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Core concepts

Regulatory Snapshot is one engine with two front doors: the web app at regsn.app, where compliance and regulatory-affairs teams configure scans and read the results, and the /v1 API, where the same engine is driven programmatically. Both speak the same vocabulary, and that vocabulary rests on a small number of objects. This page installs the whole model in one sitting; the rest of the section takes each object in turn.

The model in one paragraph

You describe a slice of the regulatory world — which jurisdictions, which topic areas, how far ahead — and run a scan over it. A completed scan is saved as a snapshot: a fixed, dated record of what the analysis found, made up of items (individual regulatory developments), trends (cross-cutting patterns), and an executive summary and narrative. Everything else in the product is downstream of a snapshot: the dashboard tabs are readings of it, exports are derivatives of it, and the Change Monitor is a comparison between it and an earlier snapshot of the same scope. Re-run the same configuration — by hand or on a schedule — and the snapshots line up into a series, which is what makes “what’s changed since last time?” answerable at all.

The object model

Five relationships carry all the weight:

  1. A scan produces exactly one snapshot. The scan is the verb, the snapshot is the noun. Scans are asynchronous — you can queue several, watch their progress, cancel one mid-flight — but the only lasting output of a successful scan is its snapshot. See Scans and snapshots.
  2. A snapshot holds items. Items are the atoms: one regulatory development each, with a jurisdiction, regulator, area, status, likelihood, impact, dates, a summary, and its sourcing. See Items, sources and citations.
  3. The dashboard tabs are readings, not separate data. Overview (the pressure heatmap and executive panels), Analyst Briefing, Trends and Timeline all render the same snapshot from different angles — a severity grid, a prose briefing, a pattern digest, a calendar. Filtering by likelihood, impact or status narrows one shared set of items, so the readings computed from items — the heatmap, the Timeline — move together; the Briefing narrative and the Trends ledger are editorial output written at scan time and stay as written. The product walkthrough starts at the Overview tab.
  4. Exports derive from a snapshot. Every artefact you generate in Studio — PDF, tearsheet, slide deck, infographic, podcast, video — is rendered from one named snapshot, so an artefact can always be traced back to the exact scan it summarises. The API surface is POST /v1/exports.
  5. Change is computed between snapshots. The Change Monitor on the Overview tab compares the loaded snapshot with your previous scan of the same scope and reports confirmed regulator events, coverage movements and unverified assertions — each kept honestly apart. See What “changed” means.

Why a snapshot, and not a live view

A reasonable question: why fix results in time at all, rather than keep one continuously updated dashboard? Because the product’s users need to be able to say “this is what the landscape looked like when we briefed the board on 09-03-2026” — and have that statement stay true. A snapshot is a point-in-time record: it never updates itself, its title carries its scope, and its scan date is stamped on the dashboard whenever it is loaded. Freshness comes from re-running the scan, not from mutating the record — and that discipline is exactly what makes the Change Monitor trustworthy, since a comparison between two fixed records cannot be contaminated by either of them shifting underneath it.

The one deliberate exception proves the rule: the Feed is a live wire of recent regulator announcements across all jurisdictions, independent of any scan. It answers “what happened this week?” while snapshots answer “what does my landscape look like, and what changed in it?”.

A worked example

Suppose you run a scan on 02-06-2026 scoped to EU and UK, areas Capital Markets and ESG / Sustainable Finance, horizon 12 months:

  • The scan completes and saves a snapshot titled after its scope. One of its items is an EU consultation on fund-liquidity rules — status Consultation, likelihood Likely, impact High, an expected date inside your window, and a summary carrying numbered citation markers back to the scan’s own sources.
  • That item appears simultaneously in the Overview cell Capital Markets × EU, on the Timeline at its expected date, and among the Briefing’s priorities — three readings of one record.
  • You generate a slide deck from the snapshot in Studio for Thursday’s risk committee. The deck names the snapshot it came from.
  • Three weeks later a scheduled re-run of the same configuration adds a second snapshot to the series. Its Change Monitor headlines a confirmed Consultation closed event for that instrument, with the regulator’s own dated document linked — and that, rather than a re-read of the whole dashboard, is your Monday briefing.

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Scans and snapshots