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ons API for agents (unofficial) — JSON over curl | clify

Office for National Statistics (ons.gov.uk), the UK's official statistics site. This CLI searches publications and data, reads time series values and metadata, bulletins, datasets and the release calendar, and downloads CSV data. It is read-only and needs no login.

Host: ons.gov.uk. Call these verified read commands with plain curl; no install, key, or account. Use the public JSON API with plain curl. No install, key, account, or browser is needed. Example: curl 'https://clify-dev.netlify.app/sites.json'. Start with /search?q=weather, then call /abc/COMMAND. Responses are one JSON object. The hosted MCP and GitHub repo are also available.

Commands

Site-wide keyword search over ONS publications, bulletins, time series and datasets, with content-type and census topic filters, sorting and paging Params: q*, filter, topics, sort, page

curl 'https://clify-dev.netlify.app/ons/search?q=inflation&filter=time_series'

search-timeseries

Search the time series explorer (58k+ series) by keyword and/or topic path; each result shows the series ID (CDID) and dataset ID Params: q, topic, sort, page

curl 'https://clify-dev.netlify.app/ons/search-timeseries?q=unemployment'

get-timeseries

Get time series metadata and its latest value (title, CDID, unit, latest period and value, release dates, source dataset) from the ONS content API Params: topic*, series_id*, dataset*

curl 'https://clify-dev.netlify.app/ons/get-timeseries'

get-timeseries-data

Get the monthly observations of a time series as a list of {date, value} (for quarterly or annual-only series use download-timeseries-csv) Params: topic*, series_id*, dataset*

curl 'https://clify-dev.netlify.app/ons/get-timeseries-data'

download-timeseries-csv

Download a time series as CSV with all frequencies (annual, quarterly, monthly) plus metadata rows; also works for a previous version Params: uri*

curl 'https://clify-dev.netlify.app/ons/download-timeseries-csv?uri=%2Feconomy%2Finflationandpriceindices%2Ftimeseries%2Fl55o%2Fmm23'

list-timeseries-versions

List previous (superseded) versions of a time series with update date, label/reason and version uri (pass uri to download-timeseries-csv) Params: topic*, series_id*, dataset*

curl 'https://clify-dev.netlify.app/ons/list-timeseries-versions'

get-bulletin

Get a statistical bulletin edition: title, summary, release and next-release dates, and its sections Params: topic*, series*, edition*

curl 'https://clify-dev.netlify.app/ons/get-bulletin'

list-bulletin-releases

List all past editions of a bulletin series, newest first Params: topic*, series*, page

curl 'https://clify-dev.netlify.app/ons/list-bulletin-releases'

List the datasets and data related to a bulletin edition Params: topic*, series*, edition*

curl 'https://clify-dev.netlify.app/ons/list-bulletin-related-data'

get-dataset

Get a dataset page: title, description, release info, any correction notice and the current edition's file download link Params: topic*, dataset*

curl 'https://clify-dev.netlify.app/ons/get-dataset'

list-topic-data

List all published data (time series, datasets, user-requested data) for a topic, with keyword filter, sorting and paging Params: topic*, filter, q, sort, page

curl 'https://clify-dev.netlify.app/ons/list-topic-data?filter=datasets&sort=release_date'

list-topic-publications

List all publications (bulletins, articles and so on) for a topic, with keyword filter, sorting and paging Params: topic*, q, sort, page

curl 'https://clify-dev.netlify.app/ons/list-topic-publications'

list-topic-headline-series

List a topic page's headline (spotlight) time series uris, e.g. CPIH/CPI/RPI for inflation Params: topic*

curl 'https://clify-dev.netlify.app/ons/list-topic-headline-series'

list-releases

List the release calendar (published, upcoming or cancelled releases) with keyword search, sorting and paging, read from the RSS feed Params: keywords, release_type, sort, api_limit, page

curl 'https://clify-dev.netlify.app/ons/list-releases?keywords=gdp&release_type=type-upcoming&sort=date-oldest'

get-release

Get a release calendar entry: title, release date and time, publication status and summary Params: slug*

curl 'https://clify-dev.netlify.app/ons/get-release'