How to integrate Census bureau MCP with LangChain

BOOK A CALLGET STARTED FOR FREE
Framework Integration Gradient
Census bureau Logo
LangChain Logo
divider

Introduction

This guide walks you through connecting Census bureau to LangChain using the Composio tool router. By the end, you'll have a working Census bureau agent that can get latest population estimate for los angeles county, list top industries in texas by employment, fetch 5-year acs median income for chicago, show community resilience scores for florida counties through natural language commands.

This guide will help you understand how to give your LangChain agent real control over a Census bureau account through Composio's Census bureau MCP server.

Before we dive in, let's take a quick look at the key ideas and tools involved.

TL;DR

Here's what you'll learn:
  • Get and set up your OpenAI and Composio API keys
  • Connect your Census bureau project to Composio
  • Create a Tool Router MCP session for Census bureau
  • Initialize an MCP client and retrieve Census bureau tools
  • Build a LangChain agent that can interact with Census bureau
  • Set up an interactive chat interface for testing

What is LangChain?

LangChain is a framework for developing applications powered by language models. It provides tools and abstractions for building agents that can reason, use tools, and maintain conversation context.

Key features include:

  • Agent Framework: Build agents that can use tools and make decisions
  • MCP Integration: Connect to external services through Model Context Protocol adapters
  • Memory Management: Maintain conversation history across interactions
  • Multi-Provider Support: Works with OpenAI, Anthropic, and other LLM providers

What is the Census bureau MCP server, and what's possible with it?

The Census bureau MCP server is an implementation of the Model Context Protocol that connects your AI agent and assistants like Claude, Cursor, etc directly to Census Bureau data resources. It provides structured and secure access to a wide range of U.S. demographic, business, and community datasets, so your agent can retrieve population statistics, analyze survey results, fetch business patterns, and explore census variables on your behalf.

  • Retrieve up-to-date population estimates: Have your agent pull the latest demographic and population data for specific states, counties, or cities using the Population Estimates Program (PEP).
  • Analyze American Community Survey results: Access detailed ACS 1-year and 5-year estimates for any geography, helping you understand community trends, housing, and economic data.
  • Explore business statistics by region: Automatically fetch County Business Patterns (CBP) and Annual Business Survey (ABS) data to examine local industry and employment trends.
  • Access decennial census data: Let your agent retrieve variables and statistics from the decennial census by vintage and dataset for deep historical and demographic analysis.
  • Investigate variable metadata and definitions: Effortlessly obtain detailed information about any census variable, including descriptions, data types, and valid values for more informed analysis.

Supported Tools & Triggers

Tools
Get ACS 1-Year EstimatesTool to retrieve 1-year american community survey (acs) estimates for a specified geography.
Get ACS 5-Year EstimatesTool to retrieve 5-year american community survey estimates for a specified year.
Get American Business SurveyTool to retrieve annual business survey (abs) data for a specified year and endpoint.
Get Community Resilience EstimatesTool to retrieve community resilience estimates for a specified year.
Get County Business PatternsTool to retrieve county business patterns (cbp) data for a specified year.
Get Decennial Census DataTool to retrieve decennial census data for a specified vintage and dataset.
Get Population EstimatesTool to retrieve population estimates program (pep) data for a specified vintage and dataset.
Get Variable DetailsTool to retrieve metadata for a specific variable in a census dataset for a given year.

What is the Composio tool router, and how does it fit here?

What is Tool Router?

Composio's Tool Router helps agents find the right tools for a task at runtime. You can plug in multiple toolkits (like Gmail, HubSpot, and GitHub), and the agent will identify the relevant app and action to complete multi-step workflows. This can reduce token usage and improve the reliability of tool calls. Read more here: Getting started with Tool Router

The tool router generates a secure MCP URL that your agents can access to perform actions.

How the Tool Router works

The Tool Router follows a three-phase workflow:

  1. Discovery: Searches for tools matching your task and returns relevant toolkits with their details.
  2. Authentication: Checks for active connections. If missing, creates an auth config and returns a connection URL via Auth Link.
  3. Execution: Executes the action using the authenticated connection.

Step-by-step Guide

Prerequisites

Before starting this tutorial, make sure you have:
  • Python 3.10 or higher installed on your system
  • A Composio account with an API key
  • An OpenAI API key
  • Basic familiarity with Python and async programming

Getting API Keys for OpenAI and Composio

OpenAI API Key
  • Go to the OpenAI dashboard and create an API key. You'll need credits to use the models, or you can connect to another model provider.
  • Keep the API key safe.
Composio API Key
  • Log in to the Composio dashboard.
  • Navigate to your API settings and generate a new API key.
  • Store this key securely as you'll need it for authentication.

