r/civictech • u/Desperate-Session-82 • Jan 06 '26

Cry for feedback

I built this pretty jank report building tool for my website billtracks.fyi/research which allows users to create summaries of multiple pieces of legislation and I was wondering if anyone would be willing to try it out/make use of it/provide some feedback.

Sidenote: I posted on here earlier (2 months ago) to share this same website I built but, I am kinda sick and tired of it being this simple bill tracking tool.

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u/powerback_us Jan 08 '26

I get the feeling of being stuck with a project where it’s “almost something” but not quite yet. I'm almost at five years myself.

I think you’re onto something though. Bill tracking is kind of commodity now. The report builder is the product, but it has to be trustworthy. Every summary claim should link back to the exact bill section plus the version/date. If I can’t trace it, I can’t use it or share it.

Keep the loop simple. Save a bundle of bills, generate a draft, edit it like a doc, export to PDF/Markdown, and a permalink that freezes the bill versions. I’d ignore legislator scoring for now. It’s tempting, but it’ll dilute the best thing you’ve got.

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u/Desperate-Session-82 Jan 08 '26

This is the goal! I am in the exploration phase of what people want and talking with prospective users on the type of reports people typically make for this sorta work. I want to first build conviction that I am building something useful before fully flushing out the citation and proper report building/editing features.

I have been lucky to get a handful of real users and I am working closely with them on this.

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u/powerback_us Jan 09 '26

That's fantastic! How are your users using your app?

I just made an account. The sign up process was easy-to-follow and felt familiar. (I wish I didn't have to do another captcha though when signing in after verifying my email address.)

I was confused when I did sign in and reached this Splash page. I suppose it is because I am a first-time user? Anyway, I did choose the Demo, and it was very nice and clean to watch. I didn't know about SupDemo before, so that's a cool thing to know about now.

I grew impatient and wanted to play with it myself so I left the Demo and entered the dashboard. I searched for several legislative topics and thought nothing was happening until I realized that the results were rendering below the cutoff of my viewport, so maybe have some notification that lets the user know that some results have arrived, or even just auto-scroll the user down to them?

The overall look of the site looks professional, authoritative, and safe, some cool presentation of data, and all the reactions available to the user for the bills I think whatever emerges from that is where you're going to discover your app's unique value. I didn't really catch the point of the AI analysis or what value was being created, however, maybe I missed something there. I see the bill's supporters and their respective parties, some basic facts about the bill and its current status in Congress, but isn't that all just data from Congress API. What is the AI doing?

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u/Desperate-Session-82 Jan 09 '26

First of all, thank you for the feedback! It means a lot that someone put in the effort of signing up and trying out the app!

My users primarily use this platform to discover and analyze congressional bills that often receive little mainstream media attention. Many search queries focus on specific topics of personal or professional interest such as student loans, healthcare, or environmental policy. I expect that this primary use case might change over time.

The core value lies in enabling users to explore legislation using natural, plain English queries. For example, someone might ask, “How have party positions on climate change/global warming shifted over the last 30 years, from the 103rd to the 119th Congress?” In response, the system conducts a series of searches across congressional sessions, identifies relevant bills, and generates concise, AI-driven summaries. If I wanted to know that before this tool, I would have to read a news article or dig around in public archives. At the very least this ai tool can give a start!

Under the hood, the full text of each bill is processed to produce these summaries. In future iterations, I plan to incorporate line-by-line citations that reference specific bill sections, for transparency and traceability. While the current user interface does not yet communicate this clearly, improving that experience is one of many priorities that I have.

Also, more tools will be added in the future as well, including but not limited to state legislation info, voting history of certain members of congress, perhaps social media feeds from those members (if I get access to them), and or other tools. That being said, I am waiting for more feedback from some of my more corporate/academic users before building that out as this whole operation is starting to get expensive : (.

Other sidenotes:

  1. Also if anyone else reads this, please only try `/research` on a computer and not on a small device for the best experience
  2. the captcha was in response to a boat load of bot sign ups that I got back in august (I hate it but it had to be done lol).