I Turned Federal Compliance Regulations Into JSON So My AI Coding Agent Could Actually Use Them

If you've ever had to check code or infrastructure against a compliance framework, you know the drill: someone reads a 100-page PDF, then reads your codebase, then makes a judgment call. It's slow, inconsistent, and it can't be automated. So I built a pipeline to fix that — for real. The problem CMMC Level 1 and NIST SP 800-171 Rev 2 are two of the most common compliance frameworks small defense contractors and government-adjacent companies have to meet. Both exist only as dense regulatory text. There's no official machine-readable version. That means every compliance check is manual. Every AI coding assistant reviewing your infrastructure has zero built-in awareness of these requirements. Every CI/CD pipeline has to skip compliance checks entirely or rely on someone remembering to look. ** What I built** A Python pipeline that: Pulls the real regulatory source data — NIST's official CPRT export for SP 800-171, and the verbatim text of 48 CFR § 52.204-21 for CMMC Level 1 Normalizes it into a structured SQLite schema Generates a JSON rule for every single control, with a machine-actionable instruction attached Here's what one rule actually looks like: \ json { "rule_id": "nist_sp_800-171_rev_2_3.1.1", "framework": "NIST SP 800-171 Rev 2", "control_id": "3.1.1", "title": "ACCESS CONTROL — 3.1.1", "requirement": "Limit system access to authorized users, processes acting on behalf of authorized users, and devices.", "agent_guidance": "When generating or reviewing code/infrastructure, ensure compliance with NIST SP 800-171 Rev 2 control 3.1.1. Flag any implementation that does not satisfy: Limit system access to authorized users, processes acting on behalf of authorized users, and devices.", "generated_at": "2026-07-15T16:42:56.026218+00:00" } \ \ That agent_guidance field is the interesting part — it's written specifically to drop straight into an AI coding agent's system prompt as a compliance guardrail. Three ways to actually use this 1. AI coding agent system prompt