California Prop 65 Notice Watchlist Processor

Normalize and compare California Proposition 65 notice snapshots, then flag new or changed records that match companies, chemicals, or product categories on your watchlist. Every result preserves source links and uncertainty.

Start in 30 seconds

1. Select Try for free and run with no input for a labeled demo.
2. Supply a notice snapshot, source attestation, and optional watchlist.
3. Reuse the persisted baseline to detect changes on later runs.

Price: $0.05 per successfully processed snapshot, plus a $0.00005 start event, regardless of notice or match count. Failed-source and demo runs are free.

This Actor does not collect the live register or prove complete enforcement coverage. It is an informational research aid, not legal or compliance advice.

Overview

The California Office of the Attorney General (OAG) maintains the public register of Proposition 65 60-day notices of violation. Businesses and compliance teams often lack automated alerts and face costly private-enforcer settlement demands.

This Actor provides:

• Deterministic snapshot ingestion: Ingests public notice records with stable notice identity (noticeNumber or reproducible hash).
• Normalized entity and substance classification: Canonicalizes alleged violators, complainants, listed chemicals, and product categories.
• Snapshot diff engine: Computes diffs between successive snapshot states (new, changed, unchanged, removed, unknown).
• Exact source provenance: Attests register URLs, document URIs, fetch timestamps, snapshot SHA-256 digests, and ingestion mechanisms.
• Explicit unknown and failed-source semantics: If a register fetch fails, times out, or returns incomplete data, verdicts are explicitly marked unknown with failure reasons. They are never falsely presented as unchanged.
• Watchlist filtering: Matches specific companies, chemicals, or categories of interest for targeted alerts.
• Pure offline / fixture operation: Runs completely locally with npm test and npm start without network access or external credentials.

Input Contract

Defined in .actor/input_schema.json:

• snapshot: Array of current notice objects (e.g. noticeNumber, noticeDate, allegedViolators, chemicals, category, productDetails, sourceUrl, documentUri).
• priorSnapshot: Optional prior snapshot array or state object to diff against. If omitted and state persistence is enabled, the previous run's snapshot is restored from the state store.
• watchlist: Optional matching rules:
  • companies: e.g. ["Acme Nutrition", "Apex Imports"]
  • chemicals: e.g. ["Lead", "Bisphenol A (BPA)", "Cadmium"]
  • categories: e.g. ["Dietary Supplements", "Food & Beverage", "Home & Kitchen"]
• source: Source fetch attestation:
  • status: "ok" | "failed" | "rate_limited" | "timeout" | "unavailable" | "malformed" | "unauthorized"
  • registerUrl: e.g. "https://oag.ca.gov/prop65"
  • fetchedAt: ISO-8601 instant
  • mechanism: "public-register" | "fixture" | "manual"
  • completeCoverage: boolean
• stateStoreName: Name of key-value store for cross-run snapshot persistence (default: "prop65-watchlist-state"). Set to null to disable persistence.
• emitOnlyWatchlistMatches: When true, only notices matching watchlist criteria are pushed to the dataset.
• emitUnchanged: When true, unchanged notices are also emitted.

Output Contract

Defined in .actor/output_schema.json, .actor/dataset_schema.json, and .actor/key_value_store_schema.json:

1. Default Dataset (rows[]): Each notice item includes:

   • noticeId: Canonical stable notice identifier.
   • noticeNumber: Register notice number.
   • noticeDate: Date notice was filed.
   • status: Change verdict ("new" | "changed" | "unchanged" | "removed" | "unknown").
   • isNew: Boolean flag.
   • isChanged: Boolean flag.
   • changedFields: Array of modified fields with before/after values if changed.
   • companies: { allegedViolators: string[], noticingParties: string[] }.
   • chemicals: Array of canonicalized chemical names.
   • category: Standardized category name.
   • productDetails: Product description.
   • watchlist: { matched: boolean, matchedCriteria: string[] }.
   • reasons: Deterministic audit reasons.
   • provenance: { sourceUrl, registerUrl, documentUri, fetchedAt, snapshotHash, mechanism }.
   • disclaimer: Mandatory legal disclaimer text.

2. Default Key-Value Store (OUTPUT):

   • contractVersion: "1.0.0"
   • ruleVersion: "1.0.0"
   • runStatus: "ok" | "degraded" | "failed"
   • evaluatedAt: Evaluation ISO-8601 instant.
   • counts: Total, new, changed, unchanged, removed, unknown, and watchlist match counts.
   • source: Validated source provenance and attestation.
   • warnings: Audit warnings.
   • disclaimer: Legal boundary text.

3. Durable State (STATE):

   • Persisted snapshot map of normalized notices used as baseline for the next run.

Diff and Failure Semantics

• New notice: Present in current snapshot, absent in prior snapshot.
• Changed notice: Present in both, but chemicals, alleged violators, category, or product details differ.
• Unchanged notice: Identical across current and prior snapshots.
• Failed source: If source.status is not "ok", runStatus is "failed", notices are emitted with status: "unknown" and reason source-failed. Under no circumstances is a failed source presented as "unchanged".

Local Development & Testing

Run all unit and behavior tests using the built-in Node.js test runner (requires Node >= 18):

$npm test

Execute a local run against the default fixture without network or credentials:

$npm start

Boundaries and Non-Goals

• No Legal Advice: Notice alerts are for operational tracking of public filings only.
• No Compliance Claims: The absence of a notice against a product or company does not certify statutory compliance, safe harbor status, or safety.
• Zero Paid Input / Credential Dependencies: Works entirely on public-register data and deterministic input snapshots.
• Allegation is not adjudication: A notice is a public filing, not proof of a violation or an automated legal conclusion.
• Partial snapshots retain unseen baseline notices as unknown; only an explicitly complete source can support removed.
• Use one writer per state store, export STATE before recovery, and delete datasets and the named store under your retention policy. Support owner: Mehdi Badawi through the Apify Store support channel, with an initial-response target of two business days.