Vaquill

Fetch one Indian enactment by the `id` from a `search` result, returning `{id, title, text, url, metadata}`. Also accepts a source URL or a bare path. NOTE: the India corpus serves an enactment as publisher links rather than inline text, so `text` carries the title and `metadata` carries the PDF, HTML and plain-text URLs to read. Prefer `get_act_text` if you can call it.

The amendment history recorded against one enactment: substitutions, insertions and omissions, each with the amending Act and its effective date (e.g. 'Subs. by Act 22 of 2023, s. 44 (w.e.f. 13-11-2025)'). Use to check whether a provision still reads as enacted before relying on its text. An empty list means no amendment was recorded, NOT that the Act was never amended. Cost: 5 credits.

A single provision with its citation, its position in the act, the structural features its text carries, and what it points at. **Cost: 2 credits.** This does not return the provision's text. `GET /acts/{actId}/sections/{n}/body` does, and is priced separately because it reads the act document. `wordCount` is summed across every passage of the provision. `actsReferenced` is whitespace-normalised before deduplication, because the publisher's line breaks otherwise make one cited act look like two.

The publisher's own text for one provision. **Cost: 3 credits.** Refunded when we hold the provision and cannot reproduce its text, because you asked for text and did not get it. The text is sliced out of the act document by the character offsets stored with each passage. It is never assembled by concatenating search passages: those carry a retrieval header that we synthesized (`Act: ... | India | State | In Force`), and serving that as statute would put our words inside a quotation of the law. **This text is as the publisher published it.** We do not apply amendments to it. `GET /acts/{actId}/sections/{n}/history` lists every amendment we hold for the provision, each with an `appliedStatus` saying whether it is reflected here. It is not.

Everything we know about an act's standing, kept in three separate vocabularies that are deliberately never collapsed into one verdict. **Cost: 1 credit.** - `publisherStatus` is `act_status` exactly as India Code records it. Their word. - `servedStatus` is ours: whether this API answers for the act, or has retired it as withdrawn by the publisher or as a duplicate of one we kept. - `repealClaim` is the publisher's repeal record WITH its source, and with the caveat that we do not verify whether the repealing instrument was itself brought into force. That last distinction is not pedantry. India Code lists the Industrial Disputes Act, 1947 as repealed by Act 37 of 2020, the Industrial Relations Code, which has never been commenced. Serving that as flatly "repealed" would be wrong, so this endpoint does not. A retired act answers here with `servedStatus: retired` and the reason, rather than 404ing, because "we deliberately withdrew this" is a more useful answer than "no such thing".

The act's own shape: its chapters and parts where the publisher gives any, and the provisions under each. **Cost: 2 credits.** `hasHierarchy` is false for most acts and that is not an error: the publisher gives many acts no chapter or part divisions at all, and for those `nodes` is a flat list of sections. The free `GET /acts/coverage` publishes how many acts do carry a hierarchy, as `depth.actsWithStructure`. Section numbers are sorted numerically with their alphabetic suffixes kept attached, so `498A` follows `498` and `10` follows `2`.

Source links for one enactment: the plain-text, PDF and HTML renderings, plus how many sections it holds. Use when the user wants to read or cite the Act itself rather than a matched section. Cost: 3 credits.

Map a repealed Indian criminal code to the 2023 code that replaced it, section by section: IPC to BNS and CrPC to BNSS, in force from 1 July 2024. Pass either side ('ipc' or 'bns' both work). Use whenever a source, a pleading or the user cites an old section number, so you answer under the provision actually in force rather than the repealed one. 'iea'/'bsa' return 404 until that mapping lands. Cost: 1 credit.

