Mission
We are an open source, non profit Chi Hack Night Breakout Group focused on the question:
Why don't we pay attention to our representatives between elections?
What We're Offering
We're building an open-source, simplified, and expanded version of OpenStates' data on state and federal legislation, and providing examples on how that data can be used.
The datasets, as they exist now, include:
- Federal, state, and local (for Chicago only) bill information
- Daily updates on legislative bills
- Vote totals - and breakdowns - by legislator
- Automatic tagging of bills by topic, using Claude
- Automatic summarization of bills, using Claude
This expanded collection of datasets will eventually include:
- Summaries and sourcing of legislative campaign promises
Current Examples
In-progress Examples
- Automated, personality-focused BlueSky bots
Project History
WindyCivi began development in 2022. We initially wanted to create a destination for simplified, summarized updates on legislative action, with the ability to follow or filter for certain legislative topics - and this is what was initially built as the Windy Civi iOS app, and website, which was first launched in a beta in 2024.
As our expanded dataset began to come together, we decided to incorporate a ledger structure to the data to allow for more performant updates, and to let the data become open-source, and accessible by anyone who wants to use it to create their own website, app, bot, or other platform for showcasing updates. This is the vision that we've been focused on as of 2025.
We're excited to build towards a vision of democratized, simplified access to legislative updates, for all.
Want To Contribute?
Take a look at our Github, Docs, and message us on our Slack channel.