Govinfo Gov GovInfo API

Name: GovInfo API
Brand: GovInfo API
Availability: InStock

✓ Official Vendor SpecData EnrichmentData TransformationapiKey7 EndpointsREST

For Agents

Search and retrieve official U.S. government publications such as bills, regulations, and the Federal Register, with structured metadata and links to authenticated documents.

Install Jentic One Beta

Connect the GovInfo API to your agent

Jentic One is a self-hosted execution layer for AI agents. It lets your agent call the GovInfo API, or any other public or private API you need. You set the rules, the agent never sees your credentials, and every call is logged.

Two steps, two machines. Install the instance in a safe environment, then register your agent from wherever it runs.

Step 1: Jentic One Host machine

# On the machine that will host your Jentic One instance:
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/jentic/jentic-one/main/tools/install.sh | sh

Step 2: Agent machine

# On the machine where your agent runs (keep this separate from the instance):
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/jentic/jentic-one/main/tools/install.sh | sh
jentic register       # connects your agent to your Jentic One instance

Jentic One is in public beta. The setup above keeps your agent separate from the instance, which is what you want before using real credentials: an agent running as the same OS user as Jentic One can read its stored keys directly. Just evaluating? A single local install is fine to start. See the secure deployment guide for the tiers.

Capabilities

What an agent can do with GovInfo API.

List GPO content collections such as BILLS, FR, and CFR with their available date ranges

Retrieve package summaries containing metadata, citations, and document download links

Fetch granules within a package - for example individual sections of a Federal Register issue

GET STARTED

Start building with GovInfo API

Explore with Jentic

View OpenAPI Document

Use Cases

Patterns agents use GovInfo API for, with concrete tasks.

★ Legislative Tracking

Monitor congressional activity by polling the GovInfo BILLS collection for newly published bills and resolutions. The /collections/{collectionCode} endpoint returns paginated package metadata so an agent can detect new filings, fetch the package summary, and pull citation data without scraping Congress.gov pages. Updates land within hours of the official publication.

List packages in the BILLS collection added since 2026-06-01 and return the package IDs, titles, and download URLs for any bill mentioning 'artificial intelligence'.

Federal Register Monitoring

Pull the Federal Register issue for a specific publication date to surface new agency rules, proposed rules, and notices. Agents call /published/{dateStr} with the FR collection filter, then fetch granule summaries to extract docket numbers, agency names, and effective dates. This avoids manual review of the daily issue, which can run hundreds of pages.

Get the Federal Register granules published on 2026-06-09 from the FR collection and return any granule whose agency field matches 'EPA'.

Citation and Reference Lookup

Resolve a package ID such as a CFR title or public law citation into full bibliographic metadata, including official document URLs in XML, PDF, and HTML formats. Useful for legal research tools, academic citation generators, and AI assistants that need to ground answers in primary government sources rather than secondary commentary.

Call /packages/{packageId}/summary for packageId 'PLAW-117publ328' and return the title, congress, and PDF download URL.

AI Agent Government Document Retrieval

An agent answering questions about U.S. law or regulations can call GovInfo via Jentic to ground responses in authenticated documents. Jentic exposes the search and package endpoints as tools, so the agent issues a search query, loads matching package IDs, and retrieves summaries - all while the GovInfo api_key stays in your Jentic One instance.

Search GovInfo for 'climate disclosure rules' across the FR collection in 2026, then fetch the package summary for the top-ranked result.

Key Endpoints

7 endpoints — the govinfo api provides programmatic access to u.

METHOD

PATH

DESCRIPTION

GET

/collections

List available GPO content collections

GET

/collections/{collectionCode}

List packages within a collection

GET

/packages/{packageId}/summary

Get bibliographic metadata for a package

GET

/packages/{packageId}/granules

List granules contained in a package

GET

/published/{dateStr}

Get documents published on a specific date

GET

/search

Full-text search across GovInfo content

GET

/collections

List available GPO content collections

GET

/collections/{collectionCode}

List packages within a collection

GET

/packages/{packageId}/summary

Get bibliographic metadata for a package

GET

/packages/{packageId}/granules

List granules contained in a package

GET

/published/{dateStr}

Get documents published on a specific date

Why Jentic?

Three things that make agents converge on Jentic-routed access.

Credential isolation

Your GovInfo API key is stored once, encrypted, by your own Jentic One instance and injected at execution time. It never enters the agent's prompt, logs, or context.

Intent-based discovery

Agents search Jentic by intent such as 'find bills published on a date' or 'get a package summary', and Jentic returns the matching GovInfo operation with its input schema so the agent calls the right endpoint without browsing the reference docs.

Time to first call

FAQs

Specific to using GovInfo API through Jentic.

What authentication does the GovInfo API use?

The GovInfo API uses an API key passed as the api_key query parameter on every request. Free keys are issued through api.data.gov. When called via Jentic, the key is stored encrypted in your Jentic One instance and injected at execution time so the agent never handles the raw credential.

Can I search across all GovInfo collections at once with this API?

Yes. The /search endpoint accepts a query string and an optional collection filter, so a single request can cover every collection or be scoped to BILLS, FR, CFR, and similar codes. Results return package IDs that can then be fetched via /packages/{packageId}/summary for full metadata.

What are the rate limits for the GovInfo API?

GovInfo uses the api.data.gov gateway, which enforces a default limit of 1,000 requests per hour per API key. Higher limits can be requested by contacting GPO. Plan batch jobs accordingly and cache package summaries since the underlying documents rarely change after publication.

How do I retrieve documents published on a specific date through Jentic?

Run pip install jentic, then search for 'retrieve government documents published on a date'. Jentic returns the GET /published/{dateStr} operation. Load its schema, supply dateStr in YYYY-MM-DD form and an optional collection filter, and execute the call to get the package list for that day.

Is the GovInfo API free to use?

Yes, the GovInfo API is free. You sign up at api.data.gov for a key and get the standard 1,000 requests per hour. There is no paid tier - GovInfo is operated by the U.S. Government Publishing Office as a public service.

What document formats can I get back from a package?

Each package summary returned by /packages/{packageId}/summary includes download URLs for the formats GPO publishes for that document type - typically PDF, XML, HTML, and a metadata MODS file. Not every collection offers every format, so check the download object on the response before requesting a specific file.

Can I limit what my agent is allowed to do with the GovInfo API?

Yes. Because you run Jentic One yourself, your own rules decide which GovInfo operations the agent may call, so you can grant only the read operations you want, such as /search and /packages/{packageId}/summary while withholding the others. Since GovInfo puts the collection and package id in the URL path, a rule can pin the agent to a single collection like FR or CFR or to one package id. Every operation here is read-only, so the agent can retrieve and cite documents but cannot alter anything, and any operation you do not name is not available to it.