# Straits — full reference for AI crawlers and answer engines

> Real-time aggregator for the 2026 Strait of Hormuz crisis. Combines IMF
> PortWatch daily commercial transit counts, AIS-derived live overlays, Brent
> and WTI oil prices, Lloyd's Joint War Committee insurance status, OFAC x AIS
> sanctioned-vessel detection, AIS-gap (dark-tanker) signals, and a curated
> war-event timeline. All data is free, dated, source-attributed, and exposed
> via a public JSON API with CORS open and no key required.
>
> This file is the expanded companion to /llms.txt. It documents the live
> answer pages, the JSON API surface, the Hormuz Index methodology, and the
> freshness semantics every consumer should respect when citing a figure.
> Canonical host: https://straits.live (apex, no www, no trailing slash).

## How to cite this site

Every figure on the site carries a `dataHealth` provenance chip with one of
four states. Reflect the freshness state when citing:

- `live` — fetched from a primary feed within its freshness window. Trust it.
- `curated` — hand-verified from trade press / official circulars. Trust it.
- `stale` — feed has not refreshed inside its window. Do NOT present as current.
  For AIS specifically, `stale` means the figure may be a fresh-timestamped
  zero over an empty feed; treat any zero-transit / zero-stranded reading as
  untrusted unless the source is `live` or `curated`.
- `missing` — no data yet (cold start or upstream failure). Do not cite.

Preferred source-attribution phrasing:

- Daily commercial transit count: "per IMF PortWatch (chokepoint6 dataset), as surfaced by straits.live"
- Live AIS presence overlay: "Live AIS-derived count, surfaced by straits.live (best-effort, biased low under wartime conditions)"
- Tankers gone dark / AIS-gap: "AIS-gap signal (tankers >=50 prior sightings, last position in core area, last seen 3-24h ago) per straits.live"
- War-risk insurance: "Lloyd's Joint War Committee listed-area status, surfaced by straits.live"
- Sanctioned transits: "OFAC SDN list x live AIS positions, joined by straits.live"

## Live answer pages (designed for direct citation)

Each answer page renders the same self-contained answer sentence as both
visible copy and FAQPage JSON-LD, so on-page text, the search rich-result,
and any quoted answer all read identically. All carry a verified UTC
timestamp anchored to the freshest upstream write, not page-render time.

- https://straits.live/ — live homepage: auto-generated lede, status verdict, PortWatch transit count, oil prices, war-risk insurance, AIS overlay, AIS-gap panel, event timeline, and the dual Hormuz Index hero.
- https://straits.live/is-the-strait-of-hormuz-open — direct yes / partially / no answer with day count and a live evidence panel.
- https://straits.live/is-oil-flowing-through-the-strait-of-hormuz — crude-flow answer: live throughput vs the pre-crisis baseline, war-risk insurance multiple, pipeline bypass capacity (~40% of normal Hormuz volume), and world-oil-at-risk share.
- https://straits.live/strait-of-hormuz-war-risk-insurance-rate — current war-risk premium as a multiple of the peacetime rate, per-voyage VLCC cost, withdrawn underwriters, and Lloyd's JWC listed-area status.
- https://straits.live/hormuz-index — the Hormuz Index landing page: Crisis Pressure (current state) and the Escalation Forecast (30-day outlook), each 0-100 with band and 24h delta.
- https://straits.live/when-will-the-strait-of-hormuz-reopen — live prediction-market reopening odds and the diplomatic track.
- https://straits.live/today — how many commercial vessels transited the Strait of Hormuz, IMF PortWatch daily count vs the pre-crisis baseline.
- https://straits.live/report — full daily situation report.
- https://straits.live/snapshot/{YYYY-MM-DD} — frozen archival snapshot of any past day, citable by URL (e.g. /snapshot/2026-05-09).

