Odel
WorkspaceAlberta

WorkspaceAlberta

@harleycoopsPythonUpdated 4 days ago

Canadian procurement intelligence: CanadaBuys and Alberta tenders, ranked for your shop.

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Server endpointStreamable HTTPNo authProbed
https://elbowsupknivesout.warreandvavasour.com/mcp

This is the third-party server itself — Odel doesn't run it. Hitting this URL directly talks straight to the upstream server with no auth or proxying. Connect through Odel to front it with managed auth.

WorkspaceAlberta

Eight photographs of Canadian women building war industries: welding, machining, drafting, and finishing munitions, 1940-1945.

Canadian industrial war production, via Library and Archives Canada.

AI Ethics

Warre & Vavasour is a startup AI lab that does not replace human workers. We build a bigger pie.

Every capability we ship exists to amplify the people already doing the work, the same promise the photographs above made to the generation that industrialized this country.

If your idea starts with headcount cuts, it is not a WorkspaceAlberta plan.

Warre & Vavasour does not make apps or chatbots. Don't ask. If this is in your business plan, you are thinking about New Business wrong. We build terminals that deliver real work and pay real taxes.

Warre & Vavasour acknowledges the astonishing resources this technology is consuming. Training and inference carry real energy, water, and mineral costs. Nobody asked for this. No one really asked for GRPO to be released on January 20, 2025. But it was released, and that is how all models got to reasoning; and from reasoning, we have harnesses now.

So this is just the way the world is and it is far too cheap not to deploy post-human-scale reasoning tools on a desktop device that genuinely accelerates Canadian manufacturing, development, and industrialization.

So yes: we acknowledge the cost. But Canadian infrastructure, right-sized models on hardware you can touch, and Canadian data retention means your enterprise AI stack is entirely Canadian and NATO supplier friendly.

There is no longer an American dependency on enterprise, on device, Canadian AI at scale.

It is 1834 all over again.

The railroad has been built.

The steam engine has been designed.

The world as we know it has changed.

WorkspaceAlberta is the way to stay ahead of these changes.

Getting Started

The hosted MCP server is live and free for browsing — no install, no account, no API key. Point any MCP-capable assistant at it:

https://elbowsupknivesout.warreandvavasour.com/mcp

Cursor, Claude Code, and other HTTP-native clients — add to your MCP config:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "workspacealberta": {
      "url": "https://elbowsupknivesout.warreandvavasour.com/mcp"
    }
  }
}

Claude Desktop (no native HTTP transport) — bridge with mcp-remote:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "workspacealberta": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "mcp-remote", "https://elbowsupknivesout.warreandvavasour.com/mcp"]
    }
  }
}

Then ask it something a real owner would ask:

  • "I run a CWB welding shop in Red Deer — what government work fits my shop right now?"
  • "What closes this week? I don't want to miss anything."
  • "Give me my morning brief — what fits us, and what's closing soon?"

Adding your Pro key

Search, details, deadlines, and the daily brief are open to everyone. Six tools — bid rooms, Cohere tender review, the watchlist, and bid/no-bid scorecards — need an active subscription. Your key arrives by email after checkout and starts with wa_live_.

Send it as an Authorization header. For HTTP-native clients:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "workspacealberta": {
      "url": "https://elbowsupknivesout.warreandvavasour.com/mcp",
      "headers": {
        "Authorization": "Bearer wa_live_YOUR_KEY"
      }
    }
  }
}

For Claude Desktop, set it on the bridge instead:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "workspacealberta": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@warreandvavasour/workspace-alberta"],
      "env": { "WORKSPACEALBERTA_API_KEY": "wa_live_YOUR_KEY" }
    }
  }
}

On a Linux workstation or a leased terminal, let the installer do it — it verifies the key against the server, writes ~/.config/workspacealberta/credentials at mode 600, and registers the authenticated endpoint with whichever CLIs are present:

./installer/configure-subscriber-key.sh

Check a key at any time:

curl -H "Authorization: Bearer wa_live_YOUR_KEY" \
  https://elbowsupknivesout.warreandvavasour.com/me

Run it locally instead (the whole server is pure Python):

python -m pip install -r requirements.txt
python mcp-servers/canadabuys/server.py

Smoke test: python -m unittest tests.test_canadabuys_mcp_smoke. Client config variants live in mcp.json.example; full tool and REST reference in docs/mcp-tool-reference.md.

