@cyanheads/ris-austria-mcp-server

v0.2.0

Published

a day ago

Search Austrian consolidated federal & state law, court decisions, and the authentic Bundesgesetzblatt from the official RIS via MCP. Keyless. STDIO or Streamable HTTP.

Public Hosted Server: https://ris-austria.caseyjhand.com/mcp

RIS (Rechtsinformationssystem des Bundes) is the Austrian government's official legal database: consolidated federal, state, and municipal law, case law across every Austrian court and tribunal, the authentic gazettes at every level of government (whose promulgated text is binding under Austrian law), the pre-parliamentary lawmaking pipeline, and ministerial decrees. This server wraps the keyless RIS OGD REST API (v2.6, CC BY 4.0) for MCP agents — the entire OGD application surface, back to the Reichsgesetzblatt of 1848. It labels every document's binding status and never presents non-authentic text as the authentic wording.

Tools

Nine tools split by document class, plus a deterministic citation resolver, document retrieval, a change feed, and an offline vocabulary reference:

| Tool | Description | |:---|:---| | ris_search_legislation | Search consolidated federal, state, and municipal law — one document per §/Artikel/Anlage — filtered to the version in force on a given date (defaults to today). Also serves English translations of selected laws. | | ris_search_case_law | Search Austrian case law (Judikatur) in one court or tribunal per call — VfGH, VwGH, ordinary courts, BVwG, LVwG, DSB, the party-transparency senate, and ten more. | | ris_search_gazette | Browse the promulgation record at every level — federal (three era tiers back to 1848, auto-routed), state law & ordinance gazettes, district, and municipal — the compliance-monitoring surface. | | ris_search_drafts | Search the federal lawmaking pipeline: ministerial drafts in public review (Begutachtungsentwürfe) and government bills (Regierungsvorlagen). | | ris_search_announcements | Search sectoral official gazettes and executive documents: social-insurance notices, veterinary notices, court rules, trade-exam regulations, health structure plans, ministerial decrees, council-of-ministers minutes. | | ris_lookup_citation | Resolve one Austrian legal citation ("§ 6 DSG", "BGBl. I Nr. 165/1999", "RGBl. Nr. 189/1902", a Geschäftszahl, "VfSlg 19.632/2012") deterministically to its canonical document. | | ris_get_document | Fetch one document's full text as markdown/HTML/XML, or its export URLs, with binding-status labeling and the authentic PDF wherever one exists. | | ris_track_changes | Exact-dated change feed per application — every document added or changed in a window, deletions included. The delta-sync primitive. | | ris_list_reference | Ground the domain vocabulary offline — applications and coverage windows, court codes, Bundesländer, decision kinds, ministries, district authorities, gazette eras and parts, citation formats, search syntax. |

`ris_search_legislation`

Search consolidated law (BrKons federal, LrKons state, Gr municipal) with in-force-date handling correct by default.

Full-text query with RIS boolean grammar (UND/ODER/NICHT or AND/OR/NOT, parentheses, quoted phrases) and title matching title, short title, or abbreviation ("DSG", "ABGB")
scope routes federal or one of the nine Bundesländer; municipality narrows a state scope to municipal law (selected norms, six Bundesländer); language: english serves the Erv collection of selected English translations
in_force_as_of defaults to today — omitting the date upstream silently searches all historical versions; include_all_versions is the explicit opt-in, and the applied date is echoed in every response
Force-window filters (entered_force_from/to, left_force_from/to) track provisions entering or leaving force in a date range — new-law and repeal monitoring
Section-range filtering (section_from/section_to/section_type — §, Artikel, Anlage), law-level grouping via law_id (Gesetzesnummer), Systematik index, changed_since windows
Output per document: section label, in-force date, ELI, parsed CELEX references (the EU-transposition hook), and export URLs (XML/HTML/PDF/RTF)

`ris_search_case_law`

Search decisions and headnotes across Austria's courts and tribunals — 17 applications.

