federal-register-mcp

Every rule, proposed rule, and executive order in a queryable API — track regulatory activity for any agency.

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What Is This?

The Federal Register publishes more than 70,000 documents per year — final rules, proposed rules, notices, executive orders, and presidential proclamations — representing the complete output of federal regulatory activity. Every agency action that affects your business, clients, or policy area passes through these pages first. But monitoring the Federal Register manually means setting up keyword alerts, reading dense regulatory prose daily, and trying to track comment deadlines across dozens of dockets simultaneously. Compliance teams at regulated companies pay $20,000+ per year for platforms that do exactly this.

This actor wraps the FederalRegister.gov public API into three powerful search modes. Keyword + filter search returns documents matching your query filtered by document type, agency, date range, and comment status. Agency activity summary returns a structured view of everything a specific agency has published in a given period — useful for regulatory strategy and lobbying. Docket tracker monitors a specific rulemaking docket number and returns all associated documents in chronological order. Output is normalized JSON with every critical field: document number, title, type, agency names, publication date, comment deadline, and direct URL to the full document.

It runs in Batch mode for scheduled regulatory monitoring pipelines and MCP server mode for live regulatory research inside Claude Desktop or any MCP-compatible AI agent. Compliance officers use it to catch rules before comment periods close. Regulatory lawyers use it to build agency activity dossiers. Policy analysts and lobbyists use it to understand regulatory intent and track rulemaking timelines.

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Who Uses This

Corporate Compliance Officers You manage regulatory compliance for a fintech company. You need to know within 24 hours when any federal financial regulator (CFPB, OCC, FinCEN, SEC, CFTC) publishes a proposed rule that touches payment processing, money transmission, or consumer lending. Currently you rely on a vendor's email digest — which covers major rules but misses agency-specific notices. This actor lets you run a daily query that catches every document type, not just final rules, before the comment window opens.

Regulatory Affairs Lawyers You're preparing a comment letter for a client on a proposed OSHA rule affecting warehouse safety. You need the complete docket history: the original ANPRM, the NPRM, all associated notices, and any interim final rules. The docket tracker mode gives you every document in the rulemaking sequence in one call — no manual FR searching, no missed documents.

Government Affairs / Lobbyists You represent a trade association in the agricultural chemicals space. Your job is to know what EPA is planning before the rules land. Agency activity summary mode gives you a full inventory of EPA's regulatory output for any 90-day window — categorized by rule type — so you can brief your board on what's coming and when.

Policy Analysts and Think Tank Researchers You're writing a report on the pace of financial deregulation across administrations. You need comparable Federal Register data — number of final rules, proposed rules, and significant rulemakings — for the CFPB across multiple fiscal years. This actor returns that data structured and ready to analyze without any manual data collection.

AI Agent Developers Building Regulatory Intelligence Tools You're building a compliance AI assistant that needs to answer "are there any open comment periods on cryptocurrency regulations right now?" This actor's MCP interface gives your agent live, accurate Federal Register data — not hallucinated regulatory timelines.

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Key Features

Feature	Detail
Data coverage	70,000+ Federal Register documents per year
Data source	FederalRegister.gov public API (official GPO data)
Document types	Rule, Proposed Rule, Notice, Presidential Document
Search mode 1	Keyword + filter (type, agency, date range, comment status)
Search mode 2	Agency activity summary (all documents by agency + period)
Search mode 3	Docket tracker (all documents by docket number)
Comment deadline tracking	Returns comments_close_on for all open rules
Historical depth	Full text search back to 1994; metadata back to 1936
MCP server mode	Live tool-use in Claude Desktop, Claude Code, any MCP client
Batch mode	Scheduled monitoring pipelines
Full text	Optional full abstract and body text extraction

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Quick Start

Batch Mode

Input (keyword search mode):

{
  "mode": "batch",
  "search_mode": "keyword",
  "query": "cryptocurrency digital assets",
  "document_types": ["RULE", "PROPOSED_RULE"],
  "agencies": ["Securities and Exchange Commission", "Commodity Futures Trading Commission"],
  "date_from": "2024-01-01",
  "date_to": "2024-12-31",
  "open_for_comment": true,
  "max_results": 25
}

Output (truncated to 2 records):

