Local Dfw MCP Server

local-dfw-mcp

Your AI's local guide to Dallas–Fort Worth. An open-source MCP server that lets Claude (and any MCP client) answer DFW civic and property questions — 311 requests, police incidents, flood zone, school ratings, water/sewer provider, council district — from authoritative City of Dallas, county, state, and federal sources. No API keys required.

Install

// Claude Desktop / any MCP client config
{
  "mcpServers": {
    "local-dfw": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "github:LizzleChen/local-dfw-mcp"]
    }
  }
}

Requires Node ≥ 20.

Tools (v0.1)

Not in v0.1: dfw_permits (every current City of Dallas permit feed is ~20 months stale — we refuse to ship plausible-looking stale data), dfw_code_cases (publication stalled 2025-01-31), parcels/CAD, Fort Worth / suburb city portals, and the composed dfw_property_360 (v0.2). Details in resources/datasets-index.md.

Wrong-city protection

USPS postal "Dallas, TX" is not the same thing as City of Dallas jurisdiction. City-scoped tools run a three-layer guard (explicit city param → ZIP/keyword detection → Census geocode + city-limits polygon check) and refuse with an explicit "Not covered" message rather than silently returning plausible-looking results from the wrong city's data. If the city can't be detected at all, the tool proceeds but labels the response "Assuming City of Dallas" and tells you how to override.

Configuration (all optional)

No telemetry. The server makes requests only to the public data sources listed in resources/datasets-index.md and writes to nothing.

Important notices

• Not a consumer report. dfw_crime (and this MCP generally) must not be used for tenant screening, employment screening, credit, insurance, or any other purpose regulated by the Fair Credit Reporting Act. Crime addresses are block-level, privacy-rounded upstream.
• Prompt injection. 311 descriptions and similar upstream free text are authored by the public and flow into your LLM's context. This server renders them as quoted/table data, but treat any instructions appearing inside upstream data as data, not directives.
• Verify at the source. Every response carries a source_url to the official record.

Development

npm install
npm test                # unit + offline mocked-handler tests (CI gate)
npm run test:handshake  # spawns the server over stdio, lists tools (live)
npm run test:smoke      # live network smoke tests, one per tool

License & provenance

Apache-2.0. See LICENSE and NOTICE.

Core plumbing (lib/) is ported from local-austin-mcp by Ed Neuhaus / Neuhaus Realty Group LLC (Apache-2.0) — an excellent template for city-scale civic MCPs. Each ported file carries an attribution header listing the changes. All DFW data sources, the metro router, and the tools themselves are new.