Katzilla

What is Katzilla?

Katzilla is a data backbone for AI agents that need to access primary U.S. government sources and return cited responses. It provides one API key as an integration point for government datasets, emphasizing traceability by baking citation metadata into every response.

It wraps major U.S. government sources behind a tool-use-oriented interface, and also offers surrounding tools for working with government information that exists on webpages rather than APIs.

Key Features

• One API key that provides access to major U.S. government sources (e.g., SEC filings, FDA recalls, Federal Register, Congressional records, court opinions, Census).
• Citation metadata included with every response, designed so agent outputs can point back to primary sources.
• Tool-use-oriented support across 27 agent-ready categories, structured to support common agent workflows.
• Scrape, Signal, and Ask tools for different needs: scrape for pages behind HTML, signal for monitoring plus curated digests, and ask for ad-hoc natural-language queries.
• Catalog-backed discovery of datasets, including 250,195 validated Data.gov datasets plus additional searchable items via metadata and raw-file retrieval.

How to Use Katzilla

1. Start with the “Start with Government Data” flow and open the docs to understand the API and dataset catalog.
2. Use Katzilla’s one API key to connect your agent to primary sources needed for your task (e.g., regulations, filings, court opinions).
3. Choose the surrounding tool that matches your workflow:
   • Use Scrape when the target information is available via HTML pages rather than a clean API.
   • Use Signal to monitor sources and receive curated digests through delivery options such as email, webhook, RSS, or PagerDuty.
   • Use Ask for natural-language queries when you want cited answers.
4. Ensure your agent surfaces the provided citation metadata so responses are traceable to the underlying government documents.

Use Cases

• Legal research agent: Retrieve and answer questions grounded in primary sources like court opinions or Congressional records, with citations attached to responses.
• Regulatory and policy agent: Pull information from Federal Register notices and regulations.gov-style material to support compliance-related questions with source-backed outputs.
• Compliance copilots for filings and oversight: Query SEC filings or other government-published documents when an agent needs to reference authoritative material rather than secondary summaries.
• Clinical and public health research support: Use primary datasets such as NIH clinical trials to support clinical or public-health queries while maintaining traceable citations.
• Production monitoring for primary sources: Monitor government sources over time and route updates using Signal delivery channels (email, webhook, RSS, PagerDuty), alongside curated digests.

FAQ

• Does Katzilla focus on primary sources or aggregated summaries? Katzilla is positioned as a “data backbone” for primary government sources rather than aggregators or scraped blogs.

• How does Katzilla help with citations? The product states that citation metadata is baked into every response.

• What are Katzilla Datalive, Katzilla Signal, and Katzilla Ask? They are described as four agent-ready tools around the core API: Datalive for dataset access plus live scraping and parsing, Signal for monitors and curated digests, and Ask for ad-hoc natural-language queries with cited answers.

• When would I use Scrape instead of Ask? Scrape is intended for extracting information from pages behind HTML, while Ask is for natural-language questions to get cited answers.

• Which sources does Katzilla cover? The site lists major U.S. government categories and examples such as SEC filings, FDA recalls, Federal Register, Congressional records, court opinions, clinical trials, labor stats, and Census; it also mentions additional international bodies and national open-data portals.

Alternatives

• Build your own retrieval layer from government websites and datasets: A custom approach can cover primary sources but typically requires handling multiple source formats, scraping, and citation plumbing yourself.
• Use open-data APIs or dataset catalogs directly (e.g., Data.gov-style catalogs): This can work when datasets are available via stable APIs, but it shifts the burden of harmonizing sources and producing consistently cited agent outputs to you.
• Agent frameworks with retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) without a government-specific backbone: These platforms can retrieve information from many sources, but you’d need to add dataset coverage, monitoring, and citation handling tailored to government primary documents.
• Monitoring/digest tools for web sources: If your main need is alerts and curated updates, general monitoring tools can provide notifications, but they won’t inherently supply the government primary-source backbone and cited response workflow described for Katzilla.