Foiarelay
A requester-side workflow linking agency rules, request drafts, authorized submission, acknowledgments, deadline candidates, correspondence, productions, review and appeal drafts.
Journalists, lawyers and public-interest requesters can manage many public-records requests across agencies with different portals, timing rules and response habits. The supplied research confirms free requester infrastructure with a public interface, federal portals and an agency-side archive provider. It also identified a direct requester-side competitor whose site was waitlist-only and said access would open within weeks. That observation was dated months before this authoring pass, so current competitor status and any claimed launch window require fresh verification.
Foiarelay would preserve jurisdiction, agency, office, request text, scope, date range, fee instruction, delivery preference, rule source, rule effective date, submission authority, provider acknowledgment, agency receipt, correspondence, extension, tolling event, deadline candidate, production, withholding statement, closure and correction. A journalist or lawyer could review a generated request or appeal draft before sending it.
A calculated deadline is a research candidate, not legal advice. Agency silence does not automatically establish constructive denial, and a late response does not automatically make an appeal appropriate. Portals can acknowledge transmission without agency receipt; agencies can seek clarification, invoke extensions, refer records, close duplicates or respond in installments. The product must show the exact rule and event behind every date.
Requests and productions may contain personal, confidential, privileged, sealed or source-sensitive information. The pilot needs workspace isolation, redaction-aware previews, least privilege, export and deletion controls. It should never submit, appeal, publish or contact an agency without explicit requester authority. The buyer hypothesis is a journalist, newsroom, lawyer, legal clinic or public-interest researcher managing repeat requests; jurisdiction mix, request volume, budget, current tools, legal review and competitor differentiation need validation.
A journalist, newsroom, lawyer, legal clinic or public-interest researcher coordinating repeat public-records requests across agencies.
Journalists and lawyers are actionable, while exact organization size, budget and current alternative need validation.
Rules, templates and state tracking can scale through software across many requests once jurisdiction packs are maintained.
The input identifies a workflow gap but provides little evidence of a barrier that prevented existing requester tools from adding it.
The input identifies a concrete requester buyer, confirms public interfaces and adjacent tools, and specifies a source-linked state-machine workflow.
A direct competitor was reportedly near launch months ago, deadline law is jurisdiction-specific, the moat is not evidenced and automated appeals risk unauthorized legal conclusions.
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