About

A reading room, not a feed

Governments publish an enormous amount: audits, technical reports, declassified files, datasets. Most of it is never read. The Quiet Archive is a small, hand-curated index of the substantive material, with every link checked.

Curation rules

Primary over secondary. We link the document itself, not a press release or news story about it. If a raw report exists, the summary is rejected.
Official endpoints first. Each entry points to the issuing body's own reading room or repository. Mirrors are used only when the original is dead or unusable, and are flagged.
Free and public. No paywalls and no logins. Some reading rooms (CIA, GAO, SEC) block automated tools but are open to people.
Low visibility, high substance. We prefer records that are rarely read but change how you understand an event.
Two dates, always. The date a document was written and the date the public could read it are recorded separately. The gap is often the story.
Nothing invented. Where a date or URL couldn't be confirmed, the entry says so with a visible flag.

Source families

Declassified archives: 46 records
Oversight & audit: 34 records
Judicial & financial: 13 records
Bulk data portals: 17 records
FOIA aggregators: 40 records

How links are verified

A script (scripts/verify-links.mjs) requests every source URL with a browser-like client, follows redirects, and records the result. It runs weekly via GitHub Actions and on demand with npm run verify. It also asks the Wayback Machine for the latest snapshot of each URL, which becomes the entry's fallback link. Where none exists, the fallback opens the Wayback calendar for that address.

The last full run was 15 October 2026. 9 entries were also confirmed by hand because their hosts block scripts.

Status	Meaning	Records
Live	Responded normally to our last automated check.	134
Live (redirected)	Works, but redirects to a new address.	0
Bot-walled	The host refuses automated checkers, so the link cannot be machine-verified.	13
Unreachable	Timed out or errored during the last check; it may be geo-restricted.	3
Dead	Failed the last check. Use the archive copy.	0

Flags

Flags appear on document pages wherever certainty is less than complete.

Flag	Meaning	Records
`host-blocks-automated-checks`	The host blocks automated link checks; the link was checked by hand or via the official index.	13
`release-date-approx`	Release date is approximate (best available public evidence).	37
`document-date-approx`	Document date is approximate or spans a range; the earliest year is shown.	10
`release-date-unknown`	No reliable public release date could be found.	3
`official-url-dead`	The original official URL no longer works.	3
`mirror-used`	Links to a faithful mirror because the official copy is gone or unusable.	6
`archive-used`	Links to an Internet Archive snapshot because the official site is offline.	1
`checker-timeout`	The host timed out during automated checks (often geo-restricted).	2
`host-tls-misconfigured`	The server's security certificate is misconfigured; strict clients may refuse it.	1

Data schema

The catalogue is plain JSON in src/data/, validated before every build. The full catalogue is also published at /search-index.json, and new entries appear in the RSS feed. Each document page includes Schema.org metadata.

{
  "id": "QA-0042",                    // stable catalogue number
  "slug": "gao-roswell-records",      // URL: /doc/<slug>/
  "title": "…",
  "issuer": "gao",                    // key into agencies.json
  "host": "GAO",                      // who serves the file
  "documentType": "report",           // enum, see README
  "documentDate": "1995-07",          // when written: YYYY | YYYY-MM | YYYY-MM-DD
  "releaseDate": "1995-07-28",        // when public; null if unknown
  "declassification": "unclassified", // declassified | unclassified | mixed | controlled-unclassified
  "sourceFamily": "oversight",
  "sourceUrl": "https://…",           // official endpoint
  "altLinks": [{ "label": "…", "url": "…" }],
  "summary": "Two or three plain-English sentences on why it matters.",
  "tags": ["…"],
  "scope": { "label": "Roswell, New Mexico", "lat": 33.39, "lng": -104.52 } | null,
  "flags": ["host-blocks-automated-checks"],
  "verify": { "manual": "2026-10-15", "method": "…", "note": "…" },
  "addedAt": "2026-10-15"
}

Privacy

No cookies, analytics, trackers, accounts or third-party requests. The only thing stored in your browser is your light or dark preference (in localStorage), and it never leaves your device. Fonts are self-hosted.

Corrections

If a link has died, a date is wrong, or a document belongs here, please open an issue or pull request on the project repository. Submissions should link to the primary source.