How to use Pack and the Institrace API

What a Pack is

A Pack is a cited slice of records already on the index, assembled so a person or another model can read them with the sources attached. Each line should point at the original file or the official register. The Pack is not a finding. It does not allege. It does not become true because it was bundled.

You do not quote a Pack as the record. You quote the paper, the donation row, the title, or the register entry inside it. If a sentence in a Pack is your own note, it is yours. The index does not read your notes, and your notes are not published as the council's words.

Pack is behind an account. The public page that explains the product is the API page for the key, and pricing for what a trial includes. This guide does not open a live Pack.

What the API asks

A key lets a program ask the same questions a signed-in reader asks: search, open a paper, pin into an investigation the account already keeps. The key does not download the investigation zip. You do that yourself. The key is not a second account with a wider view of private notes.

The API returns cited rows. It does not return a verdict. If a response has no spend rows, that is no spend rows in the slice, not proof of no payment. Contracts and spend is that sentence in full. If a response has a company number, the number was on a file. If it has only a name, the name was on a file.

Instructions for the key sit on Developers. Usage for a signed-in account sits on the account's API usage page, not on this public guide. Do not treat this page as the request specification.

A worked example

A reader starts from a public page, for example Birmingham City Council or Parliament. They see titles and counts. They sign in to read text and to build a Pack from records they choose. The Pack cites those records. It does not replace them.

An assistant with a key can ask for the same paper. The answer should carry the publisher and the file. If the assistant writes a conclusion, that conclusion is the assistant's. It is not an Institrace finding. We do not write 'we uncovered'.

Investigations on the site are the account's reading list. A pin points at a record. It does not attach two records. Attachment is the identifier rule in company numbers and Methodology.

What this is not

Before you hand a Pack to someone else, read the contents list. Every paper in it should be one you meant to include. A pin on a body does not pull in every paper that body has ever published. If you wanted a paper, pin that paper. The zip, when you download it, is the text we hold plus the address of the original, up to the cap on your account. It is a copy for reading. It is not the council's own archive.

A key is for a program you trust, on an investigation you already keep. It asks. It does not widen the account. It does not see notes as if they were minutes. If you would not want the question asked on your behalf, do not put it on the key. The API page is where the practical steps live. This guide is the limit on what the answer means. If a model answers with a smooth paragraph and no file address, ask for the address before you use the paragraph. The address is the council URL, the Commission row, the title number, or the member. A Pack that includes those addresses is doing its job. A Pack that replaces them with a summary is not. You can still write the summary. Label it as your summary. Put it under the citations, not instead of them. That order is the difference between a reading aid and a claim the index never made. The index will not correct the claim later. You will have published it.

It is not a verdict. It is not a private archive of every paper on a body. It is not permission to treat a model summary as the minute.

Pack and the key need an account. Start a trial.