Estate Atlas: SD-MCP

The first and only Model Context Protocol server for the San Diego Municipal Code — built so any AI agent (Claude, Cursor, custom) can query SD's regulatory data with citations, freshness guarantees, and machine-readable structure that no government source publishes.

Status: v0.1 — pilot. Read-only. STDIO transport. Maintained by Estate Atlas. Powered by the same fresh data pipelines used by our property-intelligence product. Embeddings: Voyage AI voyage-4-large — Anthropic's embedding partner.

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What you can ask it

> "What are the fence height rules for an RS-1-7 lot?"
> "Show me all the active permits on APN 535-095-05-00."
> "What's the rear setback for RM-1-1?"
> "Find bulletins about ADUs."
> "When was the municipal code last updated?"

Tools

Tool	Purpose
search_municipal_code	Semantic search across SDMC, bulletins, ordinances
get_code_section	Fetch a specific section by number (e.g. 142.0610)
get_table_of_contents	Browse the code structure
list_bulletins	Discover DSD information bulletins
get_bulletin	Fetch a specific IB by number
lookup_parcel	Address or APN → zoning, overlays, lot, assessor
get_permits_for_parcel	Permit history for a parcel
get_violations_for_parcel	Code-enforcement cases for a parcel
get_setbacks_for_zone	Setbacks, FAR, height limits by zone code
get_zone_info	Higher-level zone summary
data_freshness	Per-source last-update + SLA cadence
get_case_rulings	(Stub — v2) Court rulings affecting SD land use

Every response includes a _meta envelope with source, data_as_of, freshness_sla, citations (with PDF page anchors where available), and license. This is the differentiator — no government source publishes machine-readable freshness or citations.

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Install

Claude Desktop

Edit your Claude Desktop config at ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "sandiego-municipal-code": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": ["sandiego-municipal-code-mcp"],
      "env": {
        "SANDIEGO_MCP_DATABASE_URL": "postgresql://readonly@db.estateatlas.ai/sandiego_public",
        "SANDIEGO_MCP_VOYAGE_API_KEY": "pa-..."
      }
    }
  }
}

Restart Claude Desktop. You should see "sandiego-municipal-code" in the MCP indicator.

Claude Code

In ~/.claude/settings.json or a project .mcp.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "sandiego-municipal-code": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": ["sandiego-municipal-code-mcp"],
      "env": {
        "SANDIEGO_MCP_DATABASE_URL": "postgresql://...",
        "SANDIEGO_MCP_VOYAGE_API_KEY": "pa-..."
      }
    }
  }
}

Cursor / Continue / Other MCP-aware tools

Use the same JSON above; check your editor's MCP docs for the config path.

From source (development)

git clone https://github.com/estate-atlas/sandiego-mcp
cd sandiego-mcp
uv venv --python 3.11
uv pip install -e ".[dev]"
.venv/bin/sandiego-municipal-code-mcp  # runs server over STDIO

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Environment variables

Var	Required	Default	Purpose
SANDIEGO_MCP_DATABASE_URL	yes	—	Postgres connection string (read-only role). Falls back to DATABASE_URL.
SANDIEGO_MCP_VOYAGE_API_KEY	yes	—	Voyage AI key for query embeddings (voyage-4-large). Falls back to VOYAGE_API_KEY. Get one free at voyageai.com.
SANDIEGO_MCP_EMBEDDING_MODEL	no	voyage-4-large	Override the embedding model (must match the model the DB was re-indexed with).
SANDIEGO_MCP_EMBEDDING_DIM	no	1024	Override the embedding dimension.
SANDIEGO_MCP_LOG_LEVEL	no	INFO	DEBUG / INFO / WARNING / ERROR. Logs go to stderr (stdout is the MCP transport).

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Public read-only database (coming soon)

The hosted endpoint db.estateatlas.ai/sandiego_public will provide free, rate-limited access to all the data this MCP server exposes. Until that ships, you can:

1. Run your own Supabase replica with the schemas under david/backend/db/
2. Email hello@estateatlas.ai for a private beta credential

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Data sources + refresh cadence

Source	Records	Refresh
San Diego Municipal Code	1,966 docs / 27k chunks	Monthly
Information Bulletins	456 docs	Monthly
Building Permits	240k	Weekly (Accela API)
Code Enforcement	17.4k	Weekly
Parcels	1.09M	Quarterly
Zoning Parcels	varies	Quarterly
Zone Setbacks	21 zones	On ordinance change

Refresh is automated via GitHub Actions in the upstream Estate Atlas data repo. The MCP server source code lives at estate-atlas/sandiego-mcp.

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Roadmap

• v0.1 (now) — STDIO transport, 11 tools, read-only, BYO DB credentials
• v0.2 — Public read-only hosted endpoint (free tier + rate limit)
• v0.3 — Court rulings ingestion (CourtListener integration)
• v1.0 — Hosted HTTP/SSE transport, bearer-token auth, billing tiers
• v1.x — San Diego County → other CA cities → other states

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License

MIT. Municipal data is public-domain (City of San Diego). The MCP envelope, citations layer, and freshness SLA are © Estate Atlas.

Citing

If your agent's output is consumed for any regulatory or legal decision, the _meta.citations[] field gives you the verifiable source. We recommend always surfacing source_pdf_url to the human consumer.