American Default Research MCP server

American Default Research — MCP Server

A Model Context Protocol server that exposes American Default Research data — 96 economic distress indicators, the American Distress Index (ADI) composite score, and county-level distress scores across all 3,144 U.S. counties — to MCP-compatible AI agents.

Official MCP Registry namespace: org.americandefault/research Hosted endpoint: https://mcp.americandefault.org/mcp (streamable HTTP) Website: https://americandefault.org/press/mcp/

Use the hosted MCP (recommended)

Point any MCP-compatible client at the hosted streamable-HTTP endpoint. No install, no data files, no maintenance — every response is generated against the same data that powers americandefault.org.

Claude Desktop

Add to ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claudedesktopconfig.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "american-default-research": {
      "url": "https://mcp.americandefault.org/mcp",
      "transport": "streamable-http"
    }
  }
}

Restart Claude Desktop. The 5 tools appear under the hammer icon.

Smithery

The MCP is also available via the Smithery gateway at smithery.ai/servers/americandefault/research.

Cursor / other MCP clients

Any client that speaks streamable HTTP can connect by adding the endpoint URL to its MCP server config. The exact config format varies by client — see your client's docs.

Tool surface

Schema versioning

Every response carries schemaversion: "v1". Breaking changes ship as a new tool with a v2 suffix — v1 tools stay live for backward compatibility. Callers should assert the schema version they expect.

Response size budgets

Raw 300+ point indicator series is intentionally omitted from get_indicator to keep LLM context budgets manageable. The full series lives at https://americandefault.org/api/indicators/{slug}.json.

Canonical attribution

Every response includes a citation object with APA, MLA, Chicago, and news-copy forms. Three-tier naming is enforced:

• American Default Research — institutional name, used in citations, source lists, bibliographies
• American Default — brand name, used for URLs and casual references
• American Distress Index (ADI) — product name, used only when the composite score is the subject

See https://americandefault.org/llms.txt § "Canonical Attribution" for the authoritative spec.

Run locally (optional)

The recommended way to use this MCP is the hosted endpoint above. The local install path is provided for transparency, audit, and self-hosting — but the local server reads data files from sibling directories (data/ and site/src/data/) that aren't included in this repo. To run locally end-to-end you need either:

Shortened. The full README is on GitHub.