Methodology
How we track it — and why you can trust the dates
Peptlas is built to run itself without ever shipping something a human didn't approve. Here's the whole machine, in the open.
The core principle
We diff the extracted facts, not the page. Visual or HTML diffs are false-positive machines — they cry wolf on a moved banner, you stop trusting the alerts, and the pipeline dies. Instead, every source gets a small extractor that pulls the specific facts we care about into normalized JSON. We compare that.
Where the facts come from
Three tiers, by how automatable the source is:
| Tier | Sources | Method | Cadence |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tier 1 — structured | Federal Register API, Regulations.gov API, FDA press RSS | Poll → parse JSON → diff. No scraping. | Daily |
| Tier 2 — semi-structured | FDA 503A / bulk-substances pages, committee materials | A thin per-source extractor pulls normalized facts → diff the facts, not the pixels. | Daily |
| Tier 3 — wide net | State boards, enforcement notices, international regulators | Weekly AI-agent sweep → digest → human triage. | Weekly |
The loop, per detected change
- A scheduled watcher pulls the current facts from a source and writes them to JSON.
- It diffs those facts against the last committed snapshot in the repo.
- On a real change, a small model drafts a plain-English summary and the status edit.
- That opens a pull request showing the raw diff beside the AI summary — and pings the operator.
- A human reads it on their phone and merges or rejects. Nothing ships without this step.
- On merge, the site rebuilds, the page updates, and the alert email fires to tagged subscribers.
- The snapshot is committed to git — a permanent, public audit trail.
Event mode
Near known dates — a committee vote, a comment deadline — a configuration flips the watchers from daily to hourly, so the answer here is current on the day it actually matters. The next such date is the FDA advisory committee meeting beginning July 23, 2026.
Anti-silent-failure
The worst outcome isn't a wrong alert — it's a broken source that quietly stops updating while the page looks fine. Two guards prevent that:
- Sanity gate: each source must return at least a minimum number of expected items and contain its known anchor entries. If it doesn't, we fire a "source broken" alert and publish nothing.
- Weekly heartbeat: a proof-of-life message to the operator every week, even when nothing changed — so silence is never mistaken for "all clear."
The five states
We never reduce a status to "legal / illegal." That binary is exactly what misleads people. Instead every entry carries one of five states, and each badge pairs a color with a word so it's readable without relying on color:
- Under review
- Actively before the FDA advisory committee; a decision is pending and the status can move.
- In limbo
- Nominated or removed from a restricted list but NOT approved — the headline implies a change, but the legal reality did not move.
- Restricted
- Prescription-only, banned, controlled, or under active FDA enforcement.
- Compounding-legal
- On the FDA 503A bulk-substances list; a licensed pharmacy may compound it. This is not the same as being an FDA-approved drug.
- Unscheduled
- No specific federal action; unaddressed at this time.
What we don't do
- We don't sell anything, take affiliate links, or run sponsored placements.
- We don't give dosing, protocol, medical, or legal advice.
- We don't make health claims about any compound listed here.
- We don't editorialize a status — we report what the official record says and link to it.
Found something out of date or wrong? That's the one thing we most want to hear. See theAbout page for how to reach the team.