Why primary source matters for agents
An agent that hallucinates a drug side effect isn't failing at intelligence. It's failing at citation. The fix isn't a better model. It's a better source.
Language models fill gaps with confident estimates. When asked about adverse events for metformin, a model trained on 2023 data will give you an answer — but the FDA FAERS database has 15 million filed reports, updated quarterly, and the model hasn't read them. It read text about them. Point the model at the source before it answers.
Web scraping is fragile. A news article about a food recall went live yesterday, was updated twice, and the URL changed. The FDA enforcement database entry is stable, structured, and directly queryable. The difference between citing a news story and citing the source is the difference between approximate and verifiable.
Open Primitive doesn't add interpretation. Every number on the page traces to a specific government filing — a source agency, a database ID, a date. When your agent cites it, it's citing a record. Not a summary of a record.
How to connect an agent
Each primitive is a live query interface with a stable URL structure. Fetch it, pass the result to your model as context, or use the URL as a citation target in a retrieval-augmented generation pipeline. No API key. No rate-limit tiers. Public federal data, public access.
Fetch the result for a query and pass the structured output to your model before it answers. The model now has primary-source data, not training-data inference.
"Before answering about this airline's safety record, fetch the current DOT performance data from Open Primitive."
Include the primitive URL as a grounding citation in your agent's output. Instead of asserting a fact, your agent outputs: "According to the DOT record at [source], United's on-time rate was 79.2%." Verifiable. Not inferred.
Use the primitives to verify or refute a claim before including it in generated output. Ask your agent to check a health claim against PubMed study volume before asserting it as established science.
The seven primitives as data sources
Each primitive is a direct interface to a specific federal database. Below: the source, the domain, and a sample URL structure for agent use.
| Primitive | Federal source | Domain | Example query URL |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flying | DOT · BTS Form 41 | On-time rate, delays, cancellations by carrier | flights.openprimitive.com |
| Cars | NHTSA 5-Star + Complaints | Crash scores, open recalls, owner complaints by vehicle | cars.openprimitive.com |
| Health | PubMed / MEDLINE · NLM | Study volume for any health claim, 35M+ citations | health.openprimitive.com |
| Hospitals | CMS Care Compare | Mortality rate, readmission rate, patient outcomes | hospitals.openprimitive.com |
| Water | EPA SDWIS | Contaminant violations, health-based infractions by ZIP | water.openprimitive.com |
| Drugs | FDA FAERS | Adverse event reports, serious events, deaths by drug | drugs.openprimitive.com |
| Food | FDA Enforcement Reports | Active recalls by severity classification | recalls.openprimitive.com |