One application per call (court, required): vfgh, vwgh, justiz, bvwg, lvwg, dsk, upts (party-transparency senate), plus ten historical/specialized tribunals — cross-court research fans out one call per court
Filter by cited provision (norm — "DSG §1", "DSGVO Art32"), exact case number (case_number, Geschäftszahl), decision date range, decision kind (Erkenntnis/Beschluss/…), and full-text query
decision_type targets headnotes (Rechtssätze), full decision texts, or both
Court-conditional filters: issuing_body (dsk/dok/pvak/verg), court_name, legal_area, subject_area (justiz — "Datenschutzrecht", "Insolvenzrecht"), state (lvwg/uvs), collection_number (VfSlg/VwSlg cites), party (upts), commission/senate/discrimination ground (gbk), media statute (bks)
Output per decision: case numbers, decision date, ECLI, cited norms, keywords, the guiding principle (Leitsatz) on headnote documents, and headnote/decision URLs

`ris_search_gazette`

Browse the promulgation record at every level of government — what ris_lookup_citation (point lookup) can't express.

scope: federal, one of the nine Bundesländer, district (Bezirksverwaltungsbehörden), or municipal (authentic municipal promulgations)
Federal history is one logical series, auto-routed across three era tiers: BgblAuth (2004+, authentic), BgblPdf (Staats- und Bundesgesetzblatt 1945–2003), BgblAlt (Reichs-, Staats- und Bundesgesetzblatt 1848–1940, metadata + ÖNB-hosted scans) — with a notice naming which tier served
Filter by publication date range, gazette part (BGBl. I/II/III, or pre_1997 for the partless era), document type, issuing ministry, district authority, or municipality
State scopes serve the authentic Landesgesetzblätter by default; series: ordinance_gazette switches to the Verordnungsblätter, state_era: legacy selects the state's earlier non-authentic series (Niederösterreich's systematic LgblNO, or the historical Lgbl elsewhere)
Point lookup by gazette number ("BGBl. II Nr. 171/2026" or "171/2026")
Every record carries a binding label (authentic, historical_record, or consolidated_informational) and the amtssigniert PDF URL when present; the metadata-only 1848–1940 gazettes link to their ÖNB ALEX scan

`ris_search_drafts`

Watch federal law before it becomes law.

stage: review_drafts — ministerial drafts in public review (Begutachtungsentwürfe), including "what is in review right now" via in_review_on
stage: government_bills — bills adopted by the council of ministers (Regierungsvorlagen, 2004+), filtered by adoption date
ministry accepts the abbreviation ("BMF") — the server expands it to RIS's exact designation
Output includes review deadlines and council adoption dates

`ris_search_announcements`

Sectoral official gazettes and executive documents — seven collections, five of them legally binding authentic publications.

collection: social_insurance (Avsv), veterinary (Avn), court_rules (KmGer), trade_exam_rules (PruefGewO), health_structure_plans (Spg — ÖSG/RSG), ministerial_decrees (Erlässe), council_minutes (Ministerratsprotokolle)
Collection-aware filters: issue numbers, issuers (insurance carriers, ministries), cited norm ("decrees citing the DSG"), in-force date for the consolidated collections, plan type/state for health plans, session number/legislature for council minutes
Binding labels per collection: authentic, administrative_directive (decrees bind the administration, not citizens), or preparatory (council minutes)

`ris_lookup_citation`

Citation-first resolution — how Austrian legal work actually starts.

Parses and routes four citation kinds: norm cites ("§ 6 DSG", "Art 10 B-VG"), gazette numbers across all three federal eras plus LGBl ("BGBl. I Nr. 165/1999", "BGBl. Nr. 194/1961", "RGBl. Nr. 189/1902"), case numbers ("Ra 2019/22/0184", "2025-0.934.677", "6Ob56/25k"), and collection numbers ("VfSlg 19.632/2012")
Deterministic upstream filters (section + title, per-era number params, Geschäftszahl, Sammlungsnummer) — no keyword-search fuzziness
Returns found: false with structured guidance instead of throwing when nothing resolves
court and state hints short-circuit ambiguous formats

`ris_get_document`

Read and export a single document.

