@pipeworx/iowa-code

Connect: https://pipeworx.io/mcp — every tool in the catalog, including @pipeworx/iowa-code’s. Install: one-click buttons

No MCP client? Skip the connection: POST https://gateway.pipeworx.io/v1/tools/search_packs {"query":"..."} to find a tool below, GET /v1/tools/<name> for its schema, POST the same URL with arguments for the data — see For AI agents.

Tools: 3

Iowa Code — state statutes by citation, historical edition, amendment history, and chapter/section topic search. Keyless.

Tools

• ia_code_section(section, year?) — full text of an Iowa Code section by citation (“714.2” is degrees of theft; “321J.2” is OWI). Returns the statute text, its amendment history and referred_to_in cross-references as separate fields, and (via year) a historical edition back to 2000.
• ia_code_titles() — the 16 titles of the Code with official names and chapter-number ranges, for routing a subject to the right chapter range.
• ia_code_search(query, limit?) — topic/keyword search over the Code’s own official chapter and section captions (not full statutory text — see below), returning matching citations.

Auth

Keyless.

The survey trap did not apply here

The August state-law survey’s recorded trap was “published only as PDF” — but legis.iowa.gov serves every chapter of the Iowa Code as a plain RTF file, for every archived year (2000, then 2004 through the current year; 2001-2003 are genuinely missing from the site’s own year picker):

https://www.legis.iowa.gov/docs/code/2026/714.rtf   (current edition)
https://www.legis.iowa.gov/docs/code/2015/714.rtf   (a historical edition)

A cleaner per-chapter XML export also exists (/docs/publications/ICC/2026/attachments/714_slim.xml), but verified live 2026-10-06 it 404s for every year except the current one — even though the chapter-listing page for every past year keeps linking it. That is a dead link on the Legislature’s own site, not a probe mistake. RTF is therefore the one path used here, for every year including the current one, decoded by a small dependency-free RTF-to-text reader written for this file shape (shared/src/statute-rtf.ts, verified against both the 2026 and 2015 editions of chapter 714).

(Note for anyone cross-referencing today’s batch: Kentucky landed a dependency-free PDF extractor the same day, shared/src/pdf-text.ts. Iowa never needed it — RTF covers every year here — but it’s the thing to reach for if a future state really is PDF-only.)

Citations

Iowa cites by chapter.section, e.g. “714.2” (degrees of theft) or “321J.2” (OWI). The chapter is the part before the dot and may itself carry letters (“714A”, “6B”, “321J”) — not every chapter is a bare number.

Topic search is caption search, not full text

Iowa does not publish a general subject index of the Code (verified 2026-10-06: no INDEX.pdf/index.pdf under /docs/code/2026/), and the Iowa Legislature’s own publications search engine does not index Code section text at all — its own facet tree covers bills, fiscal notes, administrative bulletins and rules, but has no “Iowa Code” category. ia_code_search instead matches a query against the official chapter and section CAPTIONS every listing page already carries (“714 - THEFT, FRAUD, AND RELATED OFFENSES”, “714.1 - Theft defined.”) — real, live, and self-updating, but bounded by whatever words the Legislature chose for a caption. A plain-language query that doesn’t share vocabulary with the official caption (e.g. “security deposit” vs. the statute’s own “rental deposits”) can rank a false-positive chapter above the right one; the tool description says so.

Data sources

• https://www.legis.iowa.gov/docs/code/2026/714.rtf — the full text of one chapter (here, chapter 714, the current edition — swap the year and chapter number for any other). ia_code_section cuts one section out of this.
• https://www.legis.iowa.gov/law/iowaCode/chapters?title=XVI&year=2026 — chapter captions for one of the Code’s 16 titles (here, title XVI). ia_code_search’s first pass.
• https://www.legis.iowa.gov/law/iowaCode/sections?codeChapter=714&year=2026 — section captions for one chapter. ia_code_search’s drill-down pass.

All three are plain, keyless, server-rendered HTML/RTF — no login, no JS, no rate-limit observed during development.

Tools

• ia_code_section — Get the FULL TEXT of a section of the Iowa Code — Iowa state law — by citation. “714.2” is degrees of theft; “321J.2” is operating while intoxicated (OWI). Returns the statute text plus its amendment
• ia_code_titles — List the 16 titles of the Iowa Code with their official names and chapter-number ranges, e.g. Title XVI is Criminal Law and Procedure (chapters 687-916). Routing help for when you know the subject but
• ia_code_search — Search the Iowa Code by TOPIC or keyword rather than citation, e.g. “landlord security deposit”, “concealed handgun permit”, “operating while intoxicated”. Matches against the Iowa Legislature’s own o