Install dependencies

pip install composio-langchain langchain-mcp-adapters langchain python-dotenv

Install the required packages for LangChain with MCP support.

What's happening:

  • composio-langchain provides Composio integration for LangChain
  • langchain-mcp-adapters enables MCP client connections
  • langchain is the core agent framework
  • python-dotenv loads environment variables

Set up environment variables

bash
COMPOSIO_API_KEY=your_composio_api_key_here
COMPOSIO_USER_ID=your_composio_user_id_here
OPENAI_API_KEY=your_openai_api_key_here

Create a .env file in your project root.

What's happening:

  • COMPOSIO_API_KEY authenticates your requests to Composio's API
  • COMPOSIO_USER_ID identifies the user for session management
  • OPENAI_API_KEY enables access to OpenAI's language models

Import dependencies

from langchain_mcp_adapters.client import MultiServerMCPClient
from langchain.agents import create_agent
from dotenv import load_dotenv
from composio import Composio
import asyncio
import os

load_dotenv()
What's happening:
  • We're importing LangChain's MCP adapter and Composio SDK
  • The dotenv import loads environment variables from your .env file
  • This setup prepares the foundation for connecting LangChain with Census bureau functionality through MCP

Initialize Composio client

async def main():
    composio = Composio(api_key=os.getenv("COMPOSIO_API_KEY"))

    if not os.getenv("COMPOSIO_API_KEY"):
        raise ValueError("COMPOSIO_API_KEY is not set")
    if not os.getenv("COMPOSIO_USER_ID"):
        raise ValueError("COMPOSIO_USER_ID is not set")
What's happening:
  • We're loading the COMPOSIO_API_KEY from environment variables and validating it exists
  • Creating a Composio instance that will manage our connection to Census bureau tools
  • Validating that COMPOSIO_USER_ID is also set before proceeding

Create a Tool Router session

# Create Tool Router session for Census bureau
session = composio.create(
    user_id=os.getenv("COMPOSIO_USER_ID"),
    toolkits=['census_bureau']
)

url = session.mcp.url
What's happening:
  • We're creating a Tool Router session that gives your agent access to Census bureau tools
  • The create method takes the user ID and specifies which toolkits should be available
  • The returned session.mcp.url is the MCP server URL that your agent will use
  • This approach allows the agent to dynamically load and use Census bureau tools as needed

Configure the agent with the MCP URL

client = MultiServerMCPClient({
    "census_bureau-agent": {
        "transport": "streamable_http",
        "url": session.mcp.url,
        "headers": {
            "x-api-key": os.getenv("COMPOSIO_API_KEY")
        }
    }
})

tools = await client.get_tools()

agent = create_agent("gpt-5", tools)
What's happening:
  • We're creating a MultiServerMCPClient that connects to our Census bureau MCP server via HTTP
  • The client is configured with a name and the URL from our Tool Router session
  • get_tools() retrieves all available Census bureau tools that the agent can use
  • We're creating a LangChain agent using the GPT-5 model

Set up interactive chat interface

conversation_history = []

print("Chat started! Type 'exit' or 'quit' to end the conversation.\n")
print("Ask any Census bureau related question or task to the agent.\n")

while True:
    user_input = input("You: ").strip()

    if user_input.lower() in ['exit', 'quit', 'bye']:
        print("\nGoodbye!")
        break

    if not user_input:
        continue

    conversation_history.append({"role": "user", "content": user_input})
    print("\nAgent is thinking...\n")

    response = await agent.ainvoke({"messages": conversation_history})
    conversation_history = response['messages']
    final_response = response['messages'][-1].content
    print(f"Agent: {final_response}\n")
What's happening:
  • We initialize an empty conversation_history list to maintain context across interactions
  • A while loop continuously accepts user input from the command line
  • When a user types a message, it's added to the conversation history and sent to the agent
  • The agent processes the request using the ainvoke() method with the full conversation history
  • Users can type 'exit', 'quit', or 'bye' to end the chat session gracefully

Run the application

if __name__ == "__main__":
    asyncio.run(main())
What's happening:
  • We call the main() function using asyncio.run() to start the application

