nz-parliament - SKILL.md Agent Skill

name: nz-parliament description: Track New Zealand Parliament bills and their legislative progress from the public bills.parliament.nz API. Use when the task involves NZ bills, legislation before Parliament, a bill's status or stage (first reading, select committee, etc.), who introduced a bill, government vs member's bills, or searching bills by keyword. Keyless, read-only; no login. Covers bills only (not MP directory, votes, Hansard, or petitions).

NZ Parliament

Track bills before the New Zealand Parliament and their progress through the House, from the public bills.parliament.nz JSON API. Keyless, read-only; no login, account, or API key.

Use this when

A user asks what bills are before Parliament, or to search bills by keyword
A user wants a bill's status / current stage (first reading, select committee, second reading, royal assent, etc.) and its stage timeline
A user wants to know who introduced a bill, or government vs member's bills
A workflow needs machine-readable NZ legislation-in-progress data

Do not use this for

MP directory, electorates, party lists — not covered (bot-protected source)
Votes / divisions, Hansard debates, written questions, petitions — not covered
The full text of enacted law — use legislation.govt.nz
Government press releases / ministers — use the nz-ministers skill

Commands

cli=skills/nz-parliament/scripts/cli.py

# Current bills before the House
python3 $cli bills
python3 $cli bills --limit 30 --json

# Search bills by keyword (across all bills, not just current)
python3 $cli bills --keyword climate --all
python3 $cli bills -k "firearms" --all --json

# One bill's detail + stage timeline (by bill number or id)
python3 $cli bill 324-1
python3 $cli bill 204-1 --json

Arguments

bills — -k/--keyword TEXT, --all (include non-current bills), --limit N (1–50, default 20), --page N, --json
bill <ref> — <ref> is a bill number (e.g. 324-1) or bill id (GUID); --json

Resources

CLI entrypoint: scripts/cli.py
Smoke test: scripts/smoke_test.py
API endpoints, response shapes, and scope: references/api-notes.md

Notes

Data are live snapshots from bills.parliament.nz.
The bill list shows the bill type (Government / Member's / Local / Private) but not the sponsoring MP; the sponsoring MP appears in bill detail.
--json on every command gives machine-readable output for agent chaining.
Use NZ English in any summaries built from the output (organisation, colour).