changed in this regulation and when?"

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Example questions

What EPA rules are currently open for public comment?
Summarize 21 CFR Part 11 (FDA electronic records requirements)
What changed in Title 40 (EPA) in the last 6 months?
Find all proposed rules about AI or machine learning
What are the OSHA requirements for workplace noise exposure? (29 CFR 1910.95)
Which agencies published final rules this week?
Show me documents currently on public inspection before they're published

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Publishing a release

# Bump version in pyproject.toml and __init__.py, then:
git tag v0.2.0 && git push origin v0.2.0

# Create a GitHub release — the publish workflow auto-uploads to PyPI
gh release create v0.2.0 --generate-notes

Dry-run to TestPyPI first via Actions → Publish → Run workflow → dry_run=true.

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Development

git clone https://github.com/stark256-spec/regulations-mcp
cd regulations-mcp
pip install -e ".[dev]"
pytest tests/ -v

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Data sources

All free, public U.S. government APIs — no scraping, no unofficial endpoints:

• Federal Register API — federalregister.gov/developers
• eCFR API — ecfr.gov/developers
• Regulations.gov API — api.regulations.gov (free key required)

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License

MIT