Methodology & Sources
CivicPulse is built to be transparent about where information comes from and how it is summarized. This page explains our sources, our AI use, and how to report errors.
Data sources
- Representatives: Live data from whoismyrepresentative.com with a fallback to the United States Congress legislators dataset, refreshed daily.
- Bills & events: We are migrating from seed data to live state-legislature scrapes (via Firecrawl), summarized with Lovable AI. Each bill card shows its primary source URL and a Last updated timestamp once wired.
- Council briefings: Transcripts are summarized by Lovable AI (Google Gemini 2.5 Flash). Q&A answers cite an exact transcript timestamp.
AI use
AI is used to translate dense legislative text into plain English, to summarize public meetings, and to explain how a bill aligns with your stated values. Every AI-generated section is labeled and links back to the underlying source so you can verify it yourself.
Corrections
Found something wrong? Use the Flag inaccuracy button on any bill or summary. Reports go to our moderation queue and are reviewed within 72 hours.
What is illustrative vs. live
- Live: representatives, comments, neighborhood forum, council-meeting Q&A.
- Illustrative (until backfill ships): bill list, voting calendar, sentiment polls, neighborhood-reach metric, SMS reminders, and the premium upgrade flow. These are clearly labeled in the app.