[
  {
    "document_number": "2024-09871",
    "title": "Safeguarding Advisory Client Assets; Prohibition on Borrowing of Client Assets",
    "type": "PROPOSED_RULE",
    "agency_names": ["Securities and Exchange Commission"],
    "publication_date": "2024-05-08",
    "comments_close_on": "2024-07-08",
    "docket_ids": ["S7-04-23"],
    "cfr_references": [{"title": 17, "part": 275}],
    "html_url": "https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2024/05/08/2024-09871/safeguarding-advisory-client-assets",
    "pdf_url": "https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2024-05-08/pdf/2024-09871.pdf",
    "abstract": "The Securities and Exchange Commission is proposing to amend certain rules..."
  },
  {
    "document_number": "2024-07234",
    "title": "Digital Commodity Exchange Act Implementation: Reporting Requirements",
    "type": "PROPOSED_RULE",
    "agency_names": ["Commodity Futures Trading Commission"],
    "publication_date": "2024-04-10",
    "comments_close_on": "2024-06-10",
    "docket_ids": ["CFTC-2024-0012"],
    "cfr_references": [{"title": 17, "part": 44}],
    "html_url": "https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2024/04/10/2024-07234/digital-commodity-exchange-act-implementation",
    "pdf_url": "https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2024-04-10/pdf/2024-07234.pdf",
    "abstract": "The Commodity Futures Trading Commission proposes new reporting requirements..."
  }
]

Input (agency activity summary mode):

{
  "mode": "batch",
  "search_mode": "agency_summary",
  "agency": "Consumer Financial Protection Bureau",
  "date_from": "2024-01-01",
  "date_to": "2024-06-30"
}

Input (docket tracker mode):

{
  "mode": "batch",
  "search_mode": "docket",
  "docket_id": "CFPB-2023-0052"
}

MCP Server Mode

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "federal-register": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": [
        "apify-actor-mcp",
        "--actor-id", "your-username/federal-register-mcp",
        "--token", "YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN"
      ]
    }
  }
}

Then in Claude: "Are there any proposed rules from the CFPB currently open for public comment?"

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MCP Tools Exposed

search_federal_register

Full keyword + filter search across Federal Register documents.

{
  "tool": "search_federal_register",
  "arguments": {
    "query": "PFAS drinking water contamination",
    "document_types": ["RULE", "PROPOSED_RULE"],
    "agencies": ["Environmental Protection Agency"],
    "open_for_comment": true,
    "max_results": 20
  }
}

get_agency_activity

Return all documents published by an agency in a date range, grouped by document type.

{
  "tool": "get_agency_activity",
  "arguments": {
    "agency": "Federal Communications Commission",
    "date_from": "2024-01-01",
    "date_to": "2024-06-30",
    "document_types": ["RULE", "PROPOSED_RULE", "NOTICE"]
  }
}

track_docket

Return all Federal Register documents associated with a specific docket number, in chronological order.

{
  "tool": "track_docket",
  "arguments": {
    "docket_id": "EPA-HQ-OW-2022-0114"
  }
}

get_document

Retrieve full document record including abstract, full text reference, and all metadata.

{
  "tool": "get_document",
  "arguments": {
    "document_number": "2024-09871"
  }
}

list_open_comment_periods

Return all documents currently open for public comment, optionally filtered by agency and document type.

{
  "tool": "list_open_comment_periods",
  "arguments": {
    "agencies": ["Department of Labor", "OSHA"],
    "document_types": ["PROPOSED_RULE", "RULE"]
  }
}

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Input Schema

Field	Type	Default	Description
mode	string	"batch"	"batch" or "mcp"
search_mode	string	"keyword"	"keyword", "agency_summary", or "docket"
query	string	—	Keyword search string (mode: keyword)
document_types	array	all types	["RULE"], ["PROPOSED_RULE"], ["NOTICE"], ["PRESIDENTIAL_DOCUMENT"]
agencies	array	—	Agency names (partial match, multiple supported)
agency	string	—	Single agency name (mode: agency_summary)
docket_id	string	—	Docket number (mode: docket) — e.g., "EPA-HQ-OW-2022-0114"
date_from	string	—	ISO 8601 publication date start
date_to	string	—	ISO 8601 publication date end
open_for_comment	boolean	false	Return only documents with open comment periods
comment_deadline_within_days	integer	—	Return only documents with comment deadlines within N days
cfr_title	integer	—	Filter by CFR title number (e.g., 12 for banking)
include_abstract	boolean	true	Include document abstract in results
include_full_text_url	boolean	true	Include PDF and HTML URLs
max_results	integer	100	Maximum records to return (up to 10,000)
sort_by	string	"publication_date"	"publication_date", "comments_close_on", "relevance"
sort_order	string	"desc"	"asc" or "desc"

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Use Case Recipes

Recipe 1: Daily Compliance Alert — Open Comment Periods

Financial services compliance team monitors all open comment periods from banking regulators:

{
  "search_mode": "keyword",
  "query": "banking consumer financial",
  "agencies": ["Consumer Financial Protection Bureau", "Office of the Comptroller of the Currency", "Federal Reserve System"],
  "document_types": ["PROPOSED_RULE", "RULE"],
  "open_for_comment": true,
  "sort_by": "comments_close_on",
  "sort_order": "asc"
}

Outcome: Sorted list of open comment periods by deadline — pipe to a calendar or task management system for comment letter scheduling.

