GovWait

Source-backed government processing times with current values, history, comparisons, and provenance.

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Documentation

GovWait

GovWait records processing and wait times published by government agencies, with a source URL, an honest date and append-only history. It currently covers immigration, visa, permit, sponsorship, resettlement and passport routes from Canada, the United Kingdom, New Zealand and Norway.

GovWait is independent and is not affiliated with any government. It does not create case-specific estimates or provide legal or immigration advice.

Use the public dataset

Example:

curl https://govwait.com/api/v1/entities/ca-visitor-visa--in.json

Why the history matters

Government pages commonly replace an earlier processing-time value with the current one. GovWait stores a new observation when a published value changes and preserves the earlier record. It also keeps different measure types—such as backward-looking statistics, forward projections, service standards and percentiles—explicitly separate.

Current publication status, source dates and retrieval timestamps remain distinct. A successful build or search-engine submission is not presented as proof of indexing, traffic, demand or revenue.

Repository map

  • pipeline/ — polite source collectors, validation, export and static API generation
  • data/exports/ — versioned latest, history, projection and summary exports
  • site/ — static Astro website and discoverability audit
  • machine/openapi.yaml — public API contract
  • machine/mcp-server/ — local stdio MCP server for AI tools
  • docs/ — architecture, QA, discoverability and operating notes
  • handoff/ — product research, project state and roadmap

Local verification

The cached pipeline path makes no network request:

node pipeline/run.js
node pipeline/build-api.js
cp machine/openapi.yaml site/public/api/v1/openapi.yaml
cd site
npm ci
npm run build
npm run audit:seo

MCP server:

cd machine/mcp-server
npm ci
npm run build
npm run smoke

The MCP build deterministically bundles the three validated exports plus a SHA-256 provenance manifest into the package. npm run verify builds it, runs the protocol smoke suite, enforces the exact package allow-list, and exercises the packed artifact in a clean temporary runtime. The verified public release is govwait-mcp@0.1.0. Its package policy requires interactive 2FA and disallows token publishing. Its official MCP Registry listing is active for version 0.1.0.

Collection safeguards

  • Official primary sources only; values and provenance, not copied pages.
  • Honest bot identity with a contact address.
  • robots.txt is checked and a blocked or ambiguous source fails closed.
  • At least three seconds between requests to the same host, with caching and per-host caps.
  • No browser impersonation or WAF bypass.
  • Append-only history and blocking validation floors.
  • No personal application data.

See the methodology and MAINTENANCE_RUNBOOK.md before changing collection or history behavior.

Reuse and licensing

GovWait's original organization, field definitions and explanatory metadata are available under CC BY 4.0 where GovWait owns the rights. Underlying government information is not relicensed by GovWait; preserve the originating agency's attribution and follow its source-specific terms. Read the full data reuse and licensing notice.

GovWait-owned software code is licensed under the scoped Apache License 2.0 in LICENSE. That software licence expressly excludes government-source data, generated datasets, editorial/research/handoff content, government marks and other third-party material. The separate data notice and any file-specific terms continue to control those materials; see docs/MCP_RELEASE_RISK_ASSESSMENT.md.

Questions and corrections: contact@govwait.com.