Addresses documents by document_number + application (from any search/lookup result) or a passed-through ris.bka.gv.at document URL (host and path allowlisted)
format: markdown (default, boilerplate stripped), raw html, RIS xml, or urls_only
Binding status on every response: authentic (with amtssigniert PDF URL), consolidated_informational, historical_record, decision, preparatory, administrative_directive, or translation — non-authentic text is never presented as the binding text
Format availability is explicit: applications that publish only the signed PDF (district/municipal promulgations, court rules) or only scans (1848–1940 gazettes, ÖNB-hosted) return a format_unavailable notice with the usable URLs instead of failing
Oversized markdown returns a retrievable §/Artikel/Anlage section outline (kind: outline) instead of truncating — re-call with sections:[…] to pull just the sections you need
Returns content, not fresh metadata — the upstream API has no document-by-number search, so document numbers come from a prior search or lookup result

`ris_track_changes`

Exact-dated per-application change feed.

application + changed_from/changed_to: every document added or changed in the window — 1,400+ changes in a typical two-week federal-law window
include_deleted surfaces removals — the only RIS surface that can
Coarser alternative: the search tools' changed_since interval filters

Resource

| Type | Name | Description | |:---|:---|:---| | Resource | ris://document/{application}/{documentNumber} | Markdown text of one RIS document — injectable twin of ris_get_document |

All resource data is also reachable via tools — clients without resource support use ris_get_document.

Features

Built on @cyanheads/mcp-ts-core:

Declarative tool and resource definitions — single file per primitive, framework handles registration and validation
Unified error handling — handlers throw, framework catches, classifies, and formats
Pluggable auth (none, jwt, oauth)
Structured logging with optional OpenTelemetry tracing
STDIO and Streamable HTTP transports

RIS-specific:

The full RIS OGD surface — all 39 applications across every controller: consolidated law (federal/state/municipal), authentic gazettes at four levels of government, three federal gazette era tiers back to 1848, 17 court/tribunal applications, the lawmaking pipeline, sectoral gazettes, ministerial decrees, English translations, and the per-application change feed
Strict parameter allowlist — RIS silently ignores unknown query params (a typo returns plausible but unfiltered results), so only live-confirmed spellings are ever sent upstream
Normalizer for RIS's JSON-serialized-XML envelope: object-or-array coercion, in-band error detection, six per-controller metadata classes, <br/> cleanup, CELEX reference parsing, ministry-abbreviation expansion
English tool surface over RIS's German API — Austrian legal terms (Geschäftszahl, Rechtssatz, Bundesgesetzblatt) kept as domain vocabulary and glossed in descriptions

Agent-friendly output:

No dead ends — error recovery hints, zero-hit notices, format-unavailable notices, and found: false guidance each name the concrete next call (ris_list_reference topic, the right search tool, ris_lookup_citation), never a bare "check your input"
Zero hits are success plus a composed notice, never an error; conditional-parameter misuse (a court-specific filter with the wrong court, part outside federal scope, a collection filter on the wrong collection, bad addressing) is caught locally before any upstream call
Applied-filter echo — the in_force_as_of default is never invisible to the calling agent
Structured no-resolve results (found: false + guidance) instead of throws on citation lookup
Upstream schema-validation messages passed through — RIS enumerates valid values, which lets agents self-correct
Oversized documents return a retrievable section outline, never a silent cut — re-call with the chosen sections for selective retrieval

Localization

Tool and parameter descriptions are English-only today. German (de-AT) descriptions are planned, pending opt-in localization support in the framework (cyanheads/mcp-ts-core#259); the English surface stays the default and fallback.

Getting started

The one-click badges above (Claude Desktop, Cursor, VS Code) are the fastest path. To configure a client manually, the server runs straight from npm — no clone or build required.

