The Gov Delivery Library · what it holds, as of 15 October 2026

843,253 words of rules for delivering things in UK government

If you are running a project, programme or service in central government, this is the guidance someone may hold you to. It is published by 16 different bodies, across 297 web pages and PDFs, with no single owner and no single place it all lives. Read end to end at an average pace, it would take about 56 hours: a week and a half of doing nothing else.

The Gov Delivery Library lets your AI assistant search all of it for you. Ask a question in plain English and the answer quotes the guidance, links to the exact heading, gives the page date, and warns you where a newer document has overtaken an older one.

Add it to your assistant

The library works as a connector (an MCP server) that your assistant can call while it answers you. Every client needs the same address:

https://publicdigital-delivery-compass.netlify.app/mcp?key=gdl-trial-2026

Check your department's rules before you connect any tool to a work account.

Claude (web, desktop and mobile)

1. In Claude on the web or desktop, open Settings, then Connectors.
2. Choose Add custom connector.
3. Name it Gov Delivery Library and paste the address.
4. If Claude asks how to sign in, choose no sign-in. The key in the address is all it needs.
5. Select Add.

If you see "Couldn't register with Gov Delivery Library's sign-in service", delete the connector and add it again from scratch. Trying to reconnect the failed one keeps failing.

Works on every plan. The free plan allows one custom connector. On Team and Enterprise plans an owner has to add it for the organisation first. Once added on the web, it is also available in the mobile app.

ChatGPT

1. Open Settings, then Apps & Connectors, then Advanced settings, and turn on Developer mode.
2. Back in Apps & Connectors, choose Create.
3. Name it Gov Delivery Library, paste the address, set authentication to No authentication and confirm that you trust it.

Needs a paid plan. On Business, Enterprise and Edu workspaces an admin may need to allow developer mode first. OpenAI moves these menus often, so the names may differ slightly.

Microsoft 365 Copilot

You cannot add a connector to Microsoft 365 Copilot yourself. Your IT team can add it as a custom MCP connector in Copilot Studio or the Microsoft 365 admin centre, using the address above. Many departments will not do this for a trial, and that is a reasonable answer.

Claude Code

Run this in a terminal:

claude mcp add --transport http gov-delivery-library "https://publicdigital-delivery-compass.netlify.app/mcp?key=gdl-trial-2026"

VS Code with GitHub Copilot

Add this to .vscode/mcp.json in your project, then use Copilot in agent mode:

{
  "servers": {
    "gov-delivery-library": {
      "type": "http",
      "url": "https://publicdigital-delivery-compass.netlify.app/mcp?key=gdl-trial-2026"
    }
  }
}

Gemini CLI

Add this to ~/.gemini/settings.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "gov-delivery-library": {
      "httpUrl": "https://publicdigital-delivery-compass.netlify.app/mcp?key=gdl-trial-2026"
    }
  }
}

The Gemini app and NotebookLM do not take connectors like this.

Then ask it something

Name the library in your question the first time, so your assistant knows to use it. For example:

• "Using the Gov Delivery Library, when do I need a business case, and what goes in one?"
• "Using the Gov Delivery Library, do I still need central approval for digital spend?"
• "Using the Gov Delivery Library, what does the Green Book say about optimism bias?"

01 · The shelf

Three books hold almost half of it.

Each block below is one document or collection, sized by how many words it contains and coloured by the area of delivery it governs. Hover or tap a block for detail. The Teal Book, the Magenta Book and the Service Manual alone make up 45% of the words.

Not shown: 8 registered sources the library links to but cannot reproduce. See section 06.

02 · Who writes it

Sixteen publishers, none of them in charge of the whole.

HM Treasury owns the money, NISTA owns assurance, GDS owns the digital spine, and Government Project Delivery owns the profession's standard. Then a long tail of departments, functions and task forces publish the pieces that sit in between.

03 · How much of it is a rule

10,067 statements telling you what to do. 958 of them say you must.

Every sentence that tells a reader what they must, should, may or could do has been pulled out and graded by its wording. That is how the library can show you the mandatory lines word for word rather than in summary. The grading is done by machine from the verb used, so treat these counts as a good estimate, not a legal audit.

Where the "musts" are

04 · How it fits together

One document leads to another. Sometimes they disagree.

Government publishes documents, not the links between them. These 58 links were mapped by hand: which document expands on which, which one you need before another applies, which assurance gates sit on which decisions, and where a newer document has quietly overtaken an older one.

expands on requires or feeds into is a gate on / assured by overtakes or conflicts with

Live example

Digital spend controls changed on 1 April 2026. Four older documents still describe the old process. The Service Manual says the controls "were replaced on 1 April 2026", while the Technology Code of Practice, the DDaT Playbook, the agile business case guidance and Gate Review 4 still point readers at the old central approval route.

05 · How current it is

It keeps moving. 26 of these documents changed this year.

Each dot is a document, placed at the date its publisher last updated it and sized by its length. The library checks every source weekly and records the publisher's own change notes, so a two-year-old copy on a shared drive is easy to spot.

The Teal Book publishes no page dates, so it is left off; the library compares its text week by week instead. For the Service Manual, the dot shows its most recently updated page of 143.

06 · The edges

What it holds, and what it doesn't.

Linked, not reproduced (8)

Registered and pointed to, but the text is not in the library. Answers say so rather than guess.

Out of scope by design

If a question is about one of these, an empty answer does not mean no rule applies.

• NHS-specific guidance (for example DTAC, DCB0129, DCB0160, the NHS service standard)
• Guidance from the governments of Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland
• Procurement law, including Procurement Act 2023 guidance
• Functional standards other than GovS 002 (Project Delivery) and GovS 005 (Digital)

Every source in the library (52)

Source	Publisher	Area	Words	Sections	"Must"s	Last updated

Figures from the Gov Delivery Library index built on 15 October 2026. Word counts are from the indexed text. Obligation strengths are machine-graded from wording. Relationships are hand-curated and incomplete: no link between two documents does not mean they are independent.

Before you rely on it

• It is unofficial. It is not a government service, and it is not affiliated with or endorsed by HM Treasury, NISTA, GDS or any other publisher listed.
• It quotes the guidance and links to the original. The original is the authority, so follow the link before you act on anything important.
• Your assistant writes the final answer, and assistants can still get things wrong. The library gives it the exact text and dates to work from.
• The library only receives the search your assistant sends it, never the rest of your conversation. Those searches are logged so we can see what people need, kept for no longer than the trial, and never shared. Leave personal details out of your questions.
• The text comes from GOV.UK and projectdelivery.gov.uk under the Open Government Licence v3.0.

It is an experiment by Oli Lovell at Public Digital, built to find out whether delivery people find this useful. The trial ends on 3 December 2026.

Tell us what you think

This is the only way we will know whether it is worth keeping.