Part of the Swiss Public Data MCP Portfolio — open-source MCP servers connecting AI agents to Swiss public and open data.

This is a private project. It is independent of any employer or institutional affiliation and represents no official position of any authority.

swiss-procurement-mcp

MCP server for Swiss public procurement — read access to the official simap.ch API, covering all cantons and the Confederation, updated intraday.

🎯 Anchor demo query

«Which school-building tenders did the City of Zurich publish in 2026, which BKP construction categories do they concern, and who are the procuring offices?»

A single search_procurements_detailed(query="Schulhaus", canton="ZH", published_from="2026-01-01") returns the leading tenders already expanded with their BKP construction codes and procuring offices — connecting procurement to school-building planning in one call (optionally paired with search_construction_codes to resolve a category).

Demo

Why this server exists

Swiss public procurement is published on simap.ch. The platform's web UI is searchable by hand, but the amtsblatt-mcp server only reaches the three cantons (AR, BS, TI) that still mirror tenders to the Amtsblattportal — Zurich among the missing.

simap closes that gap: it operates a documented OpenAPI 3 read API (v1.5.1) whose search and detail endpoints are marked security: None and are callable without authentication. This server wraps exactly those read endpoints.

Mnemonic: The web UI is the front door; the API is the loading dock. Probe the dock.

Architecture decision

Architecture A (live API only, short-lived cache).

• The public search, detail and reference endpoints are unauthenticated and were confirmed working live (2026-07-26).
• Publications change intraday, so the cache TTL is deliberately short (30 min).
• The ~200 write / my/ / OIDC-protected endpoints (publishing tenders, submitting offers) are out of scope — this server never writes.

Every response carries source and provenance (live_api / cached / degraded). Upstream failure yields a degraded envelope, never a silent empty list.

Live-probe findings (2026-07-26)

Known findings

1. Wrong host, wrong conclusion. The read API lives under www.simap.ch/api. The simap.ch/de web UI is a separate SSR app that exposes none of it — probing the UI produced an earlier, mistaken "no API" verdict.
2. lang is mandatory on project-search. Omitting it is HTTP 400 (errorCode E0025), not an empty result. The client injects a default.
3. Award is not "award". newestPubTypes=award returns HTTP 400. Awards are split by procedure: award_tender, award_study_contract, award_competition, direct_award. The search_awards tool queries all four.
4. Canton ids are bare. ZH, not CH-ZH. Passing an ISO subdivision code silently matches nothing; this server rejects it with a clear error.
5. A session cookie is required. The first request sets it; a persistent HTTP client handles this transparently.

Tools

All tools carry readOnlyHint, idempotentHint and openWorldHint (they query the live simap.ch API).

Every tool takes a single validated argument object. Bounds, allow-lists and patterns are declared on the input models in inputs.py — so an out-of-range limit or an unknown canton is rejected before any upstream request, and the constraints are visible to the model in the tool schema rather than buried in the tool body:

search_procurements({"canton": "ZH", "query": "Schulhaus", "limit": 20})

The models set strict=True (no silent "10" → 10 coercion) and extra="forbid" (unknown fields are rejected, not ignored). The canton, process type, publication type, code system and language allow-lists are derived from constants.py, so they cannot drift from the probe-verified tables.

What canton= means

simap offers exactly one geographic filter, orderAddressCantons, and it selects by where the work is delivered — not by who is procuring. When a procuring office files a free-text address, the structured canton is null and the publication is invisible to that filter. Measured CH-wide over 500 projects published since 2026-07-01: 303 (60.6%) carry no canton, among them the Amt für Hochbauten Zürich, Grün Stadt Zürich, USZ, BBL and SBB.

canton_match therefore makes the question explicit:

The 31 projects only place_of_delivery finds are federal bodies procuring in Zurich (ETH, Empa, Flughafen Zürich AG) — a different question, not a gap, which is why this is three explicit semantics rather than a silent union.

Every response states in note which semantics were applied.

Portfolio connections

• A vendor's UID links to register-mcp.
• BKP / eBKP construction codes on a tender connect procurement to school-building planning and to zh-education-mcp.
• Complements amtsblatt-mcp with national coverage instead of three cantons.