Recipe 2: Agency Regulatory Posture Analysis

Understand how aggressively the FTC has been regulating over the last 2 years:

{
  "search_mode": "agency_summary",
  "agency": "Federal Trade Commission",
  "date_from": "2022-01-01",
  "date_to": "2024-01-01"
}

Outcome: Document counts by type — RULE vs. PROPOSED_RULE vs. NOTICE — showing regulatory velocity over time.

Recipe 3: Full Rulemaking History

Track a specific CFPB rulemaking from ANPRM through Final Rule:

{
  "search_mode": "docket",
  "docket_id": "CFPB-2022-0017"
}

Outcome: Complete chronological document sequence for the rulemaking — use for regulatory comment letter background research or litigation support.

Recipe 4: Environmental Rule Monitoring

All EPA rules and proposed rules affecting manufacturing (CFR Title 40) in the last 6 months:

{
  "search_mode": "keyword",
  "query": "manufacturing emissions effluent",
  "agencies": ["Environmental Protection Agency"],
  "document_types": ["RULE", "PROPOSED_RULE"],
  "cfr_title": 40,
  "date_from": "2024-01-01",
  "max_results": 100
}

Outcome: Complete EPA regulatory activity for manufacturing compliance — filter further by comment status to prioritize action items.

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Connecting to Claude Desktop / Claude Code

Claude Desktop:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "federal-register": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": [
        "apify-actor-mcp",
        "--actor-id", "your-username/federal-register-mcp",
        "--token", "apify_api_YOURTOKEN"
      ],
      "env": {}
    }
  }
}

Claude Code:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "federal-register": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["apify-actor-mcp", "--actor-id", "your-username/federal-register-mcp", "--token", "apify_api_YOURTOKEN"]
    }
  }
}

Sample prompts once connected:

• "What proposed rules from the EPA are open for comment right now?"
• "Summarize all CFPB regulatory activity from the first half of 2024."
• "Track the full rulemaking history for docket EPA-HQ-OW-2022-0114."

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Pricing

Volume	Price
First 1,000 results	$0.50
1,001 – 50,000 results	$0.40/1k
50,000+ results	$0.30/1k

ROI context: Regulatory intelligence platforms like Compliance.ai and Drata cost $15,000–$50,000/year for enterprise teams. Missing a comment deadline on a proposed rule that affects your business can cost millions in compliance remediation. This actor surfaces the data you need — at a fraction of the cost of dedicated regulatory monitoring software.

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Data Source and Freshness

• Primary: FederalRegister.gov REST API — official data from the Office of the Federal Register (OFR) / GPO
• Update frequency: New Federal Register issues publish by 6:00 AM ET on weekday mornings; actor reflects same-day content within 2 hours of publication
• Historical depth: Full document metadata back to 1936; full text search back to 1994
• Coverage: All document types published in the Federal Register — Rules, Proposed Rules, Notices, Presidential Documents (Executive Orders, Proclamations, etc.)
• CFR cross-references: Available for all documents with regulatory text

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Technical Notes

• FederalRegister.gov API requires no authentication — the actor handles all requests internally
• Agency names support partial matching; use canonical agency names for best results (e.g., "Environmental Protection Agency" not "EPA")
• Docket IDs are case-sensitive and must match the exact format used in Federal Register documents (e.g., "EPA-HQ-OW-2022-0114")
• comments_close_on is null for final rules and notices not open for comment
• Full document body text is not returned by default (use include_full_text_url to get the PDF/HTML URL for downstream processing)
• Presidential Documents include Executive Orders, Presidential Proclamations, and Presidential Memoranda
• Large agency summary queries (full year, all types) may take 30–60 seconds due to pagination

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Support

• Issues: File a GitHub issue on the actor repository
• Apify Community: community.apify.com
• FederalRegister.gov API docs: www.federalregister.gov/developers/documentation/api/v1
• Federal Register search: www.federalregister.gov/documents/search