Pipeworx census

Access U.S. Census Bureau housing data including ACS, building permits, housing starts, homeownership rates, and available census datasets by geography.

Security Scan

The skill appears to provide U.S. Census housing data but routes calls through an undeclared third‑party gateway (gateway.pipeworx.io) without provenance; that mismatch and lack of origin information warrant caution.

Purpose & Capability

The name/description (Census housing data) align with the exposed functions (ACS, building permits, etc.), but the SKILL.md embeds a third‑party MCP server URL (https://gateway.pipeworx.io/census/mcp) rather than calling an official census.gov API directly. Using a proxy/gateway can be legitimate but should be explicitly documented and justified—its presence is the main coherence concern.

Instruction Scope

The SKILL.md only defines API-like endpoints and an mcpServers entry; it does not instruct the agent to read local files, environment variables, or other system state, nor to write files. There is no broad or vague instruction granting discretionary data collection.

Install Mechanism

This is an instruction-only skill with no install spec and no code files, so nothing is written to disk or installed during enablement.

Credentials

The skill declares no required environment variables, credentials, or config paths. That is proportionate to the stated purpose—but it increases reliance on the embedded MCP server as the only external dependency to inspect.

Persistence & Privilege

Defaults are used (not always: true). The skill can be invoked autonomously by the agent; combined with the third‑party gateway this increases the blast radius because calls may be issued without further user confirmation. This is expected platform behavior but worth noting.

What to consider before installing

This skill claims to provide U.S. Census housing data but calls a third‑party gateway (gateway.pipeworx.io) rather than an official Census endpoint. Before installing: verify the gateway's operator and trustworthiness (privacy policy, TLS cert, ownership), confirm what client data (request parameters, possibly user-supplied locations) will be sent to that gateway, and prefer skills that call official APIs directly or explicitly document the proxy. If you must use it, consider restricting network egress, monitoring outbound requests, or asking the publisher for the source code/manifest and justification for the gateway. If you need high assurance about data provenance or privacy, do not install until the gateway operator is validated.

Census

Census MCP — U.S. Census Bureau housing-relevant APIs.

census_acs

Search American Community Survey data by geography and variable code (e.g., B25077_001E for median h

census_building_permits

Check monthly building permits for new residential construction by geography. Returns count of autho

census_housing_starts

Get residential construction pipeline by geography: new starts, units under construction, and comple

census_homeownership

Check quarterly homeownership rates by geography. Returns percentage of owner-occupied housing units

census_available_datasets

Discover Census datasets and their variables. Returns dataset names, descriptions, and variable code

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "census": {
      "url": "https://gateway.pipeworx.io/census/mcp"
    }
  }
}