City of Calgary Open Data

Access 988+ datasets from the City of Calgary open data portal. Search, fetch, and analyze city data on transit, environment, government, and more. The skill...

Security Scan

The skill's code, instructions, and declared environment access align with its stated purpose of querying Calgary's open data portal; it only fetches data from data.calgary.ca, optionally uses a SOCRATA app token, and caches the dataset catalog locally.

Purpose & Capability

Name/description (City of Calgary Open Data) match the included CLI and scripts which call the Socrata SODA API on data.calgary.ca. No unrelated services, binaries, or credentials are requested.

Instruction Scope

SKILL.md instructs the agent to run the included Python CLI and documents supported commands and an optional SOCRATA_APP_TOKEN. The runtime instructions do not request unrelated files, secrets, or system state beyond running the CLI.

Install Mechanism

This is an instruction-only skill with a single Python script; there is no install spec, no external downloads, and no archive extraction. The script uses only Python stdlib network calls.

Credentials

No required environment variables are declared. The only optional env var is SOCRATA_APP_TOKEN (documented in SKILL.md) which is appropriate for reducing API rate limits. The code reads that same env var and nothing else.

Persistence & Privilege

The skill does not request always:true and is user-invocable only. It does create a local cache file (.cache/catalog_cache.json) alongside the script to cache the dataset catalogue for one hour — this is reasonable for performance but worth noting if you expect no disk writes.

Assessment

This skill appears coherent and implements a simple CLI against the City of Calgary's open data portal. Things to consider before installing: (1) the skill will make outbound HTTPS requests only to data.calgary.ca; (2) it optionally uses SOCRATA_APP_TOKEN — provide that only if you trust the skill and want higher API rate limits; (3) it writes a local cache file (.cache/catalog_cache.json) next to the script; and (4) the package source/homepage is unknown — if provenance matters, review the script contents yourself (scripts/calgary_data.py) to confirm they match your expectations before use.

Access and analyze 988+ open datasets from the City of Calgary via the Socrata SODA API. Data covers transit, environment, government, demographics, health, business, and more.

Portal: https://data.calgary.ca Licence: Open Government Licence – City of Calgary

Quick Start

# Search for datasets
python3 scripts/calgary_data.py search "traffic"

# List datasets by category
python3 scripts/calgary_data.py list --category "Environment"

# View dataset info
python3 scripts/calgary_data.py info iric-4rrc

# Fetch data (default JSON, 10 rows)
python3 scripts/calgary_data.py fetch iric-4rrc --limit 5

# Fetch with filters
python3 scripts/calgary_data.py fetch iric-4rrc --where "period='2024-01'" --select "facility_name,solar_pv_production_kwh"

# Export to CSV
python3 scripts/calgary_data.py fetch iric-4rrc --limit 100 --csv > solar.csv

# List all categories
python3 scripts/calgary_data.py categories

# View popular datasets
python3 scripts/calgary_data.py popular

# GeoJSON export (if dataset has location columns)
python3 scripts/calgary_data.py geojson c9sh-grss --limit 50

Commands Reference

Command	Description
search <query>	Search datasets by keyword
list [--category <cat>]	List datasets, optionally filter by category
info <dataset-id>	Show dataset metadata (columns, types, row count)
fetch <dataset-id>	Download data rows (opts: --limit, --where, --select, --order, --csv, --json)
categories	List all categories with dataset counts
popular	Show most-viewed datasets
geojson <dataset-id>	Export geocoded data as GeoJSON

Query Parameters

The fetch command supports Socrata SODA query parameters:

• --limit N — Max rows to return (default: 10)
• --where "condition" — SQL-like filter (e.g., "population > 5000")
• --select "col1,col2" — Choose specific columns
• --order "col DESC" — Sort results
• --offset N — Skip N rows (pagination)
• --csv — Output as CSV instead of JSON

Dataset IDs

Dataset IDs are 9-character alphanumeric codes (e.g., iric-4rrc). Find them via search or list, or from the dataset URL: data.calgary.ca/dataset/{id}.

Data Sources

All data sourced from the City of Calgary Open Data Portal (data.calgary.ca) under the Open Government Licence.

Environment Variables

Variable	Required	Description
SOCRATA_APP_TOKEN	No	Optional Socrata app token to reduce rate limits. Works without it.
All data is sourced from the City of Calgary's Open Data Portal (data.calgary.ca) and is provided under the Open Government Licence – City of Calgary. See references/datasets.md for a curated list of popular datasets.