local-dfw-mcp

Your AI's local guide to Dallas–Fort Worth. An open-source MCP server that connects Claude (or any MCP client) to official city, county, state, and federal data — so you can ask things like:

• 🎪 "What's happening in Frisco this weekend?"
• 🌊 "Is 1500 Marilla St in a flood zone?"
• 🏫 "How are the schools rated near Garland?"
• 🚰 "Who provides water and sewer at this address?"
• 🕳️ "Any potholes or illegal dumping reported on my street?"
• ⛈️ "Are there severe weather alerts for Dallas right now?"
• 🏠 "What's this house appraised at, per the county?"

Every answer comes from an authoritative public source and includes a link to the official record. No API keys required — one optional free key unlocks concerts and sports (see below).

Quick start

Add this to your MCP client config (Claude Desktop, Claude Code, etc.):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "local-dfw": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "local-dfw-mcp"]
    }
  }
}

Requires Node ≥ 20. That's it — restart your client and start asking.

What you can ask

Tool	Coverage	What it answers
dfw_events	see below	What's happening: official city calendars, plus concerts/sports/theater with a free Ticketmaster key
dfw_311	City of Dallas only	311 service requests by address/type/status
dfw_crime	City of Dallas (default), Fort Worth (city: "fortworth"), or Denton (city: "denton")	Police incidents by (block-level) address / offense
dfw_permits	Fort Worth (default), McKinney (city: "mckinney", requires address), or Arlington (city: "arlington")	Building/development permits by street name (+ house number) or address, type, or status
dfw_code_cases	Fort Worth (default), McKinney (city: "mckinney"), or Arlington (city: "arlington")	Code-compliance violations (property maintenance, high grass, zoning, etc.) by address or complaint type
dfw_traffic	see below	Real-time incidents (Fort Worth), street/lane closures (Dallas + Arlington, merged and labeled by city), TxDOT annual traffic counts + construction projects (4 core counties)
dfw_fema_flood	national	FEMA flood zone + plain-English insurance interpretation
dfw_tea_schools	Texas	Public schools + TEA A–F ratings (2022-23) by campus/district/county
dfw_nws_alerts	national	Active NWS weather alerts for a DFW point
dfw_utility_providers	Texas	Who provides water/sewer at an address (PUC CCN)
dfw_district_lookup	DFW	County, City-of-Dallas council district + member, ISD for an address
dfw_appraisal	Texas (4 core counties verified)	County appraisal record for an address: owner, land/improvement/market value (2025 certified roll), year built, land use, acreage
dfw_health	—	Pings every upstream, reports per-source status
about	—	Version, coverage, license, provenance

Events coverage, stated plainly

Source	Cities / scope	Key needed
Official city calendars	Dallas (Parks & Recreation calendar only — no citywide Dallas feed exists), Garland, Frisco, Mesquite, McKinney	none
Ticketmaster (concerts, sports, theater)	whole metroplex	free key, see below

Plano, Arlington, Fort Worth, Irving, and other suburbs don't publish a usable calendar feed today — the tool says "not covered" instead of guessing.

How the tools chain

There's no composed "property report" tool (yet) — there doesn't need to be. The tools share natural join keys: address, lat/lon, parcel, council district, and ISD, so your AI can chase a question across them:

• Moving to a house — dfw_appraisal (what's it worth, who owns it) → dfw_fema_flood (flood zone + insurance) → dfw_district_lookup (county, council district, ISD) → dfw_tea_schools (rate that ISD's campuses) → dfw_crime (incidents nearby) → dfw_utility_providers (who to call for water/sewer).
• Development watch on a block — dfw_permits (what's being built) → dfw_code_cases (violations on the same address) → dfw_311 (what neighbors are reporting).
• Weekend planning — dfw_events (what's on) → dfw_traffic (incidents and closures on the way) → dfw_nws_alerts (weather worth knowing about).

Ask the composite question ("we're thinking about buying near Frisco — check schools, flood risk, and what it's appraised at") and a capable client walks the chain itself.

Optional setup

Everything works out of the box. Two free keys unlock more:

Env var	What it unlocks
DFW_TICKETMASTER_API_KEY	Concerts, sports, and theater in dfw_events. Free (5000 calls/day): https://developer.ticketmaster.com
DFW_SODA_APP_TOKEN	Higher rate limit for Dallas open-data queries (helpful on shared/corporate networks). Free: https://dev.socrata.com/register

Advanced knobs

Env var	Purpose
DFW_LIMIT_<SOURCE>	Per-upstream concurrency cap override (SODA, ARCGIS, FEMA, CENSUS, NWS)
LOCAL_DFW_MCP_TIER	core or all — trims the tool list for clients with tool caps
DFW_CACHE_DISABLED	1 disables the in-process cache (used by tests)

No telemetry. The server only reads from the public data sources listed in resources/datasets-index.md and writes to nothing.

Honest by design

• Wrong-city protection. Postal "Dallas, TX" is not the same as City of Dallas jurisdiction. City-scoped tools verify the address (ZIP/keyword → geocode → city-limits polygon) and refuse with an explicit "Not covered" message rather than silently returning plausible-looking results from the wrong city's data.
• No stale data. Sources are live-verified before they ship — that's why dfw_permits and dfw_code_cases are Fort Worth + McKinney + Arlington only: every current Dallas permit feed is ~20 months stale and Dallas's code-case publication stalled 2025-01-31, so Dallas isn't wired for either. Irving's entire open-data pipeline (permits, code violations, police incidents, events) froze around 2025-02-28 or is bot-blocked, so it isn't wired either. Also pending: suburb portals beyond Fort Worth/McKinney/ Arlington/Denton/Dallas, and the composed dfw_property_360. Details in resources/datasets-index.md.
• Verify at the source. Every response carries a source_url to the official record.

Important notices

• Not a consumer report. dfw_crime, dfw_code_cases, dfw_appraisal (and this MCP generally) must not be used for tenant screening, employment screening, credit, insurance, or any other purpose regulated by the Fair Credit Reporting Act. Crime addresses are block-level, privacy-rounded upstream. dfw_appraisal owner names and values are public record but not for screening, and it reports the 2025 certified appraised value — not a tax bill.
• Prompt injection. 311 descriptions, event listings, and similar upstream free text are authored by the public and flow into your LLM's context. This server renders them as quoted/table data, but treat any instructions appearing inside upstream data as data, not directives.

License & provenance

Apache-2.0. See LICENSE and NOTICE.

Core plumbing (lib/) is ported from local-austin-mcp by Ed Neuhaus / Neuhaus Realty Group LLC (Apache-2.0) — an excellent template for city-scale civic MCPs. Each ported file carries an attribution header listing the changes. All DFW data sources, the metro router, and the tools themselves are new.