Public Hosted Instance

A public instance is available at https://ris-austria.caseyjhand.com/mcp — no installation required. Point any MCP client at it via Streamable HTTP:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "ris-austria-mcp-server": {
      "type": "streamable-http",
      "url": "https://ris-austria.caseyjhand.com/mcp"
    }
  }
}

Prerequisites

Bun v1.3 or higher, or Node.js v24+ (needed for npx/bunx)
No API key — the RIS OGD API is keyless

Install from npm (recommended)

Add the server to your MCP client configuration:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "ris-austria-mcp-server": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@cyanheads/ris-austria-mcp-server"]
    }
  }
}

bunx @cyanheads/ris-austria-mcp-server works the same way if you prefer Bun. Add any configuration variables under an "env" key.

Install from source

For local development or to run a pinned build:

Clone the repository:

git clone https://github.com/cyanheads/ris-austria-mcp-server.git

Navigate into the directory:

cd ris-austria-mcp-server

Install dependencies and build:

bun install
bun run rebuild

Add to your MCP client configuration file:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "ris-austria-mcp-server": {
      "type": "stdio",
      "command": "node",
      "args": ["/absolute/path/to/ris-austria-mcp-server/dist/index.js"],
      "env": {
        "MCP_TRANSPORT_TYPE": "stdio",
        "MCP_LOG_LEVEL": "info"
      }
    }
  }
}

For Streamable HTTP, set the transport and start the server:

MCP_TRANSPORT_TYPE=http MCP_HTTP_PORT=3010 bun run start:http
# Server listens at http://localhost:3010/mcp

Configuration

| Variable | Description | Default | |:---|:---|:---| | RIS_API_BASE_URL | RIS OGD REST API base URL. | https://data.bka.gv.at/ris/api/v2.6 | | RIS_CONTENT_BASE_URL | Document content host (also the allowlist host for document_url input). | https://www.ris.bka.gv.at | | RIS_CONTACT | Contact string appended to the User-Agent (RIS netiquette asks integrators to be identifiable). | none | | MCP_TRANSPORT_TYPE | Transport: stdio or http. | stdio | | MCP_HTTP_PORT | HTTP server port. | 3010 | | MCP_AUTH_MODE | Authentication: none, jwt, or oauth. | none | | MCP_LOG_LEVEL | Log level (debug, info, warning, error, …). | info | | STORAGE_PROVIDER_TYPE | Storage backend. | in-memory | | OTEL_ENABLED | Enable OpenTelemetry instrumentation. | false |

See .env.example for the full list of optional overrides.

Running the server

Local development

Build and run:

# One-time build
bun run rebuild

# Run the built server
bun run start:stdio
# or
bun run start:http

Run checks and tests:

bun run devcheck   # Lint, format, typecheck, security
bun run test       # Vitest test suite
bun run lint:mcp   # Validate MCP definitions against spec

Project structure

| Directory | Purpose | |:---|:---| | src/index.ts | createApp() entry point — registers tools and resources. | | src/mcp-server/tools | Tool definitions (*.tool.ts). | | src/mcp-server/resources | Resource definitions (*.resource.ts). | | docs/design.md | Settled v1 design — tool surface, service spec, live-confirmed RIS API reference. | | tests/ | Unit and integration tests mirroring src/. | | skills/ | Framework skills synced from @cyanheads/mcp-ts-core. |

Development guide

See CLAUDE.md / AGENTS.md for development guidelines and architectural rules. The short version:

Handlers throw, framework catches — no try/catch in tool logic
Use ctx.log for request-scoped logging, ctx.state for tenant-scoped storage
Register new tools and resources via createApp() in src/index.ts
Wrap the RIS API: validate raw → normalize to domain type → return output schema; never fabricate missing fields

License

Apache-2.0 — see LICENSE for details.

RIS OGD data is CC BY 4.0 (attribution: RIS, Bundeskanzleramt Österreich). The underlying legal texts are copyright-free official works. Only the authentic, amtssignierte gazette wording is legally binding — consolidated RIS text is informational.

Published

Vulnerabilities

Links

Maintainers

Keywords

Readme