Search US open government datasets.

Searches the Data.gov dataset catalog like its search page: dataset title, link, publishing organization and description. First results page only (about 20 datasets, most relevant first). Returns an empty list when nothing matches.

No reports yetRead-only, no login

Site: Data.gov Catalog, United States
Version: v1
Runs, last 7 days: No reports yet
sha256: a9ed65bb10ab…

Run it with your agent

after installing Wield

Ask in plain words. Your agent finds this recipe and calls it:

“Search US open government datasets.”

Read-only: it changes nothing on the site. No login needed.

{
  "tool": "run",
  "arguments": {
    "recipe_id": "catalog.data.gov/search-open-data",
    "params": {
      "query": "air quality"
    }
  }
}

Requests

sent from your browser, in order

1GET/?q&sortServer-rendered catalog search page /?q=…&sort=relevance; read-only GET. Each dataset is an li.usa-collection__item with a heading link to /dataset/<name>, the publisher link under /organization/ and the description paragraph.

Parameters

from your agent

querystringrequiredTopic or keyword for the dataset, e.g. 'air quality', 'school enrollment', 'transit'

Returns

to your agent

datasetsobject[]description, organization, title, url

querystring

Where it can send

catalog.data.gov

Anything else is blocked by the extension.

Reads from your session

Nothing. Your browser attaches the site's cookies by itself.

Used only in requests to the addresses on the left. Never sent to wield.run or your agent.

Checks

a run passes when

length(output.datasets) > `0`
length(output.datasets[?starts_with(url, 'https://catalog.data.gov/dataset/')]) == length(output.datasets)
length(output.datasets[?title != `null`]) == length(output.datasets)

Raw recipe

Served as canonical JSON from /api/v1/recipes/catalog.data.gov/search-open-data, so its sha256 matches the ETag and the index.

Check it yourself

curl -s https://wield.run/api/v1/recipes/catalog.data.gov/search-open-data | shasum -a 256
# a9ed65bb10ab9a4d851ba86ba9144c36795ba5919bb73f04889a1ece6bce82a7

catalog.data.gov/search-open-data.json, v1

{
  "description": "Searches the Data.gov dataset catalog like its search page: dataset title, link, publishing organization and description. First results page only (about 20 datasets, most relevant first). Returns an empty list when nothing matches.",
  "effect": "read",
  "id": "catalog.data.gov/search-open-data",
  "keywords": [
    "data.gov",
    "catalog",
    "open data",
    "datasets",
    "dataset",
    "government data",
    "federal",
    "united states",
    "usa",
    "statistics",
    "public data",
    "open government"
  ],
  "output": {
    "schema": {
      "properties": {
        "datasets": {
          "items": {
            "properties": {
              "description": {
                "description": "Short text from the listing, may be truncated with '...'",
                "type": [
                  "string",
                  "null"
                ]
              },
              "organization": {
                "type": [
                  "string",
                  "null"
                ]
              },
              "title": {
                "type": "string"
              },
              "url": {
                "type": "string"
              }
            },
            "required": [
              "title",
              "url"
            ],
            "type": "object"
          },
          "type": "array"
        },
        "query": {
          "type": "string"
        }
      },
      "required": [
        "query",
        "datasets"
      ],
      "type": "object"
    },
    "value": "{query: params.query, datasets: steps.search.datasets[?title != `null` && href != `null`].{title: title, url: join('', ['https://catalog.data.gov', split(href, '?')[0]]), organization: organization, description: description}}"
  },
  "params": {
    "additionalProperties": false,
    "properties": {
      "query": {
        "description": "Topic or keyword for the dataset, e.g. 'air quality', 'school enrollment', 'transit'",
        "maxLength": 100,
        "minLength": 2,
        "type": "string"
      }
    },
    "required": [
      "query"
    ],
    "type": "object"
  },
  "provenance": {
    "method": "har",
    "notes": "GET /?q=…&sort=relevance: the HTML contains the first page of dataset results (li.usa-collection__item, 20 per page). Title and link come from the heading link, publisher from the /organization/ link, description from the paragraph. Selectors use semantic USWDS class names and href prefixes, no hashed classes. The URL keeps only the path (the from_hint tracking parameter is dropped).",
    "recorded_at": "2026-11-08T16:27:29.000Z",
    "recorded_by": "wield-forge (claude-haiku agent)"
  },
  "requires_login": false,
  "schema": "https://wield.run/schema/recipe/v1.json",
  "site": {
    "country": "US",
    "id": "catalog.data.gov",
    "language": "en",
    "name": "Data.gov Catalog",
    "origin": "https://catalog.data.gov",
    "origins": [
      "https://catalog.data.gov"
    ]
  },
  "steps": [
    {
      "description": "Server-rendered catalog search page /?q=…&sort=relevance; read-only GET. Each dataset is an li.usa-collection__item with a heading link to /dataset/<name>, the publisher link under /organization/ and the description paragraph.",
      "expect": {
        "assert": "status == `200` && contains(body, 'Data.gov')",
        "content_type": "html",
        "status": [
          200
        ]
      },
      "extract": {
        "html_items": {
          "datasets": {
            "fields": {
              "description": {
                "selector": "p.usa-collection__description"
              },
              "href": {
                "attr": "href",
                "selector": "h3.usa-collection__heading a"
              },
              "organization": {
                "selector": "a[href^='/organization/']"
              },
              "title": {
                "selector": "h3.usa-collection__heading a"
              }
            },
            "max": 60,
            "selector": "li.usa-collection__item"
          }
        }
      },
      "id": "search",
      "request": {
        "headers": {
          "Accept": "text/html"
        },
        "method": "GET",
        "query": {
          "q": "{{params.query}}",
          "sort": "relevance"
        },
        "url": "/"
      }
    }
  ],
  "task": "Search US open government datasets",
  "tos": {
    "notes": "Not reviewed. One search page per call, the same page a visitor loads. The site's terms on automated access were not checked.",
    "reviewed": false
  },
  "verify": {
    "checks": [
      "length(output.datasets) > `0`",
      "length(output.datasets[?starts_with(url, 'https://catalog.data.gov/dataset/')]) == length(output.datasets)",
      "length(output.datasets[?title != `null`]) == length(output.datasets)"
    ],
    "example_params": {
      "query": "air quality"
    },
    "max_ms": 5000
  },
  "version": 1
}