Compliance
Language
Learning materials

Reference

Prompt Scenarios: Chemicals & Export-Sensitive Manufacturing

Live-tested prompts for chemical-substance lookup and export-control candidate search across EU, UK and US regimes — for electronics, chemicals and aerospace manufacturers.

Last reviewed 13 August 2026

Every scenario below was run against the live platform while writing this page — the substances, codes and candidate matches shown are real.

1. Who This Is For

Electronics, chemicals, optics, aerospace and cryptography manufacturers and their compliance teams — anyone obligated to run export-control screening before a product ships, not just a customs classification. See Export-Control Coverage for what "obligated, not optional" means for these sectors specifically.

2. Chemical Substance Lookup By CAS Number

Prompt: "Find the customs classification for CAS 7782-50-5. Show the CUS number, EC number and candidate CN codes."

Tool: search_chemical_substances.

Verified live: CAS 7782-50-5 resolves to chlorine — CUS 0013108-8, EC 231-959-5, UN number 1017, CN code 28011000 — from the ECICS local cache, in well under a second. Accepts CAS RN, CUS, EC number, InChIKey, or a plain chemical name.

3. Export-Control Candidate Search — Why The Query Shape Matters

Three ways to search this, and they are genuinely not equivalent — verified live, side by side:

By bare CN code. Weak. Searching CN 8542 (electronic integrated circuits) alone returns zero candidates — most CN headings have no or only sparse direct correlation to a control-list entry.

By product description text. This is where real coverage is. Searching "integrated circuits" returns two dozen relevant entries in one call, across three jurisdictions at once: EU Dual-Use (3B503, 3D006, 3E505, 4A507), the identical entries on the UK Strategic Export Control List, and the US Commerce Control List (3A090, 3B903, 3D006, 3E905) — the exact style of ECCN-like codes a compliance analyst is looking for, none of which the bare code found.

By chemical identifier. The strongest signal available. Searching CAS 7440-67-7 (zirconium) returns exact matches — match_type: cas_exact, score 100 — simultaneously from the EU Common Military List (ML8), the UK Strategic Export Control List (ML8), the US Commerce Control List (1C111) and the US Munitions List (USML V), each with its own regulatory citation and source URL.

Tool: search_export_control_candidates — query for text, cas_rn for chemical identifier, cn_code for the (weak) code-only path.

The practical rule: ask with a product description or a chemical identifier, not a bare CN code. get_compliance_report and check_trade_compliance already do this automatically when product_texts is supplied alongside the code.

4. What The Candidate Coverage Actually Spans

Confirmed live against the current source catalog — 30 control-list sources across five jurisdictions:

JurisdictionWhat's covered
European UnionDual-Use Annex I, Common Military List, EU/G7 Common High Priority Items, plus 20 further regimes — CBAM, deforestation, conflict minerals, cultural goods, firearms, drug and explosives precursors, and more
United KingdomStrategic Export Control List
United StatesCommerce Control List (EAR), Munitions List (ITAR)
JapanMETI End User List (named entities, routed through screen_entities)
TaiwanMOEA Strategic High-Tech Commodities Entity List (named entities)

This is meaningfully broader than an EU-only tool — a single chemical or product query, like §3's zirconium example, can surface matching entries across EU, UK and US regimes at once, because a genuinely controlled item is very often controlled in more than one jurisdiction's list simultaneously.

5. Is This A Final Classification?

No — and the result says so explicitly. Every response carries review_required: true when a candidate surfaces, plus the source citation it came from. These are candidate matches requiring analyst review, not a final Dual-Use, Military List, ITAR or ECCN determination. The legal text at the cited source URL is the controlling authority; the platform's job is finding the candidates worth checking against it, not replacing that check. See Export-Control Coverage §1–2 for why a CN code alone can never be the final word — the same heading covers products with completely different control status depending on specification, encryption, military design, end-use and destination.

6. Composite: Goods Report With Product Text

Prompt: "CN 8517130000, exporting to Belarus. Product description: 'radio frequency transceiver module, 2.4 GHz, encrypted link'. Run full compliance including export-control review."

Tool: get_compliance_report or check_trade_compliance, with product_texts supplied alongside taric_code.

This is the composite path that actually reaches the deeper candidates from §3 in a single call — the code alone screens the RU/BY goods-sanctions layer, and the product text feeds the same keyword search that found the integrated-circuits and zirconium candidates above, without a separate search_export_control_candidates call.

7. Tips

  • Lead with a chemical identifier when you have one. CAS, CUS, EC number or InChIKey are the highest-confidence path into the candidate search, as shown in §3.
  • Give a short product description, not just a code, whenever the shipment might be dual-use or military-adjacent — electronics, optics, sensors, cryptography, materials processing.
  • Read review_required as "send this to the analyst," not as a verdict. A candidate hit is the start of the review, not the end of it.
  • Check more than one regime. As §3 and §4 show, the same item is routinely controlled under EU, UK and US lists at once — a clearance under one regime says nothing about the others.

8. Related Material