POST /legal/history/batch

Returns version timelines for a list of legal references in a single call: up to 100 references, French or European Union, settled with one x402 payment for the whole batch. Each entry runs through the same local timeline engine as GET /legal/history, so the response is one ordered array of timelines - when each article changed and which versions exist.

This is the portfolio monitoring primitive: an agent re-checks a whole set of articles periodically to detect when any of them gained a new version - regulatory drift across a contract’s citations, amendment tracking over a compliance register, due-diligence sweeps - without issuing one paid call per reference. Like the single endpoint, the payload is deliberately compact: each verdict carries the timeline only, not the consolidated text and not a diff.

The lookup is served from local snapshots of the LEGI and EUR-Lex corpora: no account, no API key and no network fetch to Legifrance or EUR-Lex at request time.

• For the full consolidated text of a version, call GET /legal/article or GET /legal/eu-act with date=.
• For what changed between two dates across a list, call POST /legal/diff/batch.

x402 golden rule: the agent pays for the answer to its question. A well-formed batch is a successful answer -> 200, even when some references are repealed or not covered at all. Those cases are reported per item, by the version etat or by coverage.complete: false - never as a batch error. The 4xx range is reserved for requests the service cannot answer as a batch: missing or malformed body, empty list, batch over the cap or a malformed item.

Request

POST with a JSON body. Set Content-Type: application/json.

POST /legal/history/batch
Content-Type: application/json

{
  "refs": [
    { "code": "code-civil", "article": "1240" },
    { "celex": "32016R0679", "article": "17" }
  ]
}

There is no date field on a reference: history always returns the whole timeline. Each item is either a French reference or an EU reference:

For French references, provide code and article. For EU references, provide at least one of celex or eli; article is optional when targeting the act head. If an item contains a non-empty code, it is treated as French.

Volume pricing

This endpoint uses per-unit pricing: one x402 settlement for the request, with the payable amount derived from the number of references in refs - a base plus a per-reference unit, capped at 100 references. The value of the call grows with the size of the portfolio you monitor. The gateway counts the array length; it does not inspect legal content to compute price.

The live /catalog is the price authority and exposes the current base, unit, maximum units, accepted assets and networks. This page describes the pricing model, not the amounts: do not cache figures from here.

200 response - UnifiedResponse

{
  "data": {
    "count": 2,
    "results": [ { ... }, { ... } ]
  },
  "provenance": {
    "source": "legifrance-legi + eur-lex-cellar",
    "fetched_at": "2026-06-20T12:00:00Z",
    "freshness": { "kind": "snapshot", "as_of": "2026-06-01T00:00:00Z" }
  }
}

• count: number of submitted references, equal to results.length.
• results: one verdict per input item, in the same order as the input. Covered items have the same field shape as the data of GET /legal/history: echoed identifiers, label, versions[] and count.
• Unknown references remain item-level verdicts in the 200 response. They echo the resolvable identifiers, set coverage.complete to false with a reason, and omit fields that cannot be served such as label, versions and count.
• A single provenance block covers the whole batch. When the batch touches both legal corpora, provenance.source names both; freshness.kind remains snapshot and as_of is the store dump date that backed the answer.

See GET /legal/history for the full versions[] field table, the etat status semantics and the attribution rules.

Example - mixed French and EU batch

{
  "data": {
    "count": 2,
    "results": [
      {
        "code": "code-civil",
        "article": "1240",
        "label": "Code civil, art. 1240",
        "versions": [
          {
            "version_id": "v-1804",
            "etat": "abroge",
            "date_debut": "1804-03-21",
            "date_fin": "2016-10-01"
          },
          {
            "version_id": "v-courant",
            "etat": "vigueur",
            "date_debut": "2016-10-01"
          }
        ],
        "count": 2,
        "coverage": { "complete": true }
      },
      {
        "celex": "32016R0679",
        "article": "17",
        "label": "Regulation (EU) 2016/679 (GDPR), Article 17",
        "versions": [
          {
            "version_id": "32016R0679-art-17-v1",
            "etat": "vigueur",
            "date_debut": "2018-05-25"
          }
        ],
        "count": 1,
        "coverage": { "complete": true }
      }
    ]
  },
  "provenance": {
    "source": "legifrance-legi + eur-lex-cellar",
    "fetched_at": "2026-06-20T12:00:00Z",
    "freshness": { "kind": "snapshot", "as_of": "2026-06-01T00:00:00Z" }
  }
}

A version whose most recent etat is abroge is still part of a successful item verdict: the repeal lives in the timeline, never converted into an HTTP error.

Example - unknown reference is still a 200 item verdict

In a well-formed batch, an unknown article does not fail the whole request. It is returned as an incomplete verdict that echoes the identity and explains the gap.

{
  "data": {
    "count": 1,
    "results": [
      {
        "code": "code-civil",
        "article": "9999",
        "coverage": {
          "complete": false,
          "reason": "`code-civil-art-9999` is not covered by the store"
        }
      }
    ]
  },
  "provenance": {
    "source": "legifrance-legi",
    "fetched_at": "2026-06-20T12:00:00Z",
    "freshness": { "kind": "snapshot", "as_of": "2026-06-01T00:00:00Z" }
  }
}

Errors

Only requests the service cannot answer leave the 200 range. The cap is checked before any resolution, so an oversized batch is rejected without being billed an answer.

{ "error": "request body must be a JSON object with a `refs` array", "code": "INVALID_BODY" }

{ "error": "batch `refs` must contain at least one reference", "code": "EMPTY_BATCH" }

{ "error": "batch `refs` exceeds the maximum of 100 references", "code": "BATCH_TOO_LARGE" }

{ "error": "refs[1]: reference must provide `code`+`article` (FR) or `celex`/`eli` (EU)", "code": "INVALID_REF" }

Attribution

French legislation and regulation data is derived from the LEGI dataset made available by the Direction de l’information legale et administrative (DILA) on Legifrance, under the Licence Ouverte / Etalab open licence. EU law data is derived from EUR-Lex / Cellar data made available by the Publications Office of the European Union; reuse must preserve attribution to the European Union and EUR-Lex.

See also

• GET /legal/history - the single-reference version timeline, with the full field tables and status semantics.
• POST /legal/diff/batch - what changed between two dates across a list of references, in one settlement.
• For agents - discovery surfaces, the live /catalog and how settlement works.