Using this index from an agent

Aus Data Catalog is a curated index of Australian open-data catalogues and public APIs. It is not a dataset search: it tells you which sources exist, who runs them, how to authenticate, and whether they were live when we last checked. Everything below is static, cacheable and needs no key.

Machine surfaces

/llms.txt	This page as plain text, plus one line per source.
/catalog.json	Every catalogue and curated API, one array per kind, stable ids. ETag and Last-Modified honoured.
/apis.json · /catalogues.json	The two halves of catalog.json separately.
/apis/{id}.json · /catalogues/{id}.json	One record. Same shape as the array element.
/apis/{id}.md	The detail page as Markdown for context windows.
/changes.json	Records added, removed or changed status since the previous build. Free tier: weekly. Pro: hourly, with webhook.

What “agent-ready” means

A source is marked "agent_ready": true only when all five hold: it has a machine endpoint (not a landing page); it returned 2xx within the last 30 days; its auth is classified as open, open-read or key with a documented signup; its docs URL resolves; and a licence is stated. Each check is exposed separately in readiness so you can apply your own threshold.

Record shape

{
  "id": "dea-stac",
  "kind": "api",
  "name": "Digital Earth Australia STAC",
  "homepage": "https://knowledge.dea.ga.gov.au/",
  "publisher": {
    "id": "geoscience-australia",
    "name": "Geoscience Australia",
    "type": "federal-gov"
  },
  "jurisdiction": "AU",
  "protocol": "stac",
  "protocol_version": null,
  "connect": {
    "base": "https://explorer.dea.ga.gov.au/stac",
    "docs": "https://knowledge.dea.ga.gov.au/guides/setup/gis/stac.html",
    "auth": "open-read",
    "auth_note": "none; configure S3 requester-pays / unsigned as per DEA rio config",
    "licence": "CC-BY-4.0",
    "commercial_use": "ok",
    "example": "curl -s 'https://explorer.dea.ga.gov.au/stac/search?limit=1'"
  },
  "status": {
    "state": "stale",
    "checked": "2026-08-23",
    "http": null,
    "ms": 15229
  },
  "readiness": {
    "endpoint": true,
    "live": false,
    "auth": true,
    "docs": true,
    "licence": true
  },
  "agent_ready": false,
  "themes": [
    "satellite-imagery"
  ],
  "catalogue": null,
  "notes": "Official STAC root used in DEA docs. Landsat/Sentinel analysis-ready data + derived products. Also WMS/WCS, AWS, NCI, DEA Maps.",
  "url": "https://ausdatacatalog.com/apis/dea-stac"
}

Being polite

Fetch catalog.json once and cache it by ETag; don’t crawl detail pages to rebuild it. The sources we list are run by other organisations — read their terms, especially BOM and AURIN, before hammering them. Tell us when something is wrong: every record has a “Report a change” link, and the email on it is read by a person.