Complete Code

Here's the complete code to get you started with Census bureau and LangChain:

from langchain_mcp_adapters.client import MultiServerMCPClient
from langchain.agents import create_agent
from dotenv import load_dotenv
from composio import Composio
import asyncio
import os

load_dotenv()

async def main():
    composio = Composio(api_key=os.getenv("COMPOSIO_API_KEY"))
    
    if not os.getenv("COMPOSIO_API_KEY"):
        raise ValueError("COMPOSIO_API_KEY is not set")
    if not os.getenv("COMPOSIO_USER_ID"):
        raise ValueError("COMPOSIO_USER_ID is not set")
    
    session = composio.create(
        user_id=os.getenv("COMPOSIO_USER_ID"),
        toolkits=['census_bureau']
    )

    url = session.mcp.url
    
    client = MultiServerMCPClient({
        "census_bureau-agent": {
            "transport": "streamable_http",
            "url": url,
            "headers": {
                "x-api-key": os.getenv("COMPOSIO_API_KEY")
            }
        }
    })
    
    tools = await client.get_tools()
  
    agent = create_agent("gpt-5", tools)
    
    conversation_history = []
    
    print("Chat started! Type 'exit' or 'quit' to end the conversation.\n")
    print("Ask any Census bureau related question or task to the agent.\n")
    
    while True:
        user_input = input("You: ").strip()
        
        if user_input.lower() in ['exit', 'quit', 'bye']:
            print("\nGoodbye!")
            break
        
        if not user_input:
            continue
        
        conversation_history.append({"role": "user", "content": user_input})
        print("\nAgent is thinking...\n")
        
        response = await agent.ainvoke({"messages": conversation_history})
        conversation_history = response['messages']
        final_response = response['messages'][-1].content
        print(f"Agent: {final_response}\n")

if __name__ == "__main__":
    asyncio.run(main())

Conclusion

You've successfully built a LangChain agent that can interact with Census bureau through Composio's Tool Router.

Key features of this implementation:

  • Dynamic tool loading through Composio's Tool Router
  • Conversation history maintenance for context-aware responses
  • Async Python provides clean, efficient execution of agent workflows
You can extend this further by adding error handling, implementing specific business logic, or integrating additional Composio toolkits to create multi-app workflows.

How to build Census bureau MCP Agent with another framework

OpenAI Agents SDK

OpenAI Agents SDK

Use Census bureau MCP with OpenAI Agents SDK

Claude Agent SDK

Claude Agent SDK

Use Census bureau MCP with Claude Agent SDK

Google ADK

Google ADK

Use Census bureau MCP with Google ADK

Vercel AI SDK

Vercel AI SDK

Use Census bureau MCP with Vercel AI SDK

Mastra AI

Mastra AI

Use Census bureau MCP with Mastra AI

LlamaIndex

LlamaIndex

Use Census bureau MCP with LlamaIndex

CrewAI

CrewAI

Use Census bureau MCP with CrewAI

FAQ

What are the differences in Tool Router MCP and Census bureau MCP?

With a standalone Census bureau MCP server, the agents and LLMs can only access a fixed set of Census bureau tools tied to that server. However, with the Composio Tool Router, agents can dynamically load tools from Census bureau and many other apps based on the task at hand, all through a single MCP endpoint.

Can I use Tool Router MCP with LangChain?

Yes, you can. LangChain fully supports MCP integration. You get structured tool calling, message history handling, and model orchestration while Tool Router takes care of discovering and serving the right Census bureau tools.

Can I manage the permissions and scopes for Census bureau while using Tool Router?

Yes, absolutely. You can configure which Census bureau scopes and actions are allowed when connecting your account to Composio. You can also bring your own OAuth credentials or API configuration so you keep full control over what the agent can do.

How safe is my data with Composio Tool Router?

All sensitive data such as tokens, keys, and configuration is fully encrypted at rest and in transit. Composio is SOC 2 Type 2 compliant and follows strict security practices so your Census bureau data and credentials are handled as safely as possible.

Used by agents from

Context
ASU
Letta
glean
HubSpot
Agent.ai
Altera
DataStax
Entelligence
Rolai
Context
ASU
Letta
glean
HubSpot
Agent.ai
Altera
DataStax
Entelligence
Rolai
Context
ASU
Letta
glean
HubSpot
Agent.ai
Altera
DataStax
Entelligence
Rolai

Never worry about agent reliability

We handle tool reliability, observability, and security so you never have to second-guess an agent action.

Book a call↗Get started for free