Acquisition.gov

Acquisition.gov MCP

Free, open-source, read-only, deterministic MCP access to the official Acquisition.gov FAR Overhaul (RFO) model-part pages, the posted agency-deviation index, official deviation PDFs, and a small allowlist of RFO guidance resources.

This server reports source content and metadata. It does not decide which rule governs a procurement. In particular, model deviation text is not treated as operative for an agency without that agency's posted deviation.

Available in Claude and ChatGPT

MCP	Claude	ChatGPT
Acquisition.gov	Install	Install

This MCP is published in the Claude and ChatGPT directories. Open a listing to install and connect it; no user API key or local Python setup is required. Then try a matching prompt. Prompts that combine sources require every listed MCP to be connected.

The installation instructions below cover direct setup in other compatible MCP clients.

Install

uvx acquisition-gov-mcp==1.0.8

The server uses stdio, requires no credentials, and defaults to a three-second cross-process interval between Acquisition.gov requests. FEDERAL_API_MIN_INTERVAL_SECONDS may increase or decrease that interval for controlled testing; production clients should retain three seconds.

Request pacing

Default setting	Value
Wait after each upstream request completes	3 seconds
Maximum upstream requests in flight per pacing identity	1
Rolling attempt counter in this pacer	None; provider quotas still apply

The next request starts after the previous request's duration plus 3 seconds. This is a completion delay, not a 3-second start interval. Local processes sharing the same pacing directory and identity share this gate; a separate local counter does not create additional provider quota.

See the complete pacing reference for all nine servers, shared credentials/IPs, configuration and hosting differences.

The hosted Acquisition.gov endpoint retains 60 HTTP requests per 60 seconds per incoming IP and Cloudflare location, 4 active MCP HTTP requests, a 55-second backend processing timeout, and 64 KiB request bodies. Its one-upstream-request-at-a-time gate is shared by all hosted users.

Tools

Tool	Purpose
list_rfo_parts(part?, agency?, updated_since?)	List RFO model parts with official source dates and matching posted-deviation counts.
get_rfo_part(part, section?, cursor?, max_characters?)	Retrieve parsed, paginated model text for one FAR part.
list_rfo_agency_deviations(agency?, part?, limit?)	Discover posted deviation documents. At least one filter is required.
get_rfo_agency_deviation(source_id, page_start?, page_end?)	Resolve only an indexed source ID and return page-numbered PDF text and document-found applicability language.
get_rfo_guidance(resource, heading?, cursor?)	Retrieve the FAQ, policy-and-guidance page, or FAR Council deviation-guidance PDF.

Every retrieved source includes a canonical URL, UTC retrieval time, SHA-256 content hash, extraction status, and warnings. Agency PDF dates and applicability are returned only when labeled language is found inside the document; filenames are never used to infer them.

Safety boundary

• Only https://acquisition.gov and https://www.acquisition.gov are allowed.
• Redirect targets are revalidated; credentials, explicit ports, arbitrary hosts, and private IP targets are rejected.
• Downloads are bounded to 5 MiB HTML / 25 MiB PDF. HTML complexity, redirects, page selection and output length are also bounded.
• PDF extraction runs in one isolated parser subprocess at a time, with a 30-second deadline, 2 MiB decoded page-stream limit, and 160 MiB address-space / 8-second CPU limits on Linux. macOS and Windows retain process isolation and explicit content/output limits without the Linux resource caps.
• HTTP 429 is not burst-retried. Retry-After is retained in the shared pacing state.
• If the Python TLS transport stalls against Acquisition.gov's CDN, the server may use an installed system curl for the same prevalidated URL; redirects remain disabled and revalidated by the server.
• Duplicate and conflicting index entries are returned with warnings instead of silently resolved.
• Scanned, encrypted, and malformed PDFs return explicit extraction status and metadata where possible.

Version 1.0.8 passed 236 offline tests, including 55 independent-review regressions, real stdio/HTTP smoke checks, parser isolation, cancellation and per-tool correctness cases. See testing.md for evidence, exact limits, known scope and reproducible commands.