API & MCP server for AI agents
Every fact on PermitBase is also published as static, machine-readable JSON — free, versioned, and source-cited. An MCP server for live tool calls is up at mcp.permitbase.app.
Why this exists
AI agents and answer engines increasingly need structured, provenance-bearing sources instead of scraping HTML. PermitBase's dataset — permit requirements, fees, codes adopted, and Census building-activity data — is already source-cited and versioned, so we publish it directly as a static contract any agent or developer can fetch, with the same grounding guarantee as the site itself: every response byte is either a verified field or an explicit, honest refusal. Nothing is ever summarized, derived, or guessed.
Available now — static JSON
/data/v1/manifest.json— dataset version, schema version, coverage counts, and BPS activity vintage./data/v1/coverage.json— every covered state, county, and jurisdiction, with permit-type counts. Check a jurisdiction is listed here before relying on it — anything absent is uncovered, never guessed./data/v1/jurisdiction/{slug}.json— the full requirements record for a jurisdiction (department, codes adopted, local amendments, every permit type's requirements/documents/fees/timeline/ sources) fused with its Census building-activity slice. Requirements freshness (lastVerified) and activity freshness (bpsVintage) are always kept separate — never conflated.- /llms.txt — a plain-text summary for AI crawlers and answer engines, linking the endpoints above, plus /llms-full.txt — the expanded version with per-jurisdiction detail (department, codes adopted, local amendments, permit types) inlined for a single-fetch overview.
No API key, no rate limit beyond ordinary fair use, no cost. This is the same free data as the website — just structured for machines instead of browsers.
Live — MCP server
A remote MCP (Model Context Protocol) server is live at https://mcp.permitbase.app/mcp. It exposes the same dataset as callable tools — coverage lookup, jurisdiction and permit detail, building activity, and jurisdiction comparison — so an AI agent can query PermitBase directly inside a conversation instead of fetching JSON by hand. It is retrieval-only: no model runs inside the server, so it structurally cannot hallucinate a fact.
Point any MCP-capable client at the endpoint above, or see /llms.txt for a machine-readable summary of everything on this page.