Nist

A small Model Context Protocol (MCP) server that gives AI assistants structured access to the NIST cybersecurity catalog: publications, SP 800-53 Rev 5 controls, CSF 2.0, CMVP modules, NCP checklists, glossary terms, NICE work roles, and live NVD CVE/CPE data. Local NIST data is served from a SQLite index that builds automatically on first use by downloading structured data directly from NIST.

Installation

Install directly from GitHub:

pipx install git+https://github.com/ball2jh/nist-mcp.git
# or
pip install git+https://github.com/ball2jh/nist-mcp.git

For local development:

git clone https://github.com/ball2jh/nist-mcp.git
cd nist-mcp
pip install -e ".[dev,scraper]"

Configuration

Environment Variables

Variable	Default	Description
NIST_MCP_DATA_DIR	~/.nist-mcp	Directory for the local database and cached documents
NIST_MCP_NVD_API_KEY	(none)	Optional NVD API key for higher rate limits (recommended)
NIST_MCP_UPDATE_INTERVAL	604800	Seconds between background database rebuilds (default: 7 days)

config.toml

Create ~/.nist-mcp/config.toml (or $NIST_MCP_DATA_DIR/config.toml) for persistent settings:

nvd_api_key = "your-api-key-here"
update_interval = 43200   # 12 hours

Environment variables take precedence over the config file.

MCP Client Config

Add to your MCP client's server list (e.g. Claude Desktop claude_desktop_config.json):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "nist": {
      "command": "nist-mcp",
      "env": {
        "NIST_MCP_NVD_API_KEY": "your-api-key-here"
      }
    }
  }
}

On first run, the server builds a local database by downloading structured data from NIST (~2 seconds). The database is cached and rebuilt automatically when stale (default: every 7 days).

MCP Safety Notes

This server is intended to run as a local stdio MCP server. It does not expose an HTTP listener, so access is limited to the MCP client process that launches it. Logs are written through Python logging, which writes to stderr by default and does not corrupt stdio JSON-RPC traffic.

Tool schemas constrain common option sets and result sizes. Document downloads are limited to HTTPS URLs from known NIST publication hosts, redirects are revalidated, filenames are sanitized before writing to the local cache, and page extraction is capped at 50 pages per request. Tools that download, cache, or rebuild local data are annotated as non-destructive but not purely read-only so clients can present appropriate confirmation UI.

Available Tools

Tool	Description
search_nist	Search local NIST catalog data across publications, controls, CSF, glossary, CMVP, checklists, and NICE
get_nist_record	Fetch a single local NIST record by source and ID
read_publication	Download/cache and read publication content as Markdown; returns a PDF TOC by default
search_nvd	Search live NVD CVE or CPE data
get_cve	Fetch one CVE with CVSS, weaknesses, references, KEV status, and optional change history
database_status	Show database build date, size, freshness, and file path
update_database	Rebuild the local NIST index by downloading fresh data from NIST sources

Available Resources

URI	Description
nist://about	Server version, database freshness, and quick-start tool guide

Quick Examples

Find NIST guidance on zero trust

search_nist("zero trust architecture")

Look up the SP 800-207 publication

search_nist("zero trust", source="publications")
get_nist_record(source="publications", record_id="SP.800-207")

Review access control requirements for a MODERATE system

search_nist("account management", source="controls", detail="standard")
get_nist_record(source="controls", record_id="AC-2")

Analyze Log4Shell

get_cve("CVE-2021-44228")

Check if your cryptographic library is FIPS validated

search_nist("OpenSSL", source="cmvp")

Find CSF guidance on incident response

search_nist("incident response", source="csf")

License

MIT license. Note that pymupdf4llm, used for PDF-to-Markdown conversion, is licensed under AGPL-3.0.