# PermitBird > Nationwide permit determinations with the rule text attached. Work out whether a wetland or waterway impact qualifies for a US Army Corps of Engineers nationwide permit, whether it triggers a pre-construction notification, and where the district and state layers still need checking. Every answer shows the rule it came from. PermitBird compiles the US Army Corps of Engineers nationwide permit programme into a determination engine. Give it a project's location, activity and impact numbers and it returns which nationwide permits could authorise the work, whether a pre-construction notification is triggered, and which regulatory layers it could not check. Every conclusion carries the rule it came from. ## The compiled ruleset - Programme: USACE Nationwide Permits, 2026 cycle - Primary source: 91 FR 768 (pages 768-886), docket COE-2025-0002 - Published: 2026-01-08 - Effective: 2026-03-15 - Expires: 2031-03-15 - Permits: 57, all titled and sourced. New this cycle: NWP 60. - Numbering is not contiguous: 1-25, 27-46, 48-55, 57-60. NWPs 26, 47 and 56 are reserved. ## What we do not hold - Regional conditions for the 38 USACE districts: not compiled. - Clean Water Act Section 401 certifications for the 54 states and territories: not compiled. Determinations therefore cover the federal layer only and say so in their coverageGaps field. A district or state layer can narrow, condition or remove a nationwide permit. ## Three facts commonly stated wrongly - The 300 linear foot stream bed limit is NOT in force. It was removed in the 2021 cycle and the Corps declined to reinstate it in 2026. - The half acre limit is not universal. It applies to a named subset of permits. NWP 14 carries a lower 1/3 acre limit in tidal waters, and NWPs 46 and 60 use 1 acre. - General Condition 32 has two clocks: a 30 calendar day completeness determination, then a 45 calendar day review of the complete notification. ## For agents - MCP server: https://permitbird.com/api/mcp (JSON-RPC 2.0, streamable HTTP). Tools: determine_permit_pathway, lookup_nationwide_permit, list_reference_data. - OpenAPI 3.1: https://permitbird.com/openapi.json - Machine-readable pricing: https://permitbird.com/pricing.json - Public sandbox key, no signup required: pb_sandbox_publickey - There are two obtainable plans: the public sandbox key above (free, no signup) and Pro (paid, at /pricing). A "free" value in X-PermitBird-Tier is not a plan you can sign up for; it is the reduced allowance a lapsed Pro key falls back to. - Every response carries X-Request-Id, echoed as meta.requestId or error.requestId. Quote it when reporting a 5xx; error bodies carry no internal exception text. - Rate limit counting is per serving instance, so X-RateLimit-Remaining is a close guide rather than an exact ledger. A 429 is authoritative and carries Retry-After. - A 503 entitlement_check_unavailable means Stripe could not be reached to confirm a Pro subscription. It is retryable and does not mean the key was revoked. A complete first call, copy and paste: curl -s https://permitbird.com/api/v1/determine \ -H "Authorization: Bearer pb_sandbox_publickey" \ -H "Content-Type: application/json" \ -d '{"state":"CA","district":"spk","activity":"linear-transportation","aquaticResourceType":"wetland","permanentImpactAcres":0.2}' Determination request fields, exact names: - state: two-letter code, uppercase, e.g. CA. Required. - district: USACE district code, lowercase, three or four letters, e.g. spk. Required. Full list at /api/v1/district. - activity: hyphenated identifier. Required. The 15 valid values are linear-transportation, utility-line-electric, utility-line-pipeline, utility-line-water, bank-stabilization, residential-development, commercial-development, solar-farm, stormwater-facility, boat-ramp, maintenance-repair, aquatic-restoration, agricultural, mining, minor-discharge. - aquaticResourceType: one of wetland, stream, open-water, tidal. Required. - permanentImpactAcres: number, zero or greater. Required. - temporaryImpactAcres: number. Optional. - streamBedLinearFeet: number. Optional. REST endpoints, all taking Authorization: Bearer : - POST /api/v1/determine: screen one project. - POST /api/v1/determine/batch: screen up to 100 projects in one call. Pro tier; other tiers get 403 upgrade_required. - GET /api/v1/nwp and /api/v1/nwp/{number}: the compiled ruleset, or one permit. - GET /api/v1/district and /api/v1/district/{code}: the 38 USACE districts. - GET /api/v1/state/{code}/401: a state Section 401 certification record. - GET /api/v1/activity: the activity identifiers the determination endpoint accepts. Identifiers are validated against the catalogues, so a state, district or activity we do not hold returns 422 with the valid values attached rather than a verdict computed against something unrecognised. Retry only on internal_error and rate_limit_exceeded; every other error code describes something about the request that will not change on its own. ## Docs - [API documentation](https://permitbird.com/docs/api): endpoints, errors, copy-paste cURL. - [MCP documentation](https://permitbird.com/docs/mcp): client configuration and tool schemas. - [Coverage and method](https://permitbird.com/coverage): what is compiled, what is not, and how. - [Nationwide permits](https://permitbird.com/nwp): one page per permit. - [Guides](https://permitbird.com/guides): the 2026 reissuance, pre-construction notification, the half acre limit, Section 401. - [Full text for models](https://permitbird.com/llms-full.txt) ## Citation Cite as: PermitBird, compiled from 91 FR 768, effective 2026-03-15. https://permitbird.com PermitBird is a screening tool, not legal advice and not a jurisdictional determination.