# Federal Rule Impact MCP Server (`nexgenwatch/federal-rule-impact-mcp`) Actor

Answer 'what regulations changed for this industry' from the US Federal Register: search and retrieve rules, proposed rules and notices by CFR title, agency, keyword and date.

- **URL**: https://apify.com/nexgenwatch/federal-rule-impact-mcp.md
- **Developed by:** [NexGen Watch](https://apify.com/nexgenwatch) (community)
- **Categories:** Agents, Business
- **Stats:** 1 total users, 0 monthly users, 0.0% runs succeeded, 0 bookmarks
- **User rating**: No ratings yet

## Pricing

from $50.00 / 1,000 tool calls

This Actor is paid per event and usage. You are charged both the fixed price for specific events and for Apify platform usage.

Learn more: https://docs.apify.com/actors/running/actors-in-store.md#pay-per-event

## What's an Apify Actor?

Actors are web data automations that power AI and operations. They run on the Apify platform to scrape websites, process data, connect APIs, and automate workflows.
In Batch mode, an Actor accepts a well-defined JSON input, performs an action which can take anything from a few seconds to a few hours,
and optionally produces a well-defined JSON output, datasets with results, or files in key-value store.
In Standby mode, an Actor provides a web server which can be used as a website, API, or an MCP server.
Actors are written with capital "A".

## How to integrate an Actor?

If asked about integration, you help developers integrate Actors into their projects.
You adapt to their stack and deliver integrations that are safe, well-documented, and production-ready.
The best way to integrate Actors is as follows.

- **AI agents and MCP clients** — the [Apify MCP server](https://docs.apify.com/integrations/mcp.md) at `https://mcp.apify.com` (remote, streamable HTTP, OAuth on first use).
- **Agentic workflows and local Actor development** — [Agent Skills](https://apify.com/.well-known/agent-skills/index.json) with the [Apify CLI](https://docs.apify.com/cli/docs.md): `npm install -g apify-cli`, then `apify login`.
- **JavaScript/TypeScript projects** — the official [JS/TS client](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs.md): `npm install apify-client`.
- **Python projects** — the official [Python client](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs.md): `pip install apify-client`.
- **Any other language** — the [REST API](https://docs.apify.com/api/v2.md).

For usage examples, see the [API](#api) section below.

For more details, see Apify documentation as [Markdown index](https://docs.apify.com/llms.txt) and [Markdown full-text](https://docs.apify.com/llms-full.txt).

# README

## Federal Rule Impact MCP Server

Answer **"what regulations changed for this industry"** from the US Federal Register — final
rules, proposed rules and notices, searched by CFR title, agency, keyword and date, live.

Built for policy and compliance teams.

### Three things this server gets right that a naive read gets wrong

Every one measured live against the source on 2026-07-30.

#### 1. Keyword search is full-text over the whole document — it is not a topic filter

A 90-day search for **`cybersecurity`** returned 10 documents, and **10 of 10 had the word
in neither the title nor the abstract**. Among the hits:

```
Lamb Meat; Institution of Investigation, Scheduling of Public Hearing
Drawbridge Operation Regulation; Newark Bay, Between the Cities of ...
Privacy Act of 1974; System of Records
```

That is correct API behaviour — the term is matched somewhere in the document body — and it
is useless as an industry filter if you assume otherwise. So every keyword answer reports
**how many hits actually carry the term where a human can see it**, and points you at the
structural filters instead.

**The honest way to ask "what changed for my industry" is `cfr_title` or `agency_slug`.** A
CFR-title-21 query returned **54 final rules in 90 days, every one a drug or medical-device
rule**.

#### 2. A bad agency slug is an HTTP 400, not an empty result

```
conditions[agencies][]=not-a-real-agency
  -> 400 {"errors":{"agencies":"invalid value"}}
```

One careless `except` away, that reads as *"nothing changed for your industry"* — the worst
possible wrong answer for a compliance team. So slugs are **validated against the API's own
472-agency list before the query is sent**, an unrecognised slug comes back as a free notice
with near-matches, and any non-200 raises rather than returning an empty list.

#### 3. Effective dates are often missing, including on final rules

Measured: of 20 consecutive published **rules**, one carried no effective date, and a rule
fetched individually also had `effective_on: null`. Publication date is always there;
effective date is not. This server reports `effective_date_known` and **never backfills one
date from the other**.

