Policy Intel CLI

Created by @sdhilip200 (Dhilip Subramanian).

policy-intel-pp-cli is a read-only Printing Press CLI for federal rulemaking and policy-monitoring workflows. It turns FederalRegister.gov and Regulations.gov public APIs into a small set of agent-friendly commands for research briefs, regulatory monitoring, docket review, and open comment deadline tracking.

What This Achieves

Government policy data is public, but the source APIs are shaped around document stores and filter syntax. This CLI gives analysts and agents a smaller workflow surface:

• Search recent Federal Register documents for a topic.
• Focus on rules and proposed rules without memorizing Federal Register type codes.
• Pull Regulations.gov docket details by docket ID.
• List public comments for a docket.
• Find open comment deadlines for a topic or agency.

The CLI is useful for analysts, founders, compliance teams, public-sector sales teams, data engineers, market researchers, and agents that need source-backed policy context. It does not submit comments, give legal advice, or certify compliance.

Sources

• FederalRegister.gov API: public, no API key required.
• Regulations.gov API v4: uses POLICY_INTEL_REGULATIONS_API_KEY when configured; otherwise uses the public DEMO_KEY for small smoke-test calls.

Authentication

Federal Register commands do not need credentials.

For regular Regulations.gov usage, create an api.data.gov key and set:

export POLICY_INTEL_REGULATIONS_API_KEY="..."

If the variable is missing, the CLI uses DEMO_KEY for small read-only smoke-test calls. DEMO_KEY is not intended for production polling.

Commands

Federal Register Search

policy-intel-pp-cli federal-register search "artificial intelligence" --agent

Optional filters:

policy-intel-pp-cli federal-register search "privacy" --agency federal-trade-commission --since 2026-01-01 --limit 10 --agent

Federal Register agency filters use agency slugs such as federal-trade-commission, not short codes like FTC.

Rules And Proposed Rules

policy-intel-pp-cli rules "artificial intelligence" --agent

This command applies the Federal Register RULE and PRORULE filters for agents that want rulemaking items instead of every notice or reader-aid document.

Docket Details

policy-intel-pp-cli docket EPA-HQ-OPPT-2018-0462 --agent

Returns docket title, agency, docket type, modified date, abstract, and source metadata from Regulations.gov.

Public Comments

policy-intel-pp-cli comments EPA-HQ-OPPT-2018-0462 --agent

Returns public comment records exposed by Regulations.gov. Comment fields vary by agency and document type.

Open Comment Deadlines

policy-intel-pp-cli deadlines "water" --agent

By default, this searches documents with commentEndDate >= today in UTC. You can pin the start date:

policy-intel-pp-cli deadlines "water" --from 2026-06-18 --agency EPA --agent

Source Readiness

policy-intel-pp-cli sources --agent
policy-intel-pp-cli doctor --agent

Use these before a larger automation to confirm which sources are keyless, which source is using DEMO_KEY, and which env var to set.

Output Notes

Use --agent for compact JSON. Every result names its source and caveats so an agent can distinguish source-backed facts from missing data, source limitations, and legal-status warnings.

Troubleshooting

• 429 OVER_RATE_LIMIT from Regulations.gov means the public DEMO_KEY or your configured key has been throttled. Set POLICY_INTEL_REGULATIONS_API_KEY to a real api.data.gov key for regular use, or wait before retrying small smoke-test calls.
• Federal Register filters use slugs such as federal-trade-commission; short names like FTC are not accepted by the upstream API.

Non-Goals

• No comment submission.
• No legal advice.
• No compliance certification.
• No lobbying workflow automation.
• No prediction of policy outcomes.