Describe the corpus behind this API: how many acts and provisions it holds, how they break down by jurisdiction, regulator and status, and how DEEP that holding goes. **Cost: free.** Read the `depth` block before building on this API. It answers four independent questions, because "we hold the act" and "we hold what amended it" are different claims and only one of them is true for most of the corpus: - `actsWithText` is every act we serve; - `actsWithAmendmentEvents` is the much smaller set for which we hold parsed amendment records; - `actsClaimingAmendmentsWithoutEvents` is the known gap between them, published so that an empty amendment list is legible as a gap rather than as a claim that nothing ever changed. Two different kinds of count appear here and they are labelled. `passages` in the breakdown lists is faceted live and exact right now. The act-level numbers in `totals` and `depth` come from a full distinct-act scan, and `measuredOn` says when it ran. Do not divide one into the other.

Returns the credits this API key's account can spend right now. **Free.** Never charged, so it is safe to poll for low-balance alerting or to pre-flight a batch job. **Authentication:** any valid `vq_key_` key. No particular scope is required. Credits are account-wide and are **not** split by jurisdiction: the same balance funds the India legislation endpoints and the United States primary-law endpoints, from one ledger. This route and the United States `GET /api/v1/credits/balance` therefore report the same number, and spending on either surface moves both. Read `bySource` before assuming a balance is durable: `subscription` credits are use-it-or-lose-it at the period end, while `payg` credits you purchased persist and burn last. `nextExpiry` tells you what is about to be forfeited and when. ## Example ```bash curl https://api.vaquill.ai/api/v1/in/credits/balance \ -H "Authorization: Bearer $VAQUILL_API_KEY" ```

Credit-to-price conversion rate and per-endpoint costs for the India legislation surface (`/in/acts/*`). **No authentication required.** 1 credit = $0.01 USD, billed in USD. Pass `?region=US` to price the United States primary-law surface instead: it is the same credit balance and the same key.

The amendment record for a single provision: what changed, which Act changed it, which of that Act's sections did so, when it took effect where the publisher records a date, and the wording it replaced where the publisher quotes it. **Cost: 2 credits.** An empty history for a provision we hold IS the answer and is charged; the `coverage` block tells you whether it is empty because nothing changed or because we hold no parsed record. **Read `appliedStatus` on every event.** It is `not_applied` throughout, because the text this API serves is the publisher's published text and we do not edit it. That is a deliberate, stated position rather than an omission: you should never have to infer currency from silence. **`asOf` returns a TIMELINE, not text.** We hold amendment events and no versioned text, so there is no honest way to render this provision as it stood on a date. Passing `asOf` tells you how many recorded amendments had taken effect by then, how many had not, and how many carry no date at all. `isBounded` true means we hold no recorded event affecting that date, which is not the same as there having been none. Coverage is real and uneven: many acts carry a non-zero amendment count with no parseable footnote behind it, and about half the records we do hold carry no effective date. Read the `coverage` block on this response for the provision you asked about, and the free `GET /acts/coverage` for the corpus-wide split (`depth.actsWithAmendmentEvents` against `depth.actsClaimingAmendmentsWithoutEvents`).

Inbound citations: provisions elsewhere in the corpus that name this act. **Cost: 2 credits.** A confident "nothing cites this" is the answer and is charged. 🔴 **Matched on the act's TITLE, not on an identifier**, because that is what the corpus stores. A citing document that wrote the title differently is missed, and the publisher's own line breaks make that measurable. Read `matchBasis` and treat the result as a floor rather than a complete set. A foundational act can be cited by thousands of provisions, so the answer is PAGED with `page` + `pageSize`, the same as the rest of this API. `total` is the number of distinct citing PROVISIONS across all pages, not the size of the page you were served (`returned`) and not the number of matching passages: one provision is stored as many passages, so `total` is the smaller number. `totalIsExact` goes false only if the corpus scan behind that count hits its ceiling, which no act in the corpus currently reaches.

The terms an act defines, and the provision that defines them. **Cost: 2 credits.** Refunded when the act holds no extracted definitions, because the caller asked for definitions and did not get any. ⚠️ Coverage is thin and stated rather than implied: extracted defined terms exist for a minority of served acts. An empty answer here means we did not extract them, NOT that the act defines nothing. `definitionSections` is returned separately so you can read the defining provision directly even when no terms were extracted from it. `terms` is paged with `page` + `pageSize`, because a long definitions clause can run to thousands of entries. `definitionSections` is short and is NOT paged, so it repeats in full on every page.

