How records move from filing to checkable claim
This page describes process, not performance. It does not publish accuracy rates, influence scores, or undated graph totals.
What we show you is what we ingested. We can prove when we ingested it. We can prove we have not altered it since. We cannot prove the filer told the truth.
Coverage dates by source
Coverage dates vary by source. The graph is built from federal filings on an ingestion schedule, not in real time, and some series are months behind their sources. We publish what we ingested and when.
Table measured 2026-08-05 (UTC) against the live graph and on-disk ingest artifacts. This is a fixed snapshot, not a live query. Loading this page does not remeasure the graph. Days-behind figures use that measurement date as the anchor.
Grain tells you what the date means: day is a calendar date on the record; cycle or fiscal year is coarser; write-time is when the node was written, not a federal filing date; none means no usable date field was present. Newest record dates exclude impossible future values (for example, transaction dates after the measurement day).
| Source | Population | Newest record | Grain | Newest ingested_at | Boundary |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| FEC contributions | 1,311,097 edges | Election cycle 2026 only. No day-level contribution date on these records. Cycle year is not a calendar-day freshness claim. | cycle (year) | 2026-08-03 | Coarse grain. A cycle of 2026 means some 2026-cycle bulk is present, not that coverage runs through any specific day in 2026. |
| FEC independent expenditures | 60 nodes | 2025-01-06 (expenditure date) | day | 2026-03-01 | 576 days behind measurement date on record date. Small population (n=60). |
| FARA agents | 7,022 nodes | 2026-02-12 (registration date) | day | Not present on these nodes | 174 days behind measurement date on registration date. |
| FARA foreign principals | 12,482 nodes | No date property on these nodes | none | Not present on these nodes | No usable record date or ingest stamp to publish as a coverage date. |
| SEC Form 4 (insider trades) | 7,158 edges | 2026-02-26 (transaction date) | day | 2026-02-27 | 160 days behind measurement date on record date. Form 4 is a continuous two-business-day filing regime. |
| SEC enforcement actions | 1,475 nodes | 2026-02-12 (node write time, field created) | write-time | 2026-02-12 | 174 days behind measurement date. Date is write-time, not a separate federal filing date field. |
| Lobbying disclosures | 325,653 edges | Max non-null year is 2024, on 5 edges only. 325,618 edges have year unset (null). | year (sparse) | Not present on these edges | Too coarse and too incomplete for a single useful coverage date. Do not read as coverage through 2024-12-31. |
| Lobbyist registry nodes | 47,793 nodes | 2026-02-14 (node write time, field created) | write-time | 2026-02-14 | 172 days behind measurement date. Write-time is not a disclosure filing date. |
| USAspending federal contracts | 32,362,226 nodes (as of measurement) | 2026-03-01 (award start date, dates after measurement day excluded) | day | Not present on the measured path | 157 days behind measurement date on start date. Population count is the series size at measurement, not a promotional total. |
| USAspending awards (limited subset) | 15,862 nodes | 2025-09-30 (award start date) | day | 2026-08-04 | Subset population only; not a replacement for the full contracts series above. Record start dates lag; ingest stamp is 2026-08-04. |
| Earmarks / community project funding | 16,764 nodes | Fiscal year 2026 (8,527 of 16,764 rows) | fiscal year | 2026-02-14 | Fiscal-year grain only. FY2026 means appropriations year labels are present, not day-level coverage through the measurement date. |
| STOCK Act PTR (House) | 21,267 active edges (House source tag) | 2026-07-20 (transaction date; three future-garbage dates excluded) | day | 2026-07-29 | 16 days behind measurement date on transaction date. |
| STOCK Act PTR (Senate) | 7,960 active edges (Senate source tag) | 2021-02-16 (transaction date) | day | Not present on these edges | Years behind measurement date (newest transaction 2021-02-16). |
| Congressional travel disclosures | 1,778 nodes | No start or end date on measured nodes | none on record | 2026-02-11 (ingest stamp field) | 175 days behind measurement date on ingest stamp. No usable trip date field in the measured population. |
| USAID contracts | 14,446 nodes | 2026-02-10 (contract start date; far-future end dates excluded) | day | Not present on these nodes | 176 days behind measurement date on start date. |
| Filed disclosure (single relationship present) | 1 edge | Period text only; no day-resolution field | period text | 2026-04-14 | 113 days behind measurement date on ingest stamp. Population is a single edge. |
Snapshot only. Figures above are the census values as measured on 2026-08-05 UTC. They are not rounded for comfort.
Pipeline stages
Bind means attaching source identifiers, ingest time, and integrity hashes. Verify means a reader can leave Sentinel for the federal primary source when an id exists. No stage is marketed as a prediction score.
Federal source families we draw from
Listing a family here does not assert complete coverage of that family on any date. Measured coverage dates for series we have in the graph are in the table above.
Periodic Transaction Reports filed by House members and covered staff
Electronic financial disclosures for senators
Campaign contribution and expenditure records from the Federal Election Commission
Legislative history, committee assignments, and related public records
Registered lobbyist activity and client relationships
Foreign Agent Registration Act disclosures
Public federal case filings where used as a cited source
Department of Justice press releases and enforcement announcements
Public nonprofit filings when cited as a source
Public award and assistance records when cited as a source
What we publish about verification
Answers that can print a federal transaction or disclosure id do so, so a reader can verify without trusting Sentinel.
Anchoring and hashing prove a stored artifact existed at a time and has not been altered since. They do not prove the underlying filing is accurate.
Some statistics are recomputed on independent paths sharing only the primary government source. When that happens, the write-up says so with the date of the run.
Undated node or edge counts, retired classifier AUCs, and influence score leaderboards are not paper of record.