About Colorado Code
Colorado Code provides Colorado Revised Statutes by citation, topic, title, and edition for legal research. It separates statutory text from editorial annotations and includes amendment-source history.
Key features
- 01Look up statutes by citation
- 02Search statutes by topic
- 03Browse titles and subject hints
- 04Retrieve supported historical editions
- 05Return amendment source history
Use cases
- 01Check the text of a cited Colorado statute
- 02Find statutes related to a short topic
- 03Compare supported past editions
- 04Review a statute’s amendment source
MCP support
Exposes Colorado statute lookup, topic search, and title tools to MCP clients. It can run as a local stdio MCP server or be accessed through the Pipeworx gateway.
Configuration
Remote servers need no local install. Pick your client, then copy the config or install in one click.
https://gateway.pipeworx.io/colorado-code/mcpclaude mcp add --transport http pipeworx-io-colorado-code https://gateway.pipeworx.io/colorado-code/mcp{"mcpServers":{"pipeworx-io-colorado-code":{"type":"http","url":"https://gateway.pipeworx.io/colorado-code/mcp"}}}Open in Cursor{"servers":{"pipeworx-io-colorado-code":{"type":"http","url":"https://gateway.pipeworx.io/colorado-code/mcp"}}}Open in VS Code{"mcpServers":{"pipeworx-io-colorado-code":{"type":"http","url":"https://gateway.pipeworx.io/colorado-code/mcp"}}}{"mcpServers":{"pipeworx-io-colorado-code":{"serverUrl":"https://gateway.pipeworx.io/colorado-code/mcp"}}}Run commands in a terminal; paste JSON into the client’s MCP config and restart. Servers that need sign-in will prompt on first connect.
Tools
Details
From the project READMEColorado Code — Colorado Revised Statutes by citation, topic, and title
Keyless. "C.R.S. 18-3-102" returns murder in the first degree.
Part of Pipeworx — an MCP gateway connecting AI agents to 1875+ live data sources. This is an independent, unofficial integration — not affiliated with, endorsed by, or published by the upstream provider.
The official site redirects into a wall; a second official route does not
leg.colorado.gov's "C.R.S. Online" link does not host the text itself — it
redirects into advance.lexis.com, a JS-rendered, cookie-session SPA whose
own next step is a login-capture redirect (CaptureReturnUrl). That is the
same class of wall this pack family declines (ASP.NET postback / anti-bot),
and it has no stable per-citation URL to probe anyway.
The Office of Legislative Legal Services separately publishes the whole C.R.S. as downloadable files, one per title, on its own plain file server — no login, no JS, keyless:
https://olls.info/crs/crs2026-title-18.htm (current edition)
https://olls.info/crs-archive/CRS-2015-TITLE-18.htm (a historical edition)
Files are per title, citations are per section — and titles are BIG
A title file holds the whole title plus case-law annotations after every
section (Title 18 alone is ~9.5MB), so the section is cut out of it bounded
by the next section heading OR the start of the annotations, whichever comes
first. Annotations are Lexis's editorial case-law commentary, not the
statute, and are never returned — only the statutory text, the Source:
amendment history, and Cross references: (all public law).
The cut runs on the raw HTML, not the tag-stripped text, on purpose: a real
section heading is the only place a citation is wrapped in
<b><span>NUM.</span></b>. The per-article mini table-of-contents that
precedes every article, and plain cross-references inside OTHER sections'
annotations (a citation that happens to land at the start of a text line
once tags are stripped), both repeat the same number unbolded — textually
indistinguishable from a heading after stripping, never bold in the source.
Three file formats across 27 years of archive
Checked against Title 18 (old enough to exist in every edition):
| Years | Generator | Heading marker |
|---|---|---|
| 2026 (current) | Word | <b><span>NUM.</span></b> |
| 2000-2024 | Word | a name=NUM anchor tag, NUM. Title. + class=CodeSegment labels |
| 2025 | WordPerfect | a bold STRONG-tagged NUM. Title. |
2025 is declined explicitly (edition_format_unsupported) rather than risk
a silently wrong parse for one edition out of twenty-seven — almost
certainly a one-year migration artifact between the other two generators.
If a future year changes format again, co_statute will start answering
section_not_found for a title that exists; the same risk every sibling
state pack already takes on the current year alone, just extended here
across 25 archived years too.
