CAB CABNET NZ

Overview

Use this read-only CLI to inspect public Citizens Advice Bureau NZ material related to CABNET client-enquiry evidence. CAB has not exposed an unauthenticated structured export of national CABNET enquiry counts; the skill makes that blocked state explicit instead of inventing data.

The CLI uses only Python 3 standard library modules and keyless public endpoints on cab.org.nz and catalogue.data.govt.nz.

Commands

Run commands from this skill directory with python3 scripts/cli.py. Every command accepts --json.

• sources --query "welfare report" --json discovers public CAB pages/reports, checks data.govt.nz, and confirms unauthenticated CABNET reporting endpoints are forbidden.
• categories --query tenancy --json returns the public CAB website advice taxonomy from assets/data/categories.json. This is not a confirmed CABNET enquiry taxonomy or enquiry volume table.
• enquiries --year 2025 [--category benefits] --json returns an explicit structured_export_unavailable blocked state because no public machine-readable CABNET enquiry-count export is reachable.
• trends --category "food assistance" --json returns report-backed trend caveats where a public CAB spotlight report discusses that category, but does not fabricate chart values that are only visible in PDFs/images.

Examples

python3 scripts/cli.py sources --query "welfare report" --json
python3 scripts/cli.py categories --query tenancy --json
python3 scripts/cli.py enquiries --year 2025 --category benefits --json
python3 scripts/cli.py trends --category "budgeting and debt" --json

Notes

• Use sources first when a user asks whether CABNET data is public.
• Treat categories counts as article counts in CAB's public rights/advice website, not client enquiry counts.
• If CAB later publishes CSV/XLSX/JSON enquiry exports, update scripts/cli.py to parse that export directly and revise references/api-notes.md.
• Source and format details are in references/api-notes.md.
• Run python3 scripts/smoke_test.py for the live smoke test.