abs-spend-mcp

abs-spend-mcp

An MCP server that exposes Australian household spending data — so Claude (Claude Code, Claude Desktop, or any MCP client) can answer questions like "how did Victorian transport spending move year-on-year?" directly in conversation.

Data comes live from the ABS Data API (SDMX), plus a bundled static extract of National Accounts sub-category detail. It runs server-side over stdio, so there's no CORS proxy and nothing to configure — just point your client at it.

Tools

Tool	Answers
get_spending_trend	Monthly time series for any category/state — $ level or year-on-year %, Original / Seasonally adjusted / Trend series
get_latest_summary	Latest month: total spend, nominal and real (CPI-deflated) YoY growth, top category, discretionary share
get_category_breakdown	All 9 COICOP categories for a month/geography, with shares of total
get_l2_composition	Level-2 sub-category split (e.g. Transport → vehicle purchase / operation / services) with YoY
get_cost_of_living	Living Cost Indexes by household type (YoY or index) — includes mortgage interest, unlike CPI

Categories, states, and series types take friendly names (transport, VIC, seasonally_adjusted) — see each tool's schema for the full set.

Use with Claude Code

claude mcp add --scope user abs-spend -- npx -y abs-spend-mcp

Then start any claude session and ask a spending question, or headless:

claude -p "Use the abs-spend tools: what's the latest Australian household spending summary?"

Use with Claude Desktop

Add to claude_desktop_config.json (macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "abs-spend": { "command": "npx", "args": ["-y", "abs-spend-mcp"] }
  }
}

Restart Claude Desktop; the tools appear under the connectors menu.

Run locally

npm install
npm test        # end-to-end smoke test against the live ABS API
npm start       # run the server on stdio

Requires Node 18+ (uses the built-in fetch).

Data sources & caveats

• Live: Monthly Household Spending Indicator (HSI_M), Monthly CPI Indicator (CPI_M), Selected Living Cost Indexes (LCI). Responses are cached in-process for 10 minutes.
• Static: Level-2 detail is from National Accounts 5206.0 Table 8 (HFCE) — quarterly, national, current-price. Bundled as hfce.json; refresh it in sync with the parent repo's src/data/hfce.json (see the app's scripts/extract_hfce.py).
• Dollar values are $ millions, current prices (nominal). Real YoY deflates by the all-groups CPI (8-capital-city average).
• The ABS API does not guarantee chronological observation order; the server sorts periods defensively before any YoY / deflation math.
• No sub-state (regional) spend is published — the finest geography is state/territory.

Part of the Australian Household Spending Analytics project.