Mast is built around source-backed status. The goal is not just to show an answer, but to point back to the public notice behind it.
Last reviewed: July 27, 2026
Mast looks for sources such as governor websites, state flag-status pages, federal observance references, press releases, executive orders, and official PDFs. Social posts and secondary reporting can be useful clues, but official public notices are the preferred source for calendar placement.
Mast’s federal and jurisdiction pipelines run on an operator-managed schedule and can also be refreshed manually. The cadence can change as source reliability and operating needs change, so Mast exposes pipeline health and freshness instead of promising that every government page is checked at the same fixed interval.
Some states publish a clear current flag-status page. Others publish dated news releases, PDFs, or archive pages. Mast uses state-specific parsing when a source has a known format and keeps fallback source links when a site changes.
A timeout, blocked page, changed layout, or failed parser does not prove that an order ended. When a check is not authoritative, Mast can retain the last successfully verified notices and identify the jurisdiction source as degraded. Pipeline health separately shows whether a result is fresh, stale, or unavailable.
A dated order states the authority, reason, scope, and effective period and is preferred when available. Some official pages only say that flags are currently at half-staff or full-staff. Mast records that as an observed current-status result with lower specificity, then replaces or de-duplicates it when a matching dated notice is found.
Government offices can revise dates, replace a PDF, clarify scope, or remove a notice. A successful authoritative check can update or remove an automatic record that is no longer supported. If a source check fails or returns an ambiguous result, Mast preserves the prior record rather than treating absence alone as a retraction. Material conflicts and operator-edited records are held for human review.
When Mast uses AI to summarize a notice, the model is given source text and parser context. Structured dates and source identity remain tied to the pipeline record, and AI-assisted events are marked in Mast’s data so the interface can identify the summary. Cached AI text is reused only while the underlying source and parser dates remain compatible. The summary is a convenience layer; the source link remains the reference for final verification.
Official pages can move, typo dates, change wording, or publish updates after the first notice. Mast includes a report flow so users can flag inaccurate source interpretation or missing orders.
A good flag-status answer should be inspectable. Mast exposes source links in the current order card, calendar tooltip, timeline, API, and state-source reference pages.