Subordinate instruments the publisher records as made under this act: rules, regulations, notifications and orders. **Cost: 2 credits.** An act with no subordinate instruments on record is the answer and is charged. 🔴 Resolved by the parent's TITLE. The stored `parent_act_id` is India Code's own identifier and does not address this corpus, so a hard link would resolve to nothing. Title matching reaches a served parent for most instruments that name one, and `matchBasis` says so on every response. Paged with `page` + `pageSize`. `total` counts distinct INSTRUMENTS across all pages, not the rows on this page (`returned`) and not matching passages.

Outbound citations: the other enactments this provision names, and the sections of its own act it cross-refers to. **Cost: 2 credits.** An empty result for a provision we hold IS the answer and is charged; a provision we do not hold is refunded. Act references are resolved to an `actId` where the title names something we serve, and returned with `resolved: false` where it does not. That is the honest split: the publisher names acts we may not hold, and a null id is a coverage fact rather than a parse failure. This route takes no query parameters and is not paged: one provision's own outbound edges are a short list. `totalActs` and `totalSections` are the full counts, and `truncated` says whether the row cap cut either list.

Self-describing filter vocabulary: every category, state, department and status the acts corpus actually holds, with counts. Call this before filtering, so a query uses a value that exists instead of returning empty because the spelling was wrong.

Browse and filter enactments rather than searching their text: by jurisdiction (central or a state), issuing regulator, year and status. Use when the user wants to know WHAT exists in an area before asking what it says, or to confirm an Act's exact title before citing it. Cost: 1 credit.

Turn a citation a lawyer would type into the provision it names. **Cost: 2 credits.** A malformed citation is a 422 and is NOT charged. Every other outcome is, including `not_found`: a confident negative is the answer. Accepts what Indian practice actually writes, not what a style guide prescribes. Three published standards exist and they disagree about element order, while the most common real form, `u/s 302 IPC`, appears in none of them. So order does not matter, and all of these work: u/s 302 IPC Section 302 of the Indian Penal Code, 1860 s.302 IPC S. 376(2)(g), IPC clause (a) of sub-section (1) of section 302 IPC O. 39 R. 1 CPC Art. 21 of the Constitution Regulation 24 of the SEBI (LODR) Regulations, 2015 Maharashtra Act No. LXXVII of 2018 🔴 **Read `status` before reading `candidates`.** `ambiguous` is a real answer and it is charged, because narrowing a citation to two named enactments is the work. The commonest cause is the 2023 recodification: after 1 July 2024, `s. 302` names both IPC 302 (murder) and BNS 302 (uttering words to wound religious feelings), while BNS 103 is murder. Both codes are live law simultaneously for the lifetime of pending trials, so this endpoint will not choose for you. Send `asAtDate` and it will. `r/w` ("read with") is split into separate citations and each is resolved.

The same resolver over a list, for when you would otherwise loop. **Cost: 2 credits per DISTINCT citation.** Batching buys a round trip, never a discount. Duplicates are collapsed before pricing, so sending the same citation twice is charged once. Each citation is refunded individually when we fail on it; one citation failing never refunds or voids the others. Up to 50 distinct citations, and up to 500 before deduplication. Unknown fields on the body are refused rather than ignored.

Generic corpus search over Indian Central and State legislation, returning `{id, title, url}` records for citation. Present so this server works in clients that require the standard search/fetch pair. Prefer `search_acts` if you can call it: it filters by category, state, year and status. Pair with `fetch` to read a result.

Search Indian legislation down to the individual section: Central and State Acts plus the instruments of the principal regulators (SEBI, RBI, MCA, IRDAI, TRAI, DGFT). Use for any 'what does Indian law say' question. Supports boolean and phrase queries; filters by category, state, year and status. Returns sections with title, chapter and a sourceUrl pointing at the publisher's own document. The returned actId (e.g. 'IND_central_2065') feeds every acts tool. Cost: 2 credits.