Open source

An open-source data project. Not affiliated with the Government of Canada or the City of Toronto.

Nshipyard Canada

Open data, rebuilt for the people who use it.

We turn messy public data into open infrastructure: explorer interfaces for humans, documented APIs and MCP tools for AI agents. Starting with Canada's civic data, already answering questions about the whole planet.

The problem

The data is public. Using it is another story.

Toronto is where we started: hundreds of open datasets, but inconsistent schemas, free-text fields, and missing keys force every analyst to rebuild the same cleaning work by hand. We do it once, in the open, so nobody has to again. The same pattern now runs across Canada, and worldwide wherever the underlying data is global.

722,000

street-name variants across parking tickets, entered by hand

57.8%

of building-permit cost fields are non-numeric

600+

311 problem codes, in a taxonomy retired in 2019

16 → 34

neighbourhoods split in the census re-cut, breaking every time series

The projects

Open datasets, rebuilt as infrastructure.

Each project takes one messy public dataset and turns it into something a person can explore and a machine can query. One repo per project, versioned releases, open methodology. Most start with Canadian civic data; the worldwide ones prove the pattern travels.

01 — TorontoPlanned

Geo Concordances

Every neighbourhood boundary, joined across census years. The key that unlocks every time series.

For analysts, journalists, and city staff

02 — TorontoPlanned

Licence → NAICS

160,000 business licences mapped to NAICS codes. Corridor analytics without the keyword guessing.

For BIAs, brokers, and B2B prospecting

03 — TorontoPlanned

Watermain Codebook

The codes behind the pipes, finally documented. Including the missing lead classification.

For engineers and Toronto Water

04 — TorontoPlanned

Parcel Spine

One stable ID for every Toronto property. The master key for joining it all together.

For everyone building on property data

06 — TorontoPlanned

Parking Tickets, Geocoded

50 million tickets, geocoded and mappable for the first time.

For fleets, mobility, and insurers

07 — TorontoPlanned

Civic Codebooks

NOC, infraction, and procurement codes, translated into one reference.

For analysts, staffing, and watchdogs

08 — TorontoPlanned

Development Pipeline

Every project in the housing pipeline, normalized and queryable.

For developers, lenders, and media

09 — WorldwideLive

earthquery

Ask the planet a question: natural-language search over satellite imagery embeddings.

For researchers, journalists, and the curious

10 — WorldwideLive

cyclonewatch

Live tropical cyclone risk scores from official hurricane forecasts, with the math shown.

For ports, vessels, and coastal communities

Live apps

Built on this data.

Real applications already running on City of Toronto open feeds, maintained by Nshipyard.

01 — TorontoLive

My Street

What's happening on your street this week? Live road work and building permits within 500 metres of any Toronto address, pulled straight from the city's open data.

For developers

Built for humans and agents.

Every project ships three ways to consume it: a visual explorer, a documented REST API, and MCP tools over streamable HTTP, so AI agents can query the data directly.

  • 01Explorer. Search, filter, map, and download every dataset as CSV or Parquet.
  • 02REST API. Documented endpoints with OpenAPI specs and a try-it console.
  • 03MCP. One streamable-HTTP server, namespaced tools per project, for AI agents.

One endpoint, one answer.

GET https://canada.nshipyard.com/api/v1/geo/neighbourhood?hood_140=42

{
  "hood_140": 42,
  "hood_158": [43, 44],
  "name_158": ["West Humber-Clairville", "…"],
  "ward_25": 1,
  "cma": 535
}

Open source

Our contribution to better public data.

Every project lives in its own public repo under the Nshipyard organization: MIT licensed, versioned data releases, open methodology. If publishers clean up their own data, we will happily become redundant.

  • ✓MIT licensed, no exceptions
  • ✓Versioned data releases (CSV + Parquet)
  • ✓Methodology documented in every README
  • ✓Accepting corrections and contributions
github.com/Nshipyard