A Buy America compliance API for estimating and agents

A Buy America compliance API answers a question that a web form cannot: what happens when the thing that needs a determination is not a person, but an estimating package or an autonomous agent working through a bid? Instead of a human retyping a bill of materials into a calculator, the software sends the components and gets back a structured, cited verdict it can act on. That is what the Sourceory API is for, and this guide covers what it does and how to reach it.

What the endpoint returns

You post a bill of materials, a funding agency and each component's cost and origin, and the determine endpoint returns a per-line verdict, the domestic-content percentage where it applies, and the citation behind each rule. It is the same output the free calculator shows, because both call the same deterministic engine. There is no model guessing in the loop: identical inputs return identical results.

Every determination response carries a request id and the source citation behind each verdict, so the result can be logged and audited rather than taken on trust. (Sourceory API design)

Two ways to call it

There are two front doors, depending on what is calling.

The developer docs cover the REST endpoint, and the MCP guide documents the tools an agent can call, including the determination tool and the reference lookups. There is also an OpenAPI description so a client can generate itself from the spec.

Why a cited, deterministic answer matters for machines

When a person reads a verdict they can sense-check it. A program cannot, so the value of the result depends entirely on it being reproducible and traceable. Because the engine is deterministic and every rule carries its citation, a downstream system can store the response as the evidence for a decision, and an auditor can follow it back to the source. That is a different promise from a chatbot that paraphrases a rule and hopes.

Built for the GEO era too

AI answer engines increasingly resolve compliance questions directly, so Sourceory publishes a machine-readable surface for them: a stable facts endpoint and an llms.txt that describe the rules cleanly. An assistant that wants a real determination rather than a paraphrase can reach the MCP server; one that just needs the thresholds can read the facts. For the underlying rules, OMB's Made in America Office is the governing source.