Data Gov Regulations.gov API

Name: Regulations.gov API
Brand: Regulations.gov API
Availability: InStock

★ Only Publicly Available OpenAPI DocumentDeveloper ToolsMonitoring ObservabilityapiKey3 EndpointsREST

For Agents

Search and retrieve United States federal rulemaking dockets and documents from the Regulations.gov public record.

Install Jentic One Beta

Connect the Regulations.gov API to your agent

Jentic One is a self-hosted execution layer for AI agents. It lets your agent call the Regulations.gov 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 Regulations.gov API.

Search Regulations.gov documents by agency, docket, and date filters

Retrieve a specific docket record by docket identifier

Retrieve a specific document record by document identifier

GET STARTED

Start building with Regulations.gov API

Explore with Jentic

View OpenAPI Document

Use Cases

Patterns agents use Regulations.gov API for, with concrete tasks.

★ Regulatory Monitoring for Compliance Teams

Monitor proposed federal rules and dockets relevant to a regulated business. The GET /documents.{response_format} endpoint searches the corpus by agency and date, and GET /docket.{response_format} returns the specific docket for context. Suitable for compliance, legal, and policy teams that must track rulemaking across multiple federal agencies.

Search documents from agency 'EPA' posted in the last 7 days, then fetch each parent docket via GET /docket.json for context.

Public Comment Research

Research the public comment record on a specific federal rule by retrieving the docket and its associated documents. GET /document.{response_format} returns the full text and metadata for each document, useful for journalists, researchers, and advocacy groups analysing comment periods. The corpus covers active and archived dockets.

Retrieve a specific document via GET /document.json with the document ID and return its title, agency, and posted date.

Civic Tech Dashboards

Build civic dashboards that aggregate active dockets, comment counts, and recent documents for a public audience. The three endpoints together cover discovery, docket detail, and document detail with both JSON and XML response formats. Useful for civic-tech projects, transparency newsrooms, and academic policy trackers.

Search documents across all agencies posted today, group results by agency code, and produce a dashboard summary of active rulemakings.

Agent-Driven Policy Briefs via Jentic

AI agents that produce regulatory briefs or rulemaking summaries can call Regulations.gov through Jentic without holding the api_key. The agent searches Jentic for the relevant intent, loads the schema, and executes the search or document retrieval with the key held in your Jentic One instance. This keeps the Data.gov key isolated from the agent's prompt context.

Use Jentic to search 'search regulations.gov documents', load GET /documents.json, and execute it with the user's agency and topic filters to produce a brief.

Key Endpoints

3 endpoints — jentic publishes the only available openapi specification for regulations.

METHOD

PATH

DESCRIPTION

GET

/docket.{response_format}

Get a docket record by docket identifier

GET

/document.{response_format}

Get a document record by document identifier

GET

/documents.{response_format}

Search documents by agency, docket, and date filters

GET

/docket.{response_format}

Get a docket record by docket identifier

GET

/document.{response_format}

Get a document record by document identifier

GET

/documents.{response_format}

Search documents by agency, docket, and date filters

Why Jentic?

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

Credential isolation

Your Regulations.gov api_key is stored once, encrypted, by your own Jentic One instance and appended as the api_key query parameter at execution time. It never enters the agent's prompt, logs, or context.

Intent-based discovery

Agents search Jentic by intent such as 'search Regulations.gov documents' or 'fetch a rulemaking docket', and Jentic returns the matching operation with its input schema so the agent calls the right endpoint without parsing the legacy data.gov reference docs.

Time to first call

FAQs

Specific to using Regulations.gov API through Jentic.

Why is there no official OpenAPI spec for Regulations.gov?

Regulations.gov does not publish a formal OpenAPI specification. Jentic generates and maintains this spec so that AI agents and developers can call Regulations.gov via structured tooling. It is validated against the live API and kept up to date. Get started with Jentic One, the self-hosted execution layer.

What authentication does the Regulations.gov API use?

The Regulations.gov API uses a Data.gov api_key passed as a query parameter on every request. The key is free to obtain from api.data.gov. Through Jentic the api_key is stored in the vault and appended to outbound requests so it never enters the agent's context.

Can I search documents by agency with the Regulations.gov API?

Yes. GET /documents.{response_format} accepts agency, docket, and date filters and returns matching documents in JSON or XML based on the response_format path parameter.

What are the rate limits for the Regulations.gov API?

Limits are governed by Data.gov's signed-up api_key tier - typically 1,000 requests per hour by default. Apply backoff on 429 responses and request a higher-tier key from api.data.gov for production workloads.

How do I retrieve a docket through Jentic?

Run pip install jentic, then search Jentic for 'get a regulations.gov docket', load the GET /docket.{response_format} schema, and execute it with the docket identifier and response_format set to 'json'.

Does the Regulations.gov API return JSON or XML?

Both. The response_format path parameter accepts 'json' or 'xml' and the response is shaped accordingly - pick JSON for most agent and Jentic-driven workflows.

Can I limit what my agent is allowed to do with the Regulations.gov API?

Yes. Because Jentic One is self-hosted, your own rules decide which Regulations.gov operations and credentials the agent may use. This API is read-only, so you can restrict the agent to just the operations it needs, such as searching documents with GET /documents, fetching a single docket with GET /docket, or fetching one document with GET /document, and withhold the rest. Your Data.gov api_key stays in your instance and is appended at execution time, so the agent can only read the records you have allowed.