nodecode-egov-law
Japanese laws from e-Gov: find a statute by the name a person uses, read one article as in force today or on a date, and check when an amendment takes effect. A Nodecode rewrite of TakeshiTGAL/hermes-plugin-egov-law by TakeshiTGAL.
The data is the Law API v2 of e-Gov 法令検索, the Digital Agency of Japan's official law database: public, read-only, no key. Answers carry the credit e-Gov's terms ask for (source.attribution), the law's own e-Gov page, and — for an article — the date the version in force took effect.
Get it
Tell the agent "add the egov-law cell", or run nodecode add nc://egov-law.
Set it up
Nothing is required. The section egov-law in ~/.nodecode/config.jsonc has three members, all optional:
| Member | Default | What it does |
|---|---|---|
endpoint |
https://laws.e-gov.go.jp/api/2 |
the API base |
timeout_seconds |
20 |
one request's ceiling |
max_chars |
4000 |
how much of one article egov_law_article returns by default |
Use it
Ask in the conversation — 「労基法32条の条文を見せて」, 「個人情報保護法の次の改正はいつ施行？」, 「民法第四百十五条」 — and the model calls one of the three tools:
| Tool | When | Arguments |
|---|---|---|
egov_law_search |
you do not know the exact law, or want laws whose text mentions a phrase | query, mode (title or text), limit, include_repealed |
egov_law_article |
you need one article's wording, or whether an amendment changes it | law, article, paragraph, as_of, compare_with, max_chars |
egov_law_revisions |
the question is about when something took or takes effect | law, limit |
A law is named any way a person names it: official title (労働基準法), e-Gov abbreviation (労基法), a common short name (下請法, 憲法, 18 of them), law number (昭和二十二年法律第四十九号) or law ID (322AC0000000049). An article is written 32, 第32条, 三十二条, 32の2, or 附則第143条 for the law's own supplementary provisions. A name that fits several laws answers the candidates with their law IDs.
The operator can also read from the shell:
/egov-law 労基法 32 one article, as text, with its e-Gov page /egov-law 個人情報保護法 the laws whose title matches
and from a Lisp call: (egov-law:article "労基法" "32") answers the same object the tool returns. (help :egov-law) carries the primer a model reads, including the rule to quote source.attribution with any law text.
What it does not do
- Bills still in the Diet are not in e-Gov, so no scheduled amendment is not proof there is none.
- It reads the main provisions (本則) and the law's own 附則, not 別表, forms, or the 附則 of an amending law.
- The original's two convenience notes are not carried: it does not hunt an article that an amendment moved to another number, and it does not point at an 附則 article that restates the one you read. Ask for
附則articles yourself when the answer depends on a transitional rule. - No key, no account, nothing written to disk: every request goes to
laws.e-gov.go.jp.
Test it
.github/test-cell.sh tools/nodecode-egov-law
The run stubs every nlk:http call, so it needs no network: the three tools, the element name an article is read by, the operator's command and the section's refusal are all checked against documents shaped like the API's.
