US Census MCP
Query official U.S. Census population, housing, and income data by area
Runs as a server Claude Code connects to. It needs its own configuration, and some servers need an API key.
Install just this one
Run in your terminal — needs Node
npx archtmpl@latest --mcp census-mcpFirst time? The whole install, step by step
- Open Claude Code — the terminal version or the desktop app, either one.
- In a terminal, paste the line above and press Enter. In the app, paste it into the chat and ask Claude to run it.
- Restart Claude Code. That's the whole install.
The same JSON shown on this page works in the Claude desktop app without Claude Code. Add it to the app's config file, then restart the app:
- macOS:
~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json - Windows:
%APPDATA%\Claude\claude_desktop_config.json
What this mcp server does
shell
1{ 2 "name": "US Census MCP", 3 "summary": "Query official U.S. Census population, housing, and income data by area", 4 "repo": "https://github.com/uscensusbureau/us-census-bureau-data-api-mcp", 5 "preInstall": [ 6 { "shell": "test -d \"$HOME/.claude-arch/census-mcp\" || git clone https://github.com/uscensusbureau/us-census-bureau-data-api-mcp \"$HOME/.claude-arch/census-mcp\"" }, 7 { "shell": "cd \"$HOME/.claude-arch/census-mcp\" && docker compose --profile prod run --rm census-mcp-db-init sh -c \"npm run migrate:up && npm run seed\"" } 8 ], 9 "mcpServers": {10 "census": {11 "command": "bash",12 "args": ["${HOME}/.claude-arch/census-mcp/scripts/mcp-connect.sh"],13 "env": {14 "CENSUS_API_KEY": "YOUR_CENSUS_API_KEY"15 }16 }17 },18 "postInstallNotes": "Official U.S. Census Bureau implementation. Needs Docker, Node 18+, and a free Data API key from api.census.gov/data/key_signup.html; replace the placeholder. The database seed step runs once on first install."19}20