PubLedge

Open recordkeeping protocol for fact-specific written interpretations between two parties — Joint Interpretation Agreements (JIAs), Regulatory Mitigation Agreements (RMAs), no-action letters, private letter rulings, advisory opinions, and analogous civic instruments (HOA decision logs, co-op governance records, flying-club asset agreements, and the like).

Plain markdown with structured frontmatter. SHA-256 manifest checks provide source-to-manifest consistency. Bound to the Semantic Arts gist upper ontology so records from different authorities can be queried together.

Public and maintained. Protocol specification v0.1.3; stable MCP server v0.1.3. Standalone product expansion is parked pending a concrete legal-graph or adopter demand signal.

Who this is for

Regulators, regulated parties, and civic bodies that issue or rely on fact-specific written interpretations and need them recorded in a portable, queryable form.

What problem it solves

Fact-specific interpretations (no-action letters, private rulings, JIAs, HOA decisions) live in scattered, unstructured records that can't be compared across authorities. PubLedge is an open protocol that records them as manifest-checked markdown bound to a shared ontology.

Canonical URL

https://publedge.org/

Part of the PAICE legal graph

PubLedge is one component of the PAICE legal graph (with EveryAILaw, AI Incident Law, and Obligation First). It is intentionally open: code under Apache 2.0, protocol and content under CC BY 4.0, commercial use permitted with attribution. The open siblings are funded by EveryAILaw Pro, the graph's single restricted layer; openness here is a deliberate PBC-charter choice. The canonical model is in the PAICE Foundation INTENT.

What this repo is

Three things in one place:

1. The protocol — the PROTOCOL.md specification and the PRIOR-ART.md survey that motivates it.
2. Utah-shaped reference content — 5 JIA/RMA templates anchored to Utah's AI Policy Act (Utah Code §13-72a) and GenAI safe-harbor (§13-75-104), plus 18 demonstration instruments under data/examples/instruments/ spanning 8 authorities (Utah OAIP, Utah Legislature, Colorado Legislature, SEC, CFPB, IRS Chief Counsel, IRS TEGE, CFTC) and 7 instrument types (JIA, RMA, no-action letter, advisory opinion, private letter ruling, interpretive letter, statute). 35 first-class obligation records under data/examples/obligations/ are mapped to the instruments via data/examples/mapping/index.yml; legal lifecycle is tracked separately from editorial maturity.
3. The published site — rendered HTML under docs/, served by GitHub Pages from main /docs. Regenerate with node scripts/build.js && node scripts/build-extras.js before committing; CI fails if docs/ drifts from sources.

Machine-readable endpoints

Every record and index is published in parallel HTML + structured form so agents can walk the registry without scraping:

Surface	Shape
/	WebSite + Organization + DataCatalog JSON-LD (@graph); links to every dataset distribution
/us/{jurisdiction}/{authority}/{type}/{instance}/	Canonical hierarchical URL per record; inline Schema.org LegalDocument JSON-LD; PDF + OCR text co-located
/us/{jurisdiction}/{authority}/{type}/{instance}/record.json	Same record as JSON; shape validated by /schema/json/record.schema.json; includes authority_response annotations when present
/instruments.html, /obligations.html, /authorities.html	ItemList JSON-LD; human-readable filter + sort
/matrix.html	Dataset JSON-LD + coverage matrix; DataDownload distribution at /api/v1/matrix.json
/definitions/	DefinedTermSet with instrument types + statuses as DefinedTerms
/api/v1/*.json	Machine manifests: containers, primaries, authorities, mappings, matrix, upcoming, recently-changed
/api/v1/of/*.json	Obligation-First v0.1 binding records for authorities, instruments, terms, obligations, and determinations
/calendar.ics	Enforcement calendar (iCal)
/feed.xml, /atom.xml, /feed.json	RSS 2.0, Atom 1.0, JSON Feed 1.1
/sitemap.xml	Sitemap index → per-section sitemaps (records, authorities, statutes, reference, templates, bridges, meta)
/llms.txt, /agents.json	Agent-discovery briefing + capabilities
/.well-known/mcp.json	Installable MCP server discovery for npx -y publedge
/robots.txt	Explicit allow for 17 AI crawlers (GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, Google-Extended, Applebot-Extended, etc.)
mcp-server.js	MCP server exposing 13 read-only tools: list_<legal-instruments> (with jurisdiction/authority/type/status filters), get_<legal-instrument>, list_obligations, get_obligation, list_authorities, get_authority, search, search_obligations, get_matrix, get_mappings, fetch_by_url, get_upcoming, get_recently_changed