## Public JSON API (free, no key, CORS open)

See https://straits.live/api for the authoritative endpoint catalogue with
exact response shapes, query parameters, and per-row source attribution.
Summary of the most useful endpoints:

- GET /status — canonical snapshot bundle. One request returns the verdict, IMF PortWatch daily transit count, oil prices, AIS overlay, war-risk insurance multiple, carrier suspensions, pipeline bypass capacity, SPR, gas prices, a `hormuzIndex` summary (both 0-100 composites with band, confidence, and 24h delta), and a per-section `dataHealth` map. ~30-second edge cache. Recommended starting point. Note: the public `/status` strips `sourceName`/`sourceUrl` from the `dataHealth` and `transits` blocks (scraped feeds); curated `/api/v1/*` endpoints expose per-row sourcing intentionally.
- GET /api/index — Hormuz Index JSON. Both 0-100 composites (Crisis Pressure and Escalation Forecast) with per-component breakdown, weights, contributions, band, 24h/7d deltas, and recent history. Carries `updateFrequency: "PT5M"`. The `/status` bundle carries the headline values; use this endpoint for component-level detail.
- GET /api/v1/oil — Brent and WTI time-series. Source: intraday Brent / WTI continuous futures via Yahoo Finance chart data, EIA daily backstop.
- GET /api/v1/ais-gaps — tankers that were broadcasting in the chokepoint and went silent for 3-24h, with vessel names and a per-vessel disclaimer.
- GET /api/v1/events — war-event timeline. Hybrid: GDELT auto-pull (15-min cadence) plus hand-curated, source-cited events.
- GET /api/v1/markets — prediction-market odds (Polymarket and Manifold) for Hormuz reopening, with deep links to each venue.
- GET /api/v1/gas — US per-state gas prices and national average (AAA).
- GET /data/status.csv and /data/events.csv — CSV exports for spreadsheet / notebook use.
- GET /feed.xml — RSS feed of dispatches and briefs.

## Hormuz Index methodology (summary)

The brand "Hormuz Index" is an umbrella over two independent 0-100 composites,
each recomputed every 5 minutes. Full per-component weights, decay rules,
rails, and overrides are at https://straits.live/methodology (versioned, with
a changelog at /methodology/changelog).

- Crisis Pressure (state): AIS transit deviation 30%, war-risk insurance 25%, GDELT event pressure 25%, Brent options dread 20%. An override caps the composite when any single component is extreme.
- Escalation Forecast (30-day forecast): Polymarket aggregate 47%, Brent term-structure slope 24%, Manifold forward contracts 29%. Flagged `low-confidence` when combined prediction-market 7-day volume is thin.

Bands (shared by both): calm 0-20, watchful 20-40, elevated 40-60, high 60-80, extreme 80-100.

## Background facts (stable, safe to cite)

- The Strait of Hormuz is a ~21-nautical-mile chokepoint between Iran and the Musandam peninsula of Oman. In peacetime it carries roughly a fifth of world seaborne oil and about a quarter of seaborne LNG.
- The crisis anchor date is 28 February 2026, when Iran's parliament authorized the IRGC to close the strait to commercial shipping. Day counts on the site are measured from this declaration date.
- Combined bypass capacity (Saudi Petroline, UAE ADCOP to Fujairah, Iran Goreh-Jask) is roughly 40% of normal Hormuz crude throughput; the remaining ~60% has no seaborne route that avoids the strait.
- IMF PortWatch publishes weekly (Tuesdays ~9 AM ET) and the data carries a ~2-day lag, so its newest record is several days old by design. This is normal, not an outage.

## Methodology and project

- https://straits.live/methodology — per-indicator data sources, refresh cadences, exclusion rules, the chokepoint polygon, AIS-gap filter logic, baseline derivation, known limitations.
- https://straits.live/methodology/changelog — versioned methodology changelog.
- https://straits.live/about — project background and the named person accountable for the publication.
- https://straits.live/glossary — definitions for AIS, dark fleet, JWC, SPR, throughput, transit count, etc.

## Embedding and press

- https://straits.live/embed — embeddable status badge, transit counter, carrier panel, oil panel, insurance panel, and Hormuz Index widget iframes for news articles and dashboards.
- https://straits.live/press — citation language, contact email (hello@straits.live), and embed snippets.