accc-mergers-cli

A local command-line tool for querying the ACCC merger register. Search past determinations, find similar cases by industry or issue, read the ACCC's reasoning, and browse questionnaire questions — all from your terminal.

Data is pulled from the public nwbort/accc-mergers repository as a pre-built SQLite + FTS5 database, so no client-side indexing is required.

Installation

Recommended: uv

uv tool install git+https://github.com/nwbort/accc-mergers-cli

uv installs the tool in an isolated environment and puts the mergers command on your PATH. If you don't have uv yet:

curl -LsSf https://astral.sh/uv/install.sh | sh

Alternative: pipx

pipx install git+https://github.com/nwbort/accc-mergers-cli

From source

git clone https://github.com/nwbort/accc-mergers-cli
cd accc-mergers-cli
pip install -e .

Python 3.11+ is required. The only runtime dependencies are typer, rich, and httpx.

Quick start

# First run auto-syncs the local cache (~/.accc-mergers/).
mergers search "warehouse lease beverage"

# Full detail on a single merger.
mergers show MN-01016

# Browse by filter.
mergers list --outcome approved --industry beverage --year 2025

# Force-refresh the cache.
mergers sync --force

Commands

Command	Purpose
mergers sync	Download the latest pre-built database
mergers sync --force	Re-download even if the database hash matches
mergers sync --source <path>	Sync from a local directory (or URL) instead of GitHub
mergers status	Version, generation time, and age of the local cache
mergers search <query>	Full-text search of descriptions and determinations
mergers show <id>	Full detail on a single merger
mergers timeline <id>	Chronological event timeline for one merger, with durations
mergers related <id>	Mergers linked via the 'related merger' field (e.g. waiver refiled as a notification)
mergers party <name>	All mergers involving a given acquirer or target
mergers list	Browse with filters, no query required
mergers browse	Interactive TUI browser (requires the [browse] extra)
mergers new	Mergers added to the register in the last N days (default 7)
mergers open <id>	Open a merger in the browser (mergers.fyi by default, --accc for the original page)
mergers questions [id]	Browse questionnaire questions (--search <q> to grep across all)
mergers noccs [id]	Browse Notices of Competition Concerns issued in Phase 2
mergers industries	Breakdown of activity by ANZSIC industry
mergers stats	Summary statistics (--by year|industry|acquirer|outcome|phase for grouped counts)
mergers cache path	Print the local cache directory
mergers cache clear	Delete the local cache so the next command re-syncs

Every command supports --json for machine-readable output. search, list, party and new also support --csv and --md to print a CSV or Markdown table — handy for pasting into spreadsheets or docs.

Filters

search and list share the same filter flags:

Flag	Description
--outcome	approved, denied, phase2, pending
--industry	Partial ANZSIC name match (case-insensitive)
--phase	1 or 2
--waiver / --no-waiver	Waivers only / notifications only
--year	Notification year, e.g. 2025
--since	Notified on or after this date (YYYY-MM-DD)
--until	Notified on or before this date (YYYY-MM-DD)
--has-related / --no-related	Only mergers that have (or do not have) a related merger
--acquirer <name>	Acquirer name contains this string (case-insensitive)
--target <name>	Target name contains this string (case-insensitive)
--limit N	Max results

list additionally accepts --sort date-desc|date-asc|name|duration (default date-desc).

search also accepts --regex to interpret the query as a Python regular expression instead of an FTS query. Useful for patterns FTS can't express (e.g. --regex "acqui(re|sition)s?\s+of\s+shares"). By default search prints a short matching snippet under each result; pass --no-snippets to suppress it. --section reasons|overlap|description|parties restricts the search (and any --regex scan) to a single content section.

show accepts --section determination|reasons|overlap|parties|industries|description|questionnaire|nocc to render only one block of a merger record instead of the full report.

party accepts --role acquirer|target to restrict to one side of the deal.

Interactive browser

For repeated exploration, install with the optional [browse] extra to get the mergers browse TUI:

uv tool install --with textual git+https://github.com/nwbort/accc-mergers-cli
# or
pip install 'accc-mergers-cli[browse]'

Then run:

mergers browse

The browser shows a filterable result list on the left and the full merger detail on the right. Type into the filter input to combine free-text search with structured filters, e.g. outcome:approved industry:beverage warehouse. Recognised filter keys are outcome, industry, acquirer, target, phase, year, since, until, waiver, section.

Key	Action
↑ / ↓	Move through the list
/	Focus the filter input
Esc	Return focus to the list
o	Open the highlighted merger on mergers.fyi
Shift+O	Open the original ACCC register page
?	Toggle the help overlay
q	Quit

Shell completion

mergers --install-completion   # install for your current shell
mergers --show-completion      # print the completion script

Supports bash, zsh, fish and PowerShell via Typer.

Cache

The first run of any command populates ~/.accc-mergers/db.sqlite. After 7 days the CLI warns that the cache is stale — run mergers sync to refresh.

Sync fetches cli-manifest.json from the upstream repo's cli-dist branch (a few hundred bytes) and only downloads the full SQLite database (cli.sqlite) when its SHA-256 has changed. A no-op sync is therefore a single HTTP request.

The manifest also carries a schema_version; the CLI refuses to install a database whose schema it doesn't know how to read, and prompts you to upgrade.

To sync from a local directory (useful on servers without access to GitHub), pass --source directly:

mergers sync --source /path/to/cli-dist

--source accepts a local directory path, a file:// URI, or any http(s):// URL. It takes precedence over the ACCC_MERGERS_BASE_URL environment variable, which can also be used to redirect all sync calls globally.

Running tests

pip install -e ".[dev]"
pytest

License

See LICENSE.