TownBrief MCP Server

Structured access to Massachusetts local government intelligence for AI assistants.

351 towns and cities. 14 counties. Meeting articles, transcripts, news roundups, bylaws, calendars, and 10+ years of historical archives — all from an automated journalism pipeline powered by The Wayland Post.

Quick Start

Claude Desktop / Claude Code

Add to your MCP config (claude_desktop_config.json):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "townbrief": {
      "url": "https://api.townbrief.com/sse",
      "headers": {
        "Authorization": "Bearer YOUR_API_KEY"
      }
    }
  }
}

Cursor / Windsurf / any MCP client

Endpoint: https://api.townbrief.com/sse
Transport: SSE
Auth: Bearer token

ChatGPT

Use the TownBrief GPT — no setup required, OAuth handles auth.

Get an API Key

1. Go to api.townbrief.com/authorize
2. Enter your email
3. Your key is returned via the OAuth flow

Free tier includes discovery tools (list meetings, search, browse counties). Full content access (articles, transcripts, bylaws, archives) requires a paid subscription.

Tools (22)

Free Tier — Discovery & Browse

Tool	Description
list_recent_meetings	Newest meetings across all committees for a town
search_meetings	Full-text search over article text
list_counties	All 14 MA counties with their towns
list_county_meetings	Recent meetings across a county
search_county_meetings	Search across all towns in a county
list_recent_roundups	Recent daily news roundup dates
list_bylaw_towns	Towns with bylaws indexed
list_bylaw_chapters	Table of contents for a town's bylaws

Paid Tier — Full Content

Tool	Description
get_article	AI-generated article + brief for a meeting
get_transcript	Full Whisper-generated meeting transcript
get_roundup	Daily news roundup (article + sources)
get_committee_summary	Multi-meeting overview for a committee
get_town_calendar	Upcoming town/arts/library events
search_bylaws	Full-text search of town bylaws
get_bylaw_chapter	Full chapter text
search_waylandarchive	6,000+ historical town documents (1985–present)
get_archive_page	Full text of an archive document
search_wells	Wayland private-well PFAS monitoring hub
search_waylandpost	1,000+ published Wayland Post articles
get_waylandpost_post	Full text of a Wayland Post story
search_waylandenews	5,500+ historical eNews posts (2013–2024)
search_wvn	Wayland Voters Network archive

Parameters

meeting_id format

{Committee}/{YYYY-MM-DD}

Example: Select Board/2026-06-29

town parameter

Lowercase slug: wayland, sudbury, cambridge, somerville, etc.

get_article — fields parameter

Comma-separated: article, article_plus, brief, headlines, review. Default: article,brief. Use all for everything.

get_transcript — max_chars parameter

Truncate transcript to N characters. Default: 20000 (~5000 words). Pass 0 for full text.

Pricing

• Free tier: Discovery tools (list, search, browse) — unlimited
• Paid tier: $8/month or $80/year — full content access
• Usage billing: $0.02 per content API call (metered via Stripe, billed monthly)

Subscribe at wayland.ma.townbrief.com

Coverage

All 351 Massachusetts municipalities across all 14 counties:

• Select Boards, Finance Committees, Planning Boards, Conservation Commissions, School Committees, ZBAs, and dozens of other boards
• AI-generated articles and deep-read analyses from Whisper transcripts
• Daily news roundups aggregating press releases, school news, public safety
• Town bylaws (full-text search and chapter retrieval)
• Town, arts, and library event calendars
• County-level aggregation

REST API

OpenAPI spec: api.townbrief.com/actions/openapi.json

All tools are also available as REST endpoints at https://api.townbrief.com/api/{tool_name} with query parameters.

About

Built by The Wayland Post — an independent, AI-assisted local news organization covering Wayland, MA and expanding statewide.

The pipeline downloads government meeting videos, transcribes them locally with Whisper on GPU, generates AP-style articles via Claude, fetches agenda/packet/minutes PDFs, and produces daily news roundups — all automated, all available through this API.

License

API access is a paid service. The content is copyrighted by The Wayland Post. See Terms of Service.