Canadian AI Security Is Canadian National Security

WorkspaceAlberta is a Canadian procurement intelligence workspace. It connects public tender data to the people who can actually do the work: fabricators, mills, contractors, shops, manufacturers, and the small teams that keep the real economy moving.

The direction is explicit:

  • Canadian demand signals: CanadaBuys and Alberta Purchasing Connection in one search surface.
  • Canadian AI company: Cohere as the first sovereign-model route.
  • Canadian open source model: Command A+ command-a-plus-05-2026, with the W4A4 Hugging Face route available through CohereLabs/command-a-plus-05-2026-w4a4.
  • Canadian tools: practical MCP wiring for the procurement sources Canadian firms already need to watch.
  • Canadian compute path: designed so sensitive public-sector and industrial workflows can move toward Canadian infrastructure, including Canadian chips and data-centre capacity where those options are available.

The point is not nationalism as decoration. The point is operational independence.

If Canadian companies are going to bid Canadian work, understand Canadian supply chains, and protect Canadian industrial capacity, then the AI layer underneath that work matters.

The Last Mile of Work

AI promised 5X productivity. Most small businesses got a chatbot that writes mediocre marketing copy.

The model is not the whole bottleneck. The connection is.

Wiring up the places where the work lives usually costs money, time, and technical patience a small business does not have. Government tender databases are a perfect example: the work is public, the demand is real, but the discovery process is still awkward enough that good companies miss good opportunities.

WorkspaceAlberta solves the last mile by giving an AI assistant the wiring it needs to search, compare, summarize, and brief public procurement opportunities from inside the workspace where the owner is already working.

Hélène Lalonde drawing in ends at a loom, Montreal Cottons, Valleyfield.

Hélène Lalonde drawing in ends at Montreal Cottons, Valleyfield — Nicholas Morant / National Film Board of Canada. Photothèque / Library and Archives Canada, PA-160566 (copyright expired).

What This Actually Does

WorkspaceAlberta is an MCP-first workspace for Canadian procurement.

It now brings together:

  • CanadaBuys for federal tender notices
  • Alberta Purchasing Connection for Alberta public-sector opportunities
  • Cohere Command A+ for optional tender analysis and fit review
  • A daily bid brief that summarizes the market, best-fit matches, and deadlines from both sources

A welder at Robin Nodwell Ltd., Calgary, 1963.

Welder at Robin Nodwell Ltd., Calgary, 1963 — from the Provincial Archives of Alberta series "What Alberta Makes Makes Alberta" (PA3324, no known copyright restrictions).

The assistant can:

  • search national and Alberta opportunities together
  • inspect a posting by reference number
  • list what is closing soon
  • match opportunities against a saved business profile
  • generate a free daily brief for the owner or estimator
  • use Cohere Command A+ to review tender fit, risks, requirements, and next actions

This is meant to answer practical questions:

  • What work is open right now?
  • Which opportunities fit what we actually do?
  • What closes soon?
  • What should we read first?
  • What should we ignore?

The Custom Procurement MCP Server

The custom MCP server is the product.

It is a deployed working endpoint that knows the live public procurement pipeline exposed by CanadaBuys and Alberta Purchasing Connection. It can serve that pipeline back to users through an AI assistant based on what they do, where they work, what they can supply, and what deadlines matter.

The core tools are:

  • search_opportunities for unified federal and Alberta search
  • get_opportunity_details for a single posting by reference number
  • list_deadlines for what is closing soon
  • find_matching_opportunities for profile-based ranking
  • daily_bid_brief for the daily owner/operator summary
  • analyze_contract_with_cohere for optional Cohere Command A+ tender review
  • process_bid_room for live E2B attachment processing: Cohere Parse turns tender PDFs and images into markdown, then Command A+ reviews the evidence
  • watch_opportunity / list_watchlist for a persistent tracking list with closing-date countdowns
  • bid_no_bid_scorecard for a fast deterministic go/caution/no-go read on any reference

The full tool and REST reference lives in docs/mcp-tool-reference.md; the architecture walkthrough is docs/architecture.md.

MCP is the first-class interface because this is meant to be used by agents. The same procurement core also exposes REST/OpenAPI so other AI tools can hook into the same contract intelligence without needing native MCP support.

Underneath the endpoint is pure Python procurement logic. The data processing, filtering, matching, deadline ranking, and brief generation do not require an LLM. The model layer is added only where judgment helps: risk review, requirements explanation, and bid/no-bid reasoning.