Installation

uvx swiss-procurement-mcp

Claude Desktop

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "swiss-procurement": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": ["swiss-procurement-mcp"]
    }
  }
}

Cloud (Render / Railway)

MCP_TRANSPORT=sse HOST=0.0.0.0 PORT=8000 python -m swiss_procurement_mcp

Container

docker compose up --build        # SSE on :8000

The image is multi-stage and runs as a non-root system user. compose.yaml adds a read-only root filesystem, drops all capabilities, sets no-new-privileges, and caps memory, CPU and PIDs. No secret is needed at runtime — the wrapped simap.ch endpoints are public.

CI builds the image on every push and asserts both properties that matter: that the container does not run as uid 0, and that the server still imports under --read-only --cap-drop ALL.

Configuration

No API keys — the wrapped simap.ch read endpoints are fully public.

Each tool call emits one tool_call record with its name, status and latency; upstream failures add a upstream_degraded record at WARNING. Neither carries the exception message or any upstream response body.

{"ts":"2026-07-27T15:50:25","level":"INFO","logger":"swiss_procurement_mcp","msg":"tool_call","tool":"search_procurements","status":"ok","latency_ms":312}

Testing

PYTHONPATH=src pytest tests/ -m "not live"   # offline, respx-mocked
PYTHONPATH=src pytest tests/ -m live         # hits the real API

See EXAMPLES.md for use cases grouped by audience (schools, public, administration, developers) and a tool-selection reference table.

Known limitations

• Projects, not publications. project-search indexes projects and represents each by its newest publication. A project tendered in March and awarded in July appears once, as the July award; search_awards likewise only finds projects whose newest publication is an award, so a later correction hides it. get_publication_history reaches the earlier publications.
• At least one filter is required. simap answers a filterless query with nothing rather than everything, so the tools refuse it with that reason instead of reporting an empty result.
• Read-only by design. Publishing and submission endpoints exist in the simap API but are deliberately not wrapped.
• Award coverage is uneven across cantons; some publish awards diligently, others rarely. Absence of an award is not proof none happened.
• No contract values in search results. Amounts, where published, live in the detail record's statistics section, which varies by procedure.
• Unofficial client. Publications remain authoritative on simap.ch itself.

Project structure

swiss-procurement-mcp/
├── src/swiss_procurement_mcp/
│   ├── server.py      # FastMCP tools (9, read-only)
│   ├── client.py      # simap.ch HTTP client + retry + normalisation
│   ├── constants.py   # probe-derived lookup tables (cantons, pub types, codes)
│   ├── models.py      # Pydantic v2 envelopes (source + provenance)
│   ├── _log.py        # structured JSON logging to stderr + @logged_tool
│   ├── inputs.py      # strict Pydantic tool-input models (bounds, allow-lists)
│   └── __main__.py    # Dual-transport entry point (stdio / SSE / streamable-http)
├── tests/             # respx-mocked + @pytest.mark.live
└── .github/workflows/ # CI + OIDC PyPI/MCP-registry publish

Maturity & updates

Phase 1 — read-only. This server wraps only the public read endpoints; the write / OIDC-protected simap endpoints are deliberately out of scope. See the SECURITY.md re-evaluation triggers for the conditions that would move it to a write phase.

The server targets the MCP protocol version negotiated by the pinned mcp SDK. SDK and dependency updates arrive as Dependabot PRs, so a breaking protocol or SDK change is reviewed deliberately rather than drifting in silently.

Contributing

Contributions are welcome — see CONTRIBUTING.md for how to report bugs, suggest a new endpoint, or submit code.

Security

This is a read-only, no-PII, public-open-data server. Audited against the portfolio MCP best-practice catalogue (15 pass / 16 partial / 1 fail across 32 applicable checks, production-ready). See SECURITY.md for the posture and how to report a vulnerability, and audits/ for the full report.

License

MIT License — see LICENSE. The tenders are official public-procurement announcements; simap.ch publishes no explicit open-data licence, so reuse follows the simap.ch terms (see Credits).

Author

Hayal Oezkan · github.com/malkreide

Changelog

See CHANGELOG.md.

Credits

• Data: simap.ch read API v1.5.1, operated by the simap.ch association. API docs: simap.ch/api-doc — machine-readable OpenAPI spec at /api/specifications/simap.yaml, which a live test checks the enum constants against. Guides: kissimap.ch.
• The underlying tenders are official public-procurement announcements by Swiss public bodies. simap.ch publishes no explicit open-data licence; reuse is subject to the simap.ch terms. Attribute the source as simap.ch (Verein simap.ch).
• Built following the mcp-data-source-probe methodology.

The code in this repository is MIT licensed; the data is simap.ch's, under its terms (see above). Public money, public code.