What Do They Know?

UK Freedom of Information research, the UK's largest FOI request platform — search requests, read responses, look up public authorities, and draft new requests.

GitHub

whatdotheyknow-mcp

A Model Context Protocol server for UK Freedom of Information research. Connects AI assistants to WhatDoTheyKnow — the UK's largest FOI request platform — to search requests, read responses, look up public authorities, and draft new requests.

Tools

Tool	Description
`search_request_events`	Full-text search of FOI requests and responses via WhatDoTheyKnow's Atom feed. Supports structured expressions (`status:successful`, `body:"Liverpool City Council"`).
`search_authorities`	Search UK public authorities by name. Returns slug for use with other tools.
`get_request_feed_items`	Fetch the event timeline (sent, response, clarification) for a specific FOI request.
`build_request_url`	Build a prefilled WhatDoTheyKnow request URL for a given authority and topic.
`create_request_record`	Create a request via the write API (requires `WDTK_API_KEY`).
`update_request_state`	Update user-assessed state of a request (requires `WDTK_API_KEY`).

Resources

URI template	Returns
`wdtk://authorities/{authority_slug}`	Authority profile JSON
`wdtk://requests/{request_slug}`	FOI request detail JSON
`wdtk://users/{user_slug}`	User profile JSON
`wdtk://requests/{request_slug}/feed`	Request event Atom feed
`wdtk://users/{user_slug}/feed`	User activity Atom feed
`wdtk://authorities/all.csv`	Full CSV of all UK public authorities

Prompts

Prompt	Description
`draft_foi_request`	Draft a narrow, specific FOI request for a given authority and topic.

Connect

Hosted (no install)

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "whatdotheyknow": {
      "type": "http",
      "url": "https://whatdotheyknow-mcp.fly.dev/mcp"
    }
  }
}

Local (uvx)

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "whatdotheyknow": {
      "type": "stdio",
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": ["whatdotheyknow-mcp"]
    }
  }
}

Environment variables

Variable	Required	Description
`WDTK_API_KEY`	Optional	Enables `create_request_record` and `update_request_state` write tools

Upstream API and Licence

Source	API	Licence	Auth
WhatDoTheyKnow	`www.whatdotheyknow.com`	OGL v3	None (read) / API key (write)

Data is sourced directly from the WhatDoTheyKnow public API. The platform is operated by mySociety.

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