SafeTravel NZ

Goal

Look up current, official New Zealand Government travel advice from MFAT's SafeTravel website. The skill is read-only: it searches the official destination sitemap and retrieves a destination's advice level, regional cautions, related alerts/news, and source timestamps.

Use this when

• A user asks for the NZ Government's travel advice for a country or destination.
• A workflow needs the SafeTravel advice level (1–4), regional exceptions, or the destination page's update date.
• A user wants related SafeTravel news/alerts associated with a destination page.
• An agent needs a source URL and retrieval timestamp for a travel-safety briefing.

Do not use this for

• Travel registration, login, profile/account access, emergency assistance, or storing contact details.
• Booking, visas, insurance eligibility, or immigration advice.
• Replacing a traveller's judgement, local emergency instructions, or direct official advice.
• Circumventing blocks, CAPTCHA, or access controls.

Preferred workflow

1. Run search for the destination name and use its returned slug if there is any ambiguity.
2. Run advice <slug> --json to retrieve the current official page.
3. Report the advice_level, any regional_cautions, related_alerts_news, and the source.page_updated / source.retrieved_at timestamps.
4. Always say that travel advice can change and link the user to the returned official source page.

CLI

Run from the repository root:

python3 skills/safetravel-nz/scripts/cli.py <command> [flags]

Commands

• search QUERY [--limit N] [--json] — search destination pages listed in SafeTravel's official sitemap.
• advice DESTINATION [--json] — fetch a destination's current advice. DESTINATION can be a name, slug, or canonical SafeTravel destination URL.

Examples:

python3 skills/safetravel-nz/scripts/cli.py search australia --json
python3 skills/safetravel-nz/scripts/cli.py advice australia
python3 skills/safetravel-nz/scripts/cli.py advice "https://www.safetravel.govt.nz/destinations/australia" --json

JSON result

--json emits the repository result envelope (schema_version: "1") with:

• source.url and source.retrieved_at for each live result.
• source.page_updated when SafeTravel displays an update date on a destination page.
• data.advice_level with title, textual and numeric level, update/currentness fields, and advice body.
• data.regional_cautions for any regional advice entries distinct from the country-wide level.
• data.related_alerts_news for destination-page related news cards, with official links and displayed dates where present.
• A warning that advice can change.

Resources

• CLI entrypoint: scripts/cli.py
• Deterministic parser test: tests/test_parser.py
• Bounded outage-aware smoke test: scripts/smoke_test.py
• Source surfaces, parser assumptions, and caveats: references/source-notes.md

Notes and safety

• The CLI makes only GET requests to www.safetravel.govt.nz, with a 10-second timeout per request. It has no credentials, browser automation, cache, registration, or mutation flow.
• The official sitemap is used as the destination allowlist before a destination page is retrieved.
• SafeTravel advice may change without notice. For safety-critical or imminent travel decisions, open the returned official URL directly and follow local authority or emergency instructions.