Topic search is a nearby-heading window, not full hierarchy awareness
co_search runs against the ~18MB General Index (crs2026-index.htm), which
is a nested tree — a topic heading followed by indented sub-entries that do
not repeat the heading word. Matching only a result line misses that
structure, so each query word is matched within a small window of the lines
immediately preceding a citation-bearing entry. This works well for short
topics (1-3 words: "landlord", "security deposit", "concealed handgun") and
gets noisier on long compound phrases, which is why the tool description
says so.
The four capabilities
- By citation —
co_statute. Yes. - By topic —
co_search(General Index) andco_titles(title list with subject hints). Yes, with the window caveat above. - Historical version —
co_statutewithyear, 2000-2024 and current; 2025 declined (see above). Yes, mostly. - Amendments/history — the
Source:line, surfaced ashistory. Yes for the current template and 2000-2024; for 2000-2024 editionscross_referencesis usuallynullbecause that era files "Cross references:" inside the annotations block this pack deliberately excludes.
Data sources
- https://olls.info/crs/ — current C.R.S. edition, by title.
- https://olls.info/crs-archive/ — archived editions back to 2000, by title
and year.
robots.txtdisallows crawling this path for SEO; that is not a redistribution question for data this public (CLAUDE.md's standing ruling). - https://olls.info/crs/crs2026-index.htm — the General Index, for
co_search.
Colorado Office of Legislative Legal Services. Colorado statutes are public record.
Quick Start
Add to your MCP client (Claude Desktop, Cursor, Windsurf, etc.):
{
"mcpServers": {
"colorado-code": {
"url": "https://gateway.pipeworx.io/colorado-code/mcp"
}
}
}
What this endpoint actually serves
tools/list at https://gateway.pipeworx.io/colorado-code/mcp returns the tools in the table
above plus the shared Pipeworx meta-tools — ask_pipeworx,
discover_tools, search_within, remember/recall and the rest of the
gateway-wide set. So the tool count you see is larger than this table: a
single-pack endpoint currently lists roughly 30 shared tools alongside the
pack's own. The connection's initialize response states its exact scope, and
is the authoritative answer for a given day.
This is deliberate, not multiplexing by accident. The meta-tools are what let a
scoped connection answer a question this pack does not cover — via
ask_pipeworx, which routes across the whole catalog — without you adding a
second MCP server. There is currently no way to mount a pack endpoint without
them; if the extra schemas cost you more context than the routing is worth,
connect to the full gateway once rather than to several pack endpoints.
Or connect to the full Pipeworx gateway to get every pack's tools listed directly, instead of just this one's:
{
"mcpServers": {
"pipeworx": {
"url": "https://gateway.pipeworx.io/mcp"
}
}
}
Both URLs reach the same gateway and the same 1875+ data sources. The
only difference is which pack's tools are listed directly; ask_pipeworx
reaches all of them from either one.
No MCP client? Call it over HTTP
curl -X POST https://gateway.pipeworx.io/v1/tools/co_statute \
-H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
-d '{"section":"18-3-102"}'
No account needed for the first calls. Inspect any tool: GET https://gateway.pipeworx.io/v1/tools/co_statute. Find one: POST https://gateway.pipeworx.io/v1/tools/search_packs with {"query":"..."}.
Standalone (no gateway account)
This package also runs as a local stdio MCP server — no Pipeworx account, no gateway round-trip:
{
"mcpServers": {
"colorado-code": {
"command": "npx",
"args": ["-y", "@pipeworx/mcp-colorado-code"]
}
}
}
Or run it directly to confirm it starts:
npx -y @pipeworx/mcp-colorado-code
It speaks MCP over stdin/stdout and answers initialize/tools/list/tools/call
for only this pack's tools — none of the shared meta-tools the gateway
connection above adds. Same source, same tools, no ask_pipeworx routing.
Using with ask_pipeworx
Instead of calling tools directly, you can ask questions in plain English — this works on the pack endpoint above as well as on the full gateway:
ask_pipeworx({ question: "your question about Colorado Code data" })
The gateway picks the right tool and fills the arguments automatically.
More
License
MIT
Comments
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From what the protocol is to installing your first server, these answers cover most first questions.
An open protocol that defines how AI applications connect to external tools and data in a uniform way. Clients talk to the model; MCP servers provide tools, resources and prompt templates. They exchange standard messages, so one server can be reused by many clients.