US NSF Award Obligation Change Watch

Changes to the obligated amount on an existing NSF award.

Source

NSF public Awards API (public, logged-out)

• https://api.nsf.gov/services/v1/awards.json

Public, logged-out only — no API key, login, cookie or CAPTCHA.

The eight delta types

value	fires when
new-award	an award appears in the window
award-obligation-change	obligated or estimated funding moves
award-end-date-change	the award start or end date moves
recipient-award-win	a new award matches awardee_contains
small-business-award	a new award's programme is SBIR or STTR
investigator-new-award	a new award matches pi_contains
program-funding-momentum	a programme's award count or obligated total moves
geography-funding-shift	a state's award count or obligated total moves

Leave delta_types empty for all eight. Every delta carries delta_kinds naming which ones it satisfied — one new SBIR award to a watched recipient can satisfy four.

The two rollup types need an explicit date_from and date_to. A rolling window would report movement on every run purely because the window moved, so they are refused without one, and the window is part of the baseline identity.

How the window is read

The source has no sort parameter and its default order is not by date, so recency comes from the date window, walked day by day. Each day is read to completion and checked against the API's own totalCount; a day that comes back short is reported as a named PARTIAL rather than left as a silent hole in the baseline.

Pricing (staging state)

Event	Price (FREE tier)
Actor start (apify-actor-start)	$0.02 one-time
Source check (source-check)	$0.10

source-check ladder, GOLD-floored: $0.10 / $0.09 / $0.08 / $0.067. Charged once per run after the source enumeration terminates — seed and genuine-zero runs included. Not charged when the source refused the read.

The per-delta value event (nsf-award-delta) is not priced yet. Deltas are emitted unbilled until the ratified sheet is filed, and nothing is published before that.

Snapshot mode is a PREVIEW

watch_mode: false returns at most 25 records, hard-capped in code, labeled output_mode: "preview". This actor sells change detection, not bulk export.

Watch semantics

The first watch run stores a private baseline and emits zero deltas. Billed deltas are capped at 500 per run; the overflow is a named PARTIAL withholding, never billed, re-detected next run. When a read is truncated, REMOVED is suppressed.

Terminal states

NORMAL · SUCCEEDED-0: GENUINE_EMPTY · SUCCEEDED-0 (no change) · PARTIAL · BLOCKED. A zero with no evidence FAILS loud rather than exiting 0 quietly.

One delta type per Actor

This Actor watches award-obligation-change and nothing else. The other delta types in this family are separate Actors, each with its own price and its own baseline — so you pay for the feed you want and no other.

Pricing

Event	FREE	BRONZE	SILVER	GOLD+
Actor Start (apify-actor-start)	$0.02	$0.02	$0.02	$0.02
Source check (source-check)	$0.10	$0.09	$0.08	$0.067

Prices are the filed pay-per-event amounts per plan tier (PLATINUM/DIAMOND match GOLD). Blocked and refused runs do not intentionally charge value events.