E2B sandboxes are the isolated compute layer for heavier bid-room work: opening tender packages, turning attachments into evidence, and returning structured bid artifacts without putting unknown user files inside the always-on MCP service. Cohere Parse is the document layer — it converts PDF pages and images into structured markdown (tables, forms, drawings) before review. Command A+ is the review layer: it runs inside the short-lived sandbox with read-only evidence tools over that markdown. If Parse is unset, times out, or rejects a file, the existing pdfminer/python-docx/openpyxl extractors stay as fallback. The build plan lives in docs/e2b-bid-room-plan.md, and the business-owner operating diagram lives in docs/bid-room-operating-diagram.md.

A machinist at Canada Oil Tool Manufacturing, Calgary, 1963.

Machinist at Canada Oil Tool Manufacturing, Calgary, 1963 — precision work for the energy sector. Provincial Archives of Alberta, PA3318/2 (no known copyright restrictions).

Why This Matters

Get 50% of the population 10% better. Every year. That is generational growth.

Not 10 developers 500% better. That is happening. But it does not scale to the economy.

"How do I save 5 hours a week?" "How do I save $700 a month?"

Those are the real questions. This is how you answer them.

Alberta's steel, lumber, and metals industries represent over 2,500 companies with a combined economic impact exceeding $37 billion annually.

SectorCompaniesEconomic ImpactJobs Supported
Forestry & Wood Products676+ businesses, 40 major mills$14 billion41,400
Fabricated Metal Products1,871 establishments$23.4B manufacturing sector16,600
Primary & Machinery Manufacturing200+ facilitiesIncluded above12,000+

Three photographs of workers pouring steel at the Foothills Steel Foundry, Calgary, 1963.

What Alberta makes makes Alberta — the pour at Foothills Steel Foundry, Calgary, 1963. Provincial Archives of Alberta, PA3315.1–.3 (no known copyright restrictions).

Behind every one of these companies are dozens of systems that need to talk to each other just to get anything done: quoting software, inventory spreadsheets, accounting packages, project trackers, supplier portals, and government tender databases.

Any tool that helps a fabricator create demand, a mill manufacture more efficiently, or a contractor cut costs has multiplier effects across the entire province:

  • $4 billion in forest product exports alone
  • $1.6 billion in annual wages paid to forestry workers
  • 70 communities across Alberta that depend directly on these industries
  • $988 million in tax revenue flowing back to the province

Clothing salvage centre at the General Engineering Company munitions factory, Scarborough, circa 1943. A.J. Denne tending a V-shaped victory garden at 15 Pine Crescent, Toronto, 5 June 1943.

Home-front salvage and food: a clothing depot at the GECO munitions works, Scarborough, c. 1943 (Archives of Ontario, I0004928, public domain); A.J. Denne's victory garden, Toronto, 5 June 1943 (City of Toronto Archives, fonds 1266, CC BY 2.0).

More contracts won. More jobs kept. More skill developed. More value staying here at home.

Technical Notes

MCP server:

Smoke test:

Configuration:

Raspberry Pi terminal setup:

Data and model sources:

Image source notes live in docs/imagery-sources.md.

A museum wall of Canadian industrial and home-front photography: munitions, victory gardens, synthetic rubber, and shops.

The museum wall. Top row: inspecting ammunition at GECO, Scarborough, c. 1943 (Archives of Ontario, I0058215, public domain); the Perry sisters in the plant vegetable garden, Dominion Arsenals, 24 August 1942 (Harry Rowed / NFB Photothèque / LAC, CC BY 2.0); cutting cloth for military uniforms at Tip Top Tailors, Toronto, 1939–45 (Gordon W. Powley / Archives of Ontario, C 109-2-0-18, copyright expired); assembling a coal-pulverizing mill at Polymer Rubber, Sarnia, October 1943 (Harry Rowed / NFB Photothèque / LAC, e000761792, copyright expired). Bottom row: a machinist laughing at Small Arms Limited, 26 May 1942 (Nicholas Morant / LAC, e000760725, CC BY 2.0); welding Bren-gun magazine clips at John Inglis, April 1944 (Ronny Jaques / LAC, e000762114, CC BY 2.0); packing crates at GECO, c. 1943 (Archives of Ontario, I0004900, public domain); assembling a Bren-gun blank at John Inglis, 10 May 1941 (NFB Photothèque / LAC, e000760439, copyright expired).

Data sources: Statistics Canada, Innovation Canada, Alberta Forest Products Association, Job Bank Canada