policyengine-api

Reference guidance for using PolicyEngine's web APIs, which let applications send household data over HTTP and receive policy calculations. It explains the production API and the separate alpha version, along with their available routes.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it when building a web frontend, external integration, or other application that needs PolicyEngine results through HTTP.
Why use it?
It helps developers choose the appropriate API and understand which endpoint to use for metadata, calculations, stored households, or economic-impact requests.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/policyengine/policyengine-claude/policyengine-api
Any agent
npx skills add PolicyEngine/policyengine-claude --skill policyengine-api
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/PolicyEngine/policyengine-claude

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 168 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,400 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.
Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.
Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5 $0.00168 $0.01400
Opus 5 $0.00084 $0.00700
Sonnet 5 $0.00034 $0.00280
Haiku 4.5 $0.00017 $0.00140

Measured 2d ago against content hash 0d7fe51c3ecc, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

policyengine-api scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 2d ago.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

skills/policyengine-api/SKILL.md · 101 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 101 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

PolicyEngine APIs

Two APIs coexist: v1 (PolicyEngine/policyengine-api, Flask) is production today, and v2 (PolicyEngine/policyengine-api-v2, FastAPI microservices) is in alpha.

Pick the right client first. If you are computing policy impacts from Python, use the policyengine package (pe.us.calculate_household, Simulation, economic_impact_analysis) — see the policyengine skill. It pins a certified model + data bundle and is reproducible. Reach for REST only for apps and external integrations (JS frontends, third parties) that need HTTP.

v1 API — production (https://api.policyengine.org)

Flask (policyengine_api, Python 3.10/3.11). Country id (us, uk, ca, …) is the first path segment. Verified route surface (policyengine_api/routes/, api.py):

Route Method Purpose
/{country}/metadata GET variables, parameters, entities
/{country}/calculate POST stateless household calc (household JSON in, values out)
/{country}/calculate-full POST stateless full household calc
/{country}/household POST create a stored household
/{country}/household/{id} GET/PUT fetch/update a stored household
/{country}/household/{id}/policy/{policyId} GET household calc under a stored policy
/{country}/policy · /{country}/policy/{id} POST · GET store / fetch a reform policy
/{country}/economy/{policyId}/over/{baselinePolicyId} GET society-wide reform impact
/{country}/simulation, /{country}/report POST/GET/PATCH stored simulations / report output
/specification GET OpenAPI spec (also /liveness-check, /readiness-check)

The economy endpoint is asynchronous — poll it. The same GET is re-issued until the job finishes; the response is a status envelope, not the result on the first call:

{ "status": "computing" | "ok" | "error",
  "queue_position": 3, "average_time": 42.0,
  "result": { /* deciles, poverty, budget… once status == "ok" */ },
  "policyengine_bundle": { "model_version": "…", "data_version": "…" } }

Read the full file on GitHub · 101 lines

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

  1. 2d ago First seen · 101 lines · 168 tokens per session scan A 0d7fe51c3ecc

Subscribe to this mod's changes

policyengine-api is a skill published in the GitHub repository PolicyEngine/policyengine-claude (31 stars, last pushed 7d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 168 tokens to every session and 1,400 once invoked, about $0.0008 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-30.

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