US Code Tracker

Live site — Browse the entire U.S. Code with version history, change tracking, and case law references.

Automated pipeline that fetches U.S. Code XML releases from the Office of the Law Revision Counsel (OLRC), transforms them into Markdown, and tracks changes over time using Git. Includes a full static site for browsing, searching, and comparing legislative changes across 230 historical release points spanning 2013-2026.

Independence disclaimer: This is an independent community project. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or associated with any government agency.

Features

• 230 historical release points across 7 Congresses (113th-119th, 2013-2026)
• Full-text chapter pages — read entire chapters inline without click-through
• Version comparison — congress-grouped timeline with side-by-side diffs
• Change tracking — per-section indicators showing which Public Law changed each section
• Case law integration — CourtListener case citations with court badges
• Cross-reference linking — "section N of this title" auto-linked to target section
• Full-text search — Pagefind across 53K+ sections
• Keyboard navigation — j/k to navigate sections, / to search
• RSS feed — subscribe to recent changes at /feed.xml
• Schema.org Legislation structured data for search engines
• USWDS-inspired design — Public Sans font, civic color palette, WCAG AA accessible

Packages

Package	Description
@civic-source/types	Shared TypeScript types, Zod 4 schemas, and interfaces
@civic-source/fetcher	OLRC release point fetcher with retry and idempotency
@civic-source/transformer	USLM XML to Markdown converter with status detection
@civic-source/annotator	CourtListener precedent annotation generator
@civic-source/pipeline	Orchestration pipeline for bulk conversion
@civic-source/observability	Pipeline metrics collector and reporting
@civic-source/shared	Shared utilities (logger, retry, token bucket)
@civic-source/web	Astro 6 static site with Svelte components

Development

pnpm install
pnpm build
pnpm test          # 267 tests across 8 packages
pnpm lint
pnpm typecheck

Requires Node.js 22.x LTS and pnpm 9.x.

Architecture

OLRC XML → Fetcher → Transformer → Markdown → us-code repo → Astro site
                ↓                       ↓              ↓
           Hash check              Git commit    Pre-computed diffs
          (idempotent)         (weekly cron)    (incremental gen)

Repos

Repo	Purpose
us-code-tracker	Pipeline code + Astro site (this repo)
us-code	Git-versioned statute data (230 tagged release points)
cap-citation-pipeline	Case law citation extraction from CourtListener

Historical Import

# Import historical release points
npx tsx scripts/import-history.ts --repo /path/to/us-code --resume

# Generate pre-computed diffs (incremental)
npx tsx scripts/generate-diffs.ts --repo /path/to/us-code --output apps/web/public/diffs/

Key Dependencies

Dependency	Version	Purpose
Astro	6.x	Static site generator
Svelte	5.x	Interactive components
Zod	4.x	Schema validation
Tailwind CSS	4.x	Styling
Pagefind	1.x	Full-text search
Public Sans	—	USWDS civic font

Contributing

See CONTRIBUTING.md for guidelines.

License

Code is licensed under Apache 2.0. The us-code data repository uses CC0 1.0 (public domain).