@pipeworx/iowa-code

Iowa Code — state statutes by citation, historical edition, amendment history, and chapter/section topic search. Keyless.

Part of Pipeworx — an MCP gateway connecting AI agents to 1865+ live data sources. This is an independent, unofficial integration — not affiliated with, endorsed by, or published by the upstream provider.

Tools

• ia_code_section(section, year?) — full text of an Iowa Code section by citation ("714.2" is degrees of theft; "321J.2" is OWI). Returns the statute text, its amendment history and referred_to_in cross-references as separate fields, and (via year) a historical edition back to 2000.
• ia_code_titles() — the 16 titles of the Code with official names and chapter-number ranges, for routing a subject to the right chapter range.
• ia_code_search(query, limit?) — topic/keyword search over the Code's own official chapter and section captions (not full statutory text — see below), returning matching citations.

Auth

Keyless.

The survey trap did not apply here

The August state-law survey's recorded trap was "published only as PDF" — but legis.iowa.gov serves every chapter of the Iowa Code as a plain RTF file, for every archived year (2000, then 2004 through the current year; 2001-2003 are genuinely missing from the site's own year picker):

https://www.legis.iowa.gov/docs/code/2026/714.rtf   (current edition)
https://www.legis.iowa.gov/docs/code/2015/714.rtf   (a historical edition)

A cleaner per-chapter XML export also exists (/docs/publications/ICC/2026/attachments/714_slim.xml), but verified live 2026-10-06 it 404s for every year except the current one — even though the chapter-listing page for every past year keeps linking it. That is a dead link on the Legislature's own site, not a probe mistake. RTF is therefore the one path used here, for every year including the current one, decoded by a small dependency-free RTF-to-text reader written for this file shape (shared/src/statute-rtf.ts, verified against both the 2026 and 2015 editions of chapter 714).

(Note for anyone cross-referencing today's batch: Kentucky landed a dependency-free PDF extractor the same day, shared/src/pdf-text.ts. Iowa never needed it — RTF covers every year here — but it's the thing to reach for if a future state really is PDF-only.)

Citations

Iowa cites by chapter.section, e.g. "714.2" (degrees of theft) or "321J.2" (OWI). The chapter is the part before the dot and may itself carry letters ("714A", "6B", "321J") — not every chapter is a bare number.

Topic search is caption search, not full text

Iowa does not publish a general subject index of the Code (verified 2026-10-06: no INDEX.pdf/index.pdf under /docs/code/2026/), and the Iowa Legislature's own publications search engine does not index Code section text at all — its own facet tree covers bills, fiscal notes, administrative bulletins and rules, but has no "Iowa Code" category. ia_code_search instead matches a query against the official chapter and section CAPTIONS every listing page already carries ("714 - THEFT, FRAUD, AND RELATED OFFENSES", "714.1 - Theft defined.") — real, live, and self-updating, but bounded by whatever words the Legislature chose for a caption. A plain-language query that doesn't share vocabulary with the official caption (e.g. "security deposit" vs. the statute's own "rental deposits") can rank a false-positive chapter above the right one; the tool description says so.

Data sources

• https://www.legis.iowa.gov/docs/code/2026/714.rtf — the full text of one chapter (here, chapter 714, the current edition — swap the year and chapter number for any other). ia_code_section cuts one section out of this.
• https://www.legis.iowa.gov/law/iowaCode/chapters?title=XVI&year=2026 — chapter captions for one of the Code's 16 titles (here, title XVI). ia_code_search's first pass.
• https://www.legis.iowa.gov/law/iowaCode/sections?codeChapter=714&year=2026 — section captions for one chapter. ia_code_search's drill-down pass.

All three are plain, keyless, server-rendered HTML/RTF — no login, no JS, no rate-limit observed during development.

Quick Start

Add to your MCP client (Claude Desktop, Cursor, Windsurf, etc.):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "iowa-code": {
      "url": "https://gateway.pipeworx.io/iowa-code/mcp"
    }
  }
}

What this endpoint actually serves

tools/list at https://gateway.pipeworx.io/iowa-code/mcp returns the tools in the table above plus the shared Pipeworx meta-tools — ask_pipeworx, discover_tools, search_within, remember/recall and the rest of the gateway-wide set. So the tool count you see is larger than this table: a single-pack endpoint currently lists roughly 30 shared tools alongside the pack's own. The connection's initialize response states its exact scope, and is the authoritative answer for a given day.

This is deliberate, not multiplexing by accident. The meta-tools are what let a scoped connection answer a question this pack does not cover — via ask_pipeworx, which routes across the whole catalog — without you adding a second MCP server. There is currently no way to mount a pack endpoint without them; if the extra schemas cost you more context than the routing is worth, connect to the full gateway once rather than to several pack endpoints.

Or connect to the full Pipeworx gateway to get every pack's tools listed directly, instead of just this one's:

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

Both URLs reach the same gateway and the same 1865+ data sources. The only difference is which pack's tools are listed directly; ask_pipeworx reaches all of them from either one.

No MCP client? Call it over HTTP

curl -X POST https://gateway.pipeworx.io/v1/tools/ia_code_section \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{"section":"714.2"}'

No account needed for the first calls. Inspect any tool: GET https://gateway.pipeworx.io/v1/tools/ia_code_section. Find one: POST https://gateway.pipeworx.io/v1/tools/search_packs with {"query":"..."}.

Run it from npm

@pipeworx/mcp-iowa-code is a local stdio bridge to the Pipeworx gateway: your MCP client starts it with npx, and it forwards every call to the same https://gateway.pipeworx.io/iowa-code/mcp endpoint shown above. It needs network access; there is no offline mode.

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

Without a key it calls anonymously, capped at 50 calls a day. A free account raises that to 200 a day: get a key at https://pipeworx.io/signup and add "env": { "PIPEWORX_API_KEY": "<your key>" } to the server entry. The key is sent as a Bearer token, the same way a hosted connection sends it, so calls are metered and billed exactly as they are there.

It lists only this pack's tools by default. Set PIPEWORX_META_TOOLS=1 to also list ask_pipeworx and the other gateway-wide tools.

Behind an HTTPS proxy: Node's built-in fetch does not read HTTPS_PROXY by default. Newer Node releases honour it when NODE_USE_ENV_PROXY=1 is set; check your Node version's documentation.

Using with ask_pipeworx

Instead of calling tools directly, you can ask questions in plain English — this works on the pack endpoint above as well as on the full gateway:

ask_pipeworx({ question: "your question about Iowa Code data" })

The gateway picks the right tool and fills the arguments automatically.

More

• Docs and guides
• pipeworx.io

License

MIT