What this repo is not

• Not a regulator. PubLedge does not issue rulings.
• Not a law firm. Templates here are prior art, not legal advice.
• Not a CMS. Editors edit markdown in git.
• Not a blockchain. The integrity layer is plain SHA-256 over plain files.

Quickstart

git clone https://github.com/snapsynapse/publedge.git
cd publedge
./scripts/validate-hashes.sh           # verify integrity
node scripts/validate.js               # cross-reference checks
node scripts/build.js                  # regenerate docs/ entity pages + API
node scripts/build-extras.js           # copy reference HTML, feeds, discovery files

To validate the Obligation-First binding, check out snapsynapse/obligation-first beside this repo or set OBLIGATION_FIRST_DIR, then run npm run validate:of.

After intentional content edits, refresh hashes:

./scripts/validate-hashes.sh --update

CI runs all of the above, plus a pa11y-ci WCAG 2.1 AA pass across every URL in the sitemap, on every push and pull request.

Use PubLedge in five minutes

Choose the surface that matches the job:

1. Browse the instrument registry or open a canonical record such as the SEC CorpFin no-action letter.
2. Query an index without scraping HTML:

curl -sS https://publedge.org/api/v1/containers.json | jq '.[0]'

3. Fetch a record-shaped JSON representation by appending record.json to its canonical record URL:

curl -sS https://publedge.org/us/federal/sec-corpfin/nal/2025-001/record.json | jq '.id, .status'

4. Add the read-only MCP server to any stdio-capable client:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "publedge": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "publedge"]
    }
  }
}

5. Use search to discover records and fetch_by_url when you already have a canonical PubLedge URL. The complete endpoint and capability inventories are at api/v1/index.json and agents.json.

Canonical markdown under data/examples/ is the maintained source. Published HTML, API indexes, and each record.json are generated representations and should not be edited directly.

Repository layout

Path	Purpose
PROTOCOL.md	The PubLedge specification
INTENT.md	Authoritative repository disposition, active work, and revisit triggers
PRIOR-ART.md	Survey of analogous instrument programs
DEFINITIONS.md	Canonical vocabulary (status values, instrument types, obligation kinds)
MANIFEST.yaml	SHA-256 hashes for every canonical file
_templates/jia/, _templates/rma/	Fill-in templates with {{variable}} placeholders
data/examples/instruments/	18 demonstration instruments; filename = stable id (e.g. us-ut-oaip-rma-2025-001.md)
data/examples/authorities/	Authority records for each issuing body
data/examples/obligations/	Obligation definitions linked from instruments
data/examples/mapping/	Obligation-to-statute mapping index
about/	Hand-crafted /about/ source page (copied verbatim into docs/)
reference/	Hand-crafted reference HTML (prior-art, disclaimer, vocabulary)
schema/json/	JSON Schemas + JSON-LD context
vendor/gist/	Pinned snapshot of the Semantic Arts gist core ontology
scripts/	Validators (validate.js, verify.js), build (build.js, build-extras.js), hash check
_workshop/	Site ontology workshop output (taxonomy, sitemap, content guide, roadmap)

The _workshop/ directory documents the design decisions behind the layout above. Read _workshop/TAXONOMY.md, _workshop/SITEMAP.md, and _workshop/CONTENT-GUIDE.md before proposing structural changes.