### Tools

| tool | what it answers |
|---|---|
| `search_rules` | What was published in a trailing window, filtered by CFR title, agency, type or keyword |
| `get_rule` | One document in full: agencies, CFR references, RINs, dockets, dates, abstract, URL |
| `list_agencies` | All 472 agency slugs the Register recognises, filterable |
| `list_cfr_titles` | The 50 CFR titles — the structural map from an industry to a filter |
| `explain_limits` | What this server will and will not say, and the three traps above. Read before acting. |

Document types: `rule`, `proposed_rule`, `notice`, `presidential_document`. The default is
rules plus proposed rules. An unrecognised type is refused, never silently defaulted.

### Scope and compliance

**US Federal Register only.** State registers, agency guidance published outside the
Register, and the text of the CFR itself are not covered.

`federalregister.gov/robots.txt` **disallows the HTML search pages** —
`/documents/search`, `/articles/search`, `/regulations/search`,
`/public-inspection/search` — and does **not** disallow `/api/`. This server uses the JSON
API only; a test asserts no disallowed path can be built into a request URL. No
`Crawl-delay` is stated and the API returns no rate-limit header, so pacing is our own
choice: every call goes through one shared strict-pacing bucket at **5 requests/second**.

This server reports what the Federal Register published. It does **not** determine that a
rule applies to you, does **not** compute compliance deadlines, and is not legal advice.

### Pricing

| Event | Price |
|---|---|
| Server start (`apify-actor-start`) | $0.05, charged once per server run by the platform |
| Tool call (`mcp-tool-call`) | **$0.05 flat per completed tool call** |

No other events. Memory is pinned to 1024 MB so the start fee is charged **once** — on this
platform the start event bills once per gigabyte.

**Errors and notices are not charged.** An unknown agency slug, a CFR title outside 1–50, an
unknown document type, or a Federal Register read failure returns without billing.

**A sourced "nothing was published" IS charged**, and so is "that document number is not in
the Register" — those are the answers to the questions asked.

If a tool call cannot be billed correctly, **the call fails** rather than serving free.

# Actor input Schema

## `note` (type: `string`):

This Actor runs as an MCP server in Standby mode. Connect an MCP client to the server URL with path /mcp; there is no batch input to fill in.

## Actor input object example

```json
{
  "note": "standby"
}
```

# Actor output Schema

## `results` (type: `string`):

No description

# API

You can run this Actor programmatically using our API. Below are code examples in JavaScript, Python, and CLI, as well as the OpenAPI specification and MCP server setup.

## JavaScript example

```javascript
import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

// Initialize the ApifyClient with your Apify API token
// Replace the '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>' with your token
const client = new ApifyClient({
    token: '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>',
});

// Prepare Actor input
const input = {
    "note": "standby"
};

// Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
const run = await client.actor("nexgenwatch/federal-rule-impact-mcp").call(input);

// Fetch and print Actor results from the run's dataset (if any)
console.log('Results from dataset');
console.log(`💾 Check your data here: https://console.apify.com/storage/datasets/${run.defaultDatasetId}`);
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
items.forEach((item) => {
    console.dir(item);
});

// 📚 Want to learn more 📖? Go to → https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs

```

## Python example

```python
from apify_client import ApifyClient

# Initialize the ApifyClient with your Apify API token
# Replace '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>' with your token.
client = ApifyClient("<YOUR_API_TOKEN>")

# Prepare the Actor input
run_input = { "note": "standby" }

# Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
run = client.actor("nexgenwatch/federal-rule-impact-mcp").call(run_input=run_input)

# Fetch and print Actor results from the run's dataset (if there are any)
print(f"💾 Check your data here: https://console.apify.com/storage/datasets/{run.default_dataset_id}")
for item in client.dataset(run.default_dataset_id).iterate_items():
    print(item)

# 📚 Want to learn more 📖? Go to → https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs/quick-start

```

## CLI example

```bash
echo '{
  "note": "standby"
}' |
apify call nexgenwatch/federal-rule-impact-mcp --silent --output-dataset

```

## MCP server setup

```json
{
    "mcpServers": {
        "apify": {
            "type": "http",
            "url": "https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=fetch-actor-details,nexgenwatch/federal-rule-impact-mcp"
        }
    }
}
```

The hosted server signs you in with OAuth on first connect, so no API token belongs in this config. Clients without OAuth support can send an `Authorization: Bearer <APIFY_API_TOKEN>` header instead, using a token from API & Integrations in Apify Console (https://console.apify.com/settings/integrations).

## OpenAPI specification

Download the OpenAPI definition: https://api.apify.com/v2/actors/zLgtyVGhpvd4qOmmc/builds/eAUtPOpbgarNOLlS7/openapi.json