Update check

Update Check — Keeping the Marketplace Current

This is the maintenance engine for the whole claude-for-legal-bangladesh marketplace. Bangladesh entered a period of heavy ordinance-based lawmaking in August 2024; statutes verified at build time (July 2026) can be amended, ratified, replaced, or lapse (Constitution Art. 93). This skill turns "the law may have changed" from a disclaimer into a procedure.

Inputs

• references/currency-watch.md — the watchlist (13 areas) + change log. This is the contract between this skill and the rest of the marketplace.
• --topic flag scopes to matching watchlist rows; default = all.
• Web access. If unavailable: stop, say so plainly, output the manual checklist (the source list below with what to look for), and do not mark anything verified.

Procedure

1. Read the watchlist. Note the "last full verification" date. Tell the user the staleness up front.

2. Per watchlist item, check primary sources in this order: a. bdlaws consolidated text — alphabetical index / chronological index — is the instrument still shown as in force? has an amending Act/Ordinance appeared in the chronological index since the last check date? b. Bangladesh Gazette / dpp.gov.bd for instruments too new for bdlaws. c. The responsible regulator's circular/SRO page per references/regulators.md (NBR for tax rows, BB/BFIU for finance/AML, BSEC, DIFE/MoLE, DoE, DPDT, BTRC). d. Reputable secondary alerts (law-firm updates, Daily Star Law, lawyersclubbangladesh) — pointers only, never the authority: any change found via a secondary must be confirmed against (a)–(c) or reported as "unconfirmed report".

3. Ordinance ratification sweep. For every 2024–2026 ordinance on the watchlist, check specifically: ratified by Parliament? replaced by an Act? amended? lapsed? (The PDP Ordinance 2025 → PDP Act 2026 sequence is the model of why this matters.) 3A. Full-index sweep (total-coverage mode). The corpus baseline is references/full-statute-corpus.csv (one row per instrument on bdlaws, volume walk dated in its build note; 1,668 rows as of 14 July 2026). Re-walk the index: a. Enumerate volume pages http://bdlaws.minlaw.gov.bd/volume-1.html … volume-58.html and probe the next volume number — a new volume appearing is itself a finding. Direct fetches garble Bangla (the server declares charset=UTF-16 while sending UTF-8): for volumes 27+ fetch via the reader proxy https://r.jina.ai/http://bdlaws.minlaw.gov.bd/volume-N.html?nocache=<random> (the throwaway param busts cached-empty responses; pace requests and back off on empty bodies). The alphabetical index (laws-of-bangladesh-alphabetical-index.html, 9+ pages, both language toggles) is the cross-check when reachable — its ?page parameter is unreliable through plain fetchers. b. Diff against the corpus CSV:

   • act_id on site but not in CSV → NEW INSTRUMENT → propose a bucket (use the classifier logic mirrored in the CSV's bucket column), append the row, and flag as coverage drift in the report.
   • row in CSV without [Repealed]/[রহিত] but now tagged on site → NEWLY REPEALED → move to references/repealed-statutes.md with its successor (read the repealing instrument off the act page), and grep the repo for any skill citing it.
   • title/number changes → record as corrections. c. Art. 93 ratification sweep: every 2024–2026 Ordinance row (volumes 55-57 and any later) — check whether a like-named ২০২৬ (or later) আইন now exists in the newest volume; the July 2026 pattern is ordinance → repealed → re-enacted as Act (vol. 55: 17/17 repealed; vol. 56: 69/80; vol. 57: 26/36 at build time). Unratified, un-repealed ordinances older than ~6 months get an explicit "lapse risk (Art. 93)" flag. d. Two rows carry [TITLE ILLEGIBLE AT SOURCE — VERIFY] (act-609, act-679) — retry them each run until resolved.

4. Classify each item: NO CHANGE / AMENDED / REPEALED-REPLACED / NEW INSTRUMENT in this area / RATE-DEADLINE CHANGE / UNCONFIRMED REPORT — with the source URL and, for changes, a one-paragraph impact note naming the affected plugins/skills (grep hint: search the repo for the old citation).

5. Report before touching anything:

   # Law Currency Report — [date]
   Baseline: last verified [date] · Scope: [topics]
   ## Changes found (N)
   [item → classification → source → impact → affected files]
   ## Unconfirmed reports (N)
   ## No change (N) — one line each
   ## Recommended edits
   [exact diffs to references/*.md and any SKILL.md citing changed law]
   

6. On approval only: apply the edits, update the watchlist cells, prepend a change-log row in currency-watch.md (date · change · impact), update the "last full verification" date only if scope was all, and remind the user to bump plugin versions + commit ("law-update: <summary> — verified against <source>").

Guardrails

• Never mark an item verified without having actually checked a primary source this run.
• Never delete history — repealed instruments stay in statute-index.md with REPEALED markers and their successor, because old matters are governed by old law.
• Rate/deadline items (tax especially) are never "no change" by inference — absence of news is not verification; find the current Finance instrument.
• If bdlaws is unreachable (it happens), degrade gracefully: report which items could not be verified rather than guessing.
• This skill edits reference files, not legal positions in users' practice profiles — when a change invalidates a configured playbook position (e.g., a new wage gazette), flag it and direct the user to the relevant plugin's customize.