Data, API, RSS and MCP

All public data is free to reuse with attribution to Party Lines NI and to the parties as the authors of their releases.

Filters

The same query parameters work on every page, statistic, export, RSS feed and API endpoint:

party – one or more of alliance dup sinn-fein uup sdlp tuv green pbp aontu (comma-separated)
period – 7d 30d 90d 12m ytd mandate , Nd, Nm, week:2026-W45, month:2026-10, year:2025; or from/to (YYYY-MM-DD)
topic – health education housing economy public_finance justice environment agriculture infrastructure welfare equality community_relations constitutional immigration local_government international other ; subtopic e.g. health.waiting_lists
type – policy_announcement policy_proposal criticism event_response call_for_action parliamentary_update campaign recognition commentary
geo – ni roi uk international cross_border ; issue – an issue ID
proposal, criticism – yes/no; proactivity, tone, target; q – search titles and descriptions

JSON API (read-only)

GET /api/v1/search?q=… – ranked search by words and meaning (q ≤ 200 characters; same filters)
POST /api/v1/similar with JSON {"text": "…", "exclude_party": "dup", "period": "12m"} – releases similar in meaning to a passage (≤ 4,000 characters; not stored or cached)
GET /api/v1/releases – paginated list (page, limit ≤ 100, sort=newest|oldest|discovered)
GET /api/v1/releases/{id} – one release
GET /api/v1/parties, /api/v1/parties/{slug}
GET /api/v1/stats/summary – counts by party; /api/v1/stats/timeseries?interval=week|month|year; /api/v1/stats/topics?mode=primary|any; /api/v1/stats/communication-types; /api/v1/stats/gaps
GET /api/v1/topics, /api/v1/issues, /api/v1/issues/{id}, /api/v1/coverage

Responses are cached for five minutes and rate-limited per client (about 120 requests a minute). Every statistic carries the filters it was computed with and a link to the matching releases. Example: https://partylines.nidata.fyi/api/v1/stats/summary?period=30d.

CSV exports

/export/releases.csv – release metadata (up to 10,000 rows)
/export/stats.csv?by=party|month|week|year|topic|type – counts by party and dimension

RSS

/rss with any filters, e.g. /rss?party=alliance,dup&topic=health&period=30d. Without a period, feeds contain releases published in the last 30 days, newest first, so a historical import never floods a feed; releases discovered late appear only if their publication date is within that window. Each item has a permanent GUID, the original publication date, the party and a link to the original. Build a feed.

MCP server

A read-only Model Context Protocol server is available at https://partylines.nidata.fyi/mcp (Streamable HTTP, no authentication). Tools: search_releases (ranked by words and meaning when given a query), find_similar_releases (a passage of up to 4,000 characters), get_release, list_parties, get_party_statistics, compare_parties, get_topic_trends, get_topic_gaps, get_issue, get_source_coverage, generate_rss_url. Results are bounded and every statistic includes coverage completeness, so an absence of releases is never presented as evidence of inactivity.