Federal appellate dockets

Federal appellate dockets — the thirteen circuits, the Federal Circuit and the Supreme Court. 2.2 million dockets. This is the case on appeal; the written opinion that results is in the court-listener pack.

Part of Pipeworx — an MCP gateway connecting AI agents to 1573+ live data sources.

No API key.

What this is, and what it is not

Docket metadata: that a case exists, its parties, court, docket number, filing and termination dates, and assigned judge. It contains no filings — no complaints, motions, briefs or orders. Those are RECAP, a separate corpus that is not keyless.

An agent with this data knows a case was brought. It does not know what anyone argued.

Tools

Tool	Returns
federal_appeal_search	Dockets matching a party name
federal_appeal_recent	Recent dockets, newest first

Caveats

• Quarterly snapshot. Every response carries snapshot_date.
• date_terminated is 78.3% filled, so a missing date means not recorded, never still open. Responses say which.
• nature_of_suit is sparse — 14.8% corpus-wide, 30.5% in district courts. This can tell you a company is in federal court; it often cannot tell you what for.
• Party search matches a substring of the case caption, so a distinctive party name works better than a full caption.

Attribution

Data is CourtListener / Free Law Project, published under the Public Domain Mark. Free Law Project funds and maintains the corpus. If this pack is useful to you, https://free.law/donate/ is where that goes.

Quick Start

Add to your MCP client (Claude Desktop, Cursor, Windsurf, etc.):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "federal-appeals": {
      "url": "https://gateway.pipeworx.io/federal-appeals/mcp"
    }
  }
}

What this endpoint actually serves

tools/list at https://gateway.pipeworx.io/federal-appeals/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 1573+ data sources. The only difference is which pack's tools are listed directly; ask_pipeworx reaches all of them from either one.

Standalone (no gateway account)

This package also runs as a local stdio MCP server — no Pipeworx account, no gateway round-trip:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "federal-appeals": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@pipeworx/mcp-federal-appeals"]
    }
  }
}

Or run it directly to confirm it starts:

npx -y @pipeworx/mcp-federal-appeals

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 Federal Appeals data" })

The gateway picks the right tool and fills the arguments automatically.

More

• Docs and guides
• pipeworx.io

License

MIT