statistik-austria-mcp

Table of Contents

1. About The Project
   • Built With
2. Getting Started
   • Prerequisites
   • Installation
3. Usage
   • Limitations
4. Data Source
5. Contributing
6. License
7. Contact

About The Project

A Model Context Protocol server for the free Open Government Data portal of Statistik Austria (data.statistik.gv.at). It lets an AI assistant such as Claude search the catalog, read a dataset's structure and fetch its data directly, instead of you downloading and pasting CSV files.

The portal publishes each dataset as a set of files with coded values, so a raw table is hard for a model to read correctly. The server joins the classification files onto the data, so every value arrives as a readable German label together with its original code, and marks the rows that are totals of other rows.

Built as a personal learning project to practise building MCP servers.

Features:

• Keyword search over the full OGD catalog (around 540 datasets)
• Dataset metadata: dimensions and measures
• Data with codes resolved to German labels, formatted label <code>
• Total rows are flagged, so the assistant doesn't add a total to its own parts
• Filters by dimension value, so large tables don't have to be read in full
• Paging that never drops rows silently: every response says how many rows exist and where to continue
• Clear messages for datasets in formats the server can't read, instead of a bare error
• Downloads are cached for an hour, so paging through a dataset doesn't download it again

Built With

• Python 3
• MCP Python SDK
• pandas
• httpx2
• cachetools
• uv

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Getting Started

The server runs locally on your computer and talks to your MCP client over stdio. uvx installs and starts it, so there is nothing to clone for normal use.

Prerequisites

• uv (it downloads a matching Python version automatically)
• Git
• Claude Desktop or Claude Code (or any other MCP client)

Installation

Claude Desktop

1. Open the config file. In Claude Desktop, go to Settings → Developer → Edit Config, or open it directly:
   • Windows: %APPDATA%\Claude\claude_desktop_config.json
   • macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json
2. Add the server

   {
     "mcpServers": {
       "statistik-austria": {
         "command": "uvx",
         "args": ["--from", "git+https://github.com/DV155/Statistik-Austria-MCP-Server", "statistik-austria-mcp"]
       }
     }
   }
   

3. Quit Claude Desktop completely and start it again.

Claude Code

claude mcp add --transport stdio --scope user statistik-austria -- uvx --from git+https://github.com/DV155/Statistik-Austria-MCP-Server statistik-austria-mcp

The first start takes a while, because uv installs the dependencies (pandas is the largest). To get that out of the way, run the uvx command above once in a terminal and stop it with Ctrl+C once it is running. If Claude can't find uvx, replace "uvx" with its full path (which uvx shows it). Claude Desktop writes the server's logs to %APPDATA%\Claude\logs on Windows and ~/Library/Logs/Claude on macOS.

Local development

1. Clone the repo

   git clone https://github.com/DV155/Statistik-Austria-MCP-Server.git
   cd Statistik-Austria-MCP-Server
   

2. Install the dependencies

   uv sync
   

3. Start the server in the MCP Inspector

   uv run mcp dev src/statserver/server.py
   

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Usage

Ask Claude a question about Austrian statistics, and it uses the tools on its own.

Tool	What it does
search_dataset	Searches the catalog by keyword and returns matching dataset IDs and titles
fetch_dataset_json	Returns a dataset's dimensions and measures with their codes
fetch_dataset_csv	Returns the data with labels, total-row flags and paging; filters keeps only the rows for given dimension values

The server also provides an ogd://catalog resource with the catalog's categories.

Tip: the catalog's titles are German, so the server searches in German. Claude translates the question itself, but asking in German works just as well.

Limitations

Tested against all 543 datasets in the catalog in October 2026:

• 474 load fully
• 66 are published in formats the server can't read (zip archives and map services such as WFS and WMS); the server says so instead of failing
• 2 contain no data rows
• 1 (OGDEXT_BINNENWAND_1) loads without labels and slowly

Other limitations:

• Only the free OGD portal is supported, not the paid STATcube API
• The catalog is read from the portal's HTML page, so search stops working if Statistik Austria changes that page's structure
• The first request for a very large dataset can take several seconds while it downloads

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Data Source

All data comes from Statistik Austria - data.statistik.gv.at, licensed under CC BY 4.0. When you publish results obtained through this server, credit Statistik Austria as the source.

This is an independent project and is not affiliated with or endorsed by Statistik Austria.

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Contributing

Contributions are what make the open source community such an amazing place to learn, inspire, and create. Any contributions you make are greatly appreciated.

If you have a suggestion that would make this better, please fork the repo and create a pull request. You can also simply open an issue with the tag "enhancement". Don't forget to give the project a star! Thanks again!

1. Fork the Project
2. Create your Feature Branch (git checkout -b feature/AmazingFeature)
3. Commit your Changes (git commit -m 'Add some AmazingFeature')
4. Push to the Branch (git push origin feature/AmazingFeature)
5. Open a Pull Request

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Top contributors:

License

Distributed under the MIT license. See LICENSE for more information.

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Contact

Daniil Vasilcovschii - LinkedIn - GitHub

Project Link: https://github.com/DV155/Statistik-Austria-MCP-Server

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