Contributing an instrument

1. Pick template under _templates/jia/ or _templates/rma/.
2. Replace every {{variable_name}} with applicable values.
3. Set id to {jurisdiction}-{authority}-{type}-{YYYY-NNN} (e.g. us-ut-oaip-rma-2025-003). Filename must match: us-ut-oaip-rma-2025-003.md.
4. Set legal status: proposed and editorial_status: draft. Add parties under parties:.
5. Place file under data/examples/instruments/.
6. Run ./scripts/validate-hashes.sh --update to refresh MANIFEST.yaml.
7. Run node scripts/build.js && node scripts/build-extras.js to verify site regenerates cleanly.
8. Open a pull request.

See CONTRIBUTING.md for full conventions including obligation entries, source PDFs, and OCR workflow.

License

PubLedge is dual-licensed:

• Content (markdown, YAML, HTML) — CC-BY 4.0
• Code (scripts, schemas, build tooling) — Apache 2.0

See LICENSE for the split. Vendored snapshots retain their upstream licenses; the pinned gist core ontology is CC-BY 4.0 (Semantic Arts). Full credits in ATTRIBUTION.md.

Built on

• Knowledge as Code — the four-role entity pattern (Authority / Container / Secondary / Primary) PubLedge inherits.
• gist (Semantic Arts) — open upper ontology bound to PubLedge entities.
• Every AI Law — preferred source for statute-anchor URLs in statute_anchors[].
• skill-provenance — hash-mechanism pattern adapted for validate-hashes.sh. PubLedge does not adopt the full skill-provenance protocol.

Status and roadmap

Milestone	Status
Workshop, taxonomy, sitemap, content guide	done
Protocol specification (PROTOCOL.md)	done
Prior-art survey (PRIOR-ART.md)	done
Initial Utah templates (3 JIA, 2 RMA)	done
First registry instance (us-ut-oaip-jia-2026-001)	done
Hash-pinned integrity + CI verification	done
Discovery files (llms.txt, agents.json, feed.xml)	done
MCP server (mcp-server.js)	done
CLI validators (scripts/validate.js, scripts/verify.js)	done
JSON Schemas + JSON-LD context (schema/json/)	done
Unified site generator (build.js + build-extras.js)	done
Frontmatter spec v0.2	done
9 federal + Utah demonstration remaps	done
4 Utah statutes as first-class instrument records	done
Canonical URL architecture (/{country}/{jurisdiction}/{authority}/{type}/{YYYY-NNN}/)	done
record.json per instrument (Schema.org LegalDocument JSON-LD)	done
calendar.ics, api/v1/upcoming.json, api/v1/recently_changed.json	done
Status vocabulary (9 values) + DEFINITIONS.md + /definitions/ page	done
publedge-source-ingest skill for authored ingestion	done
Disclaimer & Source Policy at /reference/disclaimer/	done
Obligations + mapping curation pass (35 obligations, 16 mappings)	done
JSON-LD on top-level pages (home @graph, ItemList indexes, DefinedTermSet, Dataset)	done
Split sitemap index + 7 section sitemaps	done
JSON Feed 1.1 + Atom 1.0 feeds alongside RSS	done
/schema/json/record.schema.json (JSON Schema draft 2020-12)	done
Extended MCP tool surface (13 tools; filters, URL-based fetch, upcoming, recently-changed)	done
Explicit AI-crawler allowlist in robots.txt	done
Authority response protocol field, rendering, schema, and validation	done
Agent-readiness + a11y audit artifacts in audits/ + .a11y-audit/	done
Axe-core WCAG 2.1 AA remediation (4 rules, 70 instances → 0)	done
Private snapshot for pre-release review	sent
Lawyer review (SLC attorney)	pending; demand-triggered
repo-polish	done
Repository public	done
Obligation-First v0.4.x naming profile	done
promo-orchestrator + public announcement	parked
Browser-side registry browser + comparison tooling	parked
Branch-and-strip to reusable protocol template	parked

See ROADMAP.md for phasing and _workshop/ROADMAP.md for the original workshop plan.