What is Zonos Clarify?

Zonos Clarify automates partner government agency (PGA) compliance for cross-border shipments. It identifies which agency requirements apply to each item based on its HS code and route, presents the agency's compliance questionnaire, pre-fills answers from your item data using AI, and attaches the finalized, compliant answers to the item so they flow into customs filing.

Which government agencies does Zonos Clarify support?

Clarify supports U.S. partner government agency (PGA) programs such as the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), USDA Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS), Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), and Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), as well as other program types including free trade agreements and tariff measures.

How do I integrate Zonos Clarify?

Clarify is available through the Zonos GraphQL API. Use the complianceRequirements query to discover which programs apply to an item, complianceQuestionnaireInfer to infer and pre-fill answers, and the questionnaire session mutations to review, answer, and finalize the questionnaires. Finalized answers are materialized onto the item for customs filing.

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Zonos Clarify

Automate partner government agency (PGA) compliance — find which agency requirements apply to each item, answer the questionnaires with AI prefill, and attach compliant answers for customs filing.

Many cross-border shipments are subject to partner government agency (PGA) requirements in addition to customs duties and taxes. Before goods can clear the border, the importer often has to answer agency-specific questions per item — for example, the FDA's questions for food and cosmetics, or the CPSC's certification for children's products. Getting these answers wrong (or missing them) holds shipments at the border.

Zonos Clarify turns that manual, error-prone process into a structured, automatable flow:

Discover which compliance programs apply to an item from its HS code and route.
Infer and prefill answers from your existing item data using Zonos AI.
Review and answer only the questions that remain, with branching handled for you.
Finalize the questionnaire so the answers materialize onto the item and flow into customs filing.

How Clarify works

A typical end-to-end flow uses the Zonos GraphQL API in five steps:

Discover requirements. Query complianceRequirements with an item's HS code and ship-to country to see which compliance programs are triggered, and read each program's questionnaire structure.
Infer and prefill. Call complianceQuestionnaireInfer with your items. Clarify resolves the applicable programs per item, opens a questionnaire session, and pre-answers questions from inferred facts — each inferred answer carries a confidence score.
Review and answer. Walk the remaining questions with questionnaireAnswersSubmit. The questionnaire branches automatically based on prior answers, so the importer only sees the questions that actually apply.
Attest or finalize. Accept the prefilled answers in one click with questionnaireSessionAttest, or submit a complete set of answers directly with questionnaireResponseSubmit.
Materialize. When a questionnaire is finalized, Clarify records an immutable response and writes effect-keyed answers onto the item so they carry through to the customs entry.

See Complete a questionnaire for the full request-and-response walkthrough, and How it works for the concepts behind branching, inference, and materialization.

Key concepts

Concept↕	What it means↕
Compliance program	A regulatory program (e.g. an FDA prior-notice program) identified by a stable `code`. Each program owns a questionnaire.
Questionnaire version	The published set of questions for a program. Clarify always serves the current `ACTIVE` version.
Question	A single prompt with an `answerType` of `BOOLEAN`, `SINGLE_SELECT`, `MULTI_SELECT`, `TEXT`, `NUMBER`, or `DATE`.
Display condition	Branching logic that shows or hides a question based on earlier answers, so importers never see irrelevant questions.
Inference & provenance	Zonos AI pre-answers questions from item data. Every answer is `MANUAL` or `INFERRED`, and inferred answers include a `confidence` score.
Session vs. response	A session is the in-progress wizard. A response is the finalized, immutable record of the answers.
Attestation	Accepting the inferred answers as-is to finalize a line without re-typing them.
Effect key	Where a finalized answer is written on the item (an attribute or a product-composition field) so it flows into customs filing.
Target	What the answers describe: a durable `CATALOG_ITEM` (answer once, reuse) or a per-shipment `ITEM`.
Container	The grouping the answers are collected under, such as a `DECLARATION`.
Intended use	The declared import intent (`CONSUMER`, `COMMERCIAL`, `PERSONAL`, `RESEARCH`) that backstops inference.

Supported programs

Clarify models compliance as programs, each with a programType:

PGA - U.S. partner government agency programs such as the FDA (food, cosmetics, drugs, devices), USDA AMS (agricultural commodities and organic certification), CPSC (consumer and children's products), and FWS (fish and wildlife products).
FTA - Free trade agreement eligibility (e.g. claiming preferential treatment under a trade agreement).
TARIFF_MEASURE - Questionnaires tied to specific tariff measures.
OTHER - Any additional program that doesn't fit the categories above.

The set of active programs grows over time. Use complianceRequirements to see exactly which programs are triggered for a given item and route.

Use cases

FDA-regulated goods

Answer FDA questions for food, cosmetics, supplements, and devices before import.

CPSC children's products

Attach the required attestation per item ahead of CPSC eFiling.

USDA AMS commodities

Capture organic and agricultural-marketing answers for covered goods.

FWS wildlife products

Collect Fish and Wildlife Service declarations for wildlife-derived items.

Next steps

Check compliance requirements - discover applicable programs and read questionnaire structures.
Complete a questionnaire - infer, answer, attest, and finalize via GraphQL.
How it works - branching, effect keys, inference, and dynamic options in depth.
New to the Zonos API? Start with OAuth and API errors.

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