data.govt.nz Catalogue
SkillSearchSearch and inspect New Zealand Government open-data catalogue datasets, organisations, resources, and datastore records through the public CKAN API at catalogue.data.govt.nz. Use when the task involves finding NZ public datasets, agencies, downloadable resources, CSV/API links, metadata, or data.govt.nz catalogue records. Read-only and no API key required.
Available today. Use it from your connected AI after setup.
No other account needed.
Connect ahel once, and every AI you use reads what you have installed.
Then ask your AI: use the data.govt.nz Catalogue skill
What this skill tells your AI
The instructions your AI receives, as published by thecolab-ai/.skills in skills/data-govt-nz/SKILL.md and read by ahel’s review.
Goal
Query New Zealand's public open-data catalogue through a deterministic no-login CLI backed by the CKAN API.
Use this when
- A user asks what public NZ datasets exist for a topic
- A workflow needs dataset metadata, organisations, resource URLs, or formats
- A user has a data.govt.nz dataset ID/name and wants details
- A workflow needs a small preview from a CKAN datastore resource
Do not use this for
- Authenticated agency portals or non-public datasets
- Bulk mirroring the entire catalogue
- Treating catalogue metadata as authoritative source data without checking the linked source resource
CLI
python3 skills/data-govt-nz/scripts/cli.py search "water quality" --json
python3 skills/data-govt-nz/scripts/cli.py dataset waterpoint --json
python3 skills/data-govt-nz/scripts/cli.py orgs --limit 20
python3 skills/data-govt-nz/scripts/cli.py resource <resource-id> --limit 5 --json
Commands:
search QUERY [--limit N] [--json]- catalogue dataset searchdataset ID_OR_NAME [--json]- full dataset/package metadataorgs [--limit N] [--json]- list catalogue organisationsresource RESOURCE_ID [--limit N] [--json]- datastore preview when available
Resources
- CLI:
scripts/cli.py - Smoke test:
scripts/smoke_test.py - API notes:
references/api-notes.md
Signals
- GitHub stars
- 25
- Forks
- 6
- Last commit
- Sep 2026
Advanced
- Catalog kind
- skill
- Gateway key
data-govt-nz- Source
- github.com/thecolab-ai/.skills