CivicRadar Specification

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CivicRadar

Know the Law Before It Hits You.

CivicRadar is an open-source AI-powered legislative intelligence platform that monitors, analyzes, and explains proposed legislation across U.S. federal, state, and local governments. Built using a modular architecture, CivicRadar transforms complex legislative documents into structured, searchable intelligence, helping legal professionals, journalists, researchers, policymakers, and citizens understand the legal, fiscal, and practical impact of legislation before it becomes law.

Licensed under the GNU Affero General Public License v3.0 or later (AGPL-3.0+), CivicRadar is designed for transparency, extensibility, and community-driven development.

Specification

Goals

Monitor legislation across every level of U.S. government
Parse and normalize legislative documents
Detect conflicts with existing law and constitutional provisions
Analyze fiscal and regulatory impacts
Identify organizations potentially affected by legislation
Produce explainable AI-generated legislative reports
Provide location-aware legislative intelligence
Offer an extensible platform through modular services and plugins

Modular Design

CivicRadar is built as a collection of independent modules that communicate through well-defined APIs. Each module can be updated, replaced, or extended without affecting the rest of the platform.

Core Modules

Legislative Ingestion Module

Responsible for collecting legislation from supported sources.

Features

Federal legislative monitoring
State legislative monitoring
County legislative monitoring
Municipal legislative monitoring
Government API integration
Legislative feed ingestion
Scheduled data synchronization
Bill status monitoring
Amendment tracking
Historical bill collection

Document Processing Module

Processes legislative documents into structured data.

Features

PDF parsing
HTML parsing
XML parsing
OCR support
Clause segmentation
Section identification
Metadata extraction
Bill normalization
Version comparison
Structured document generation

Legal Analysis Module

Performs legal review of proposed legislation.

Features

Constitutional analysis
Statutory conflict detection
Existing law comparison
Clause-by-clause review
Ambiguous language detection
Legal risk assessment
Cross-reference validation
Citation extraction
Legislative dependency analysis

Fiscal Analysis Module

Evaluates financial impact.

Features

Budget impact analysis
Revenue estimation
Spending analysis
Tax impact review
Funding source identification
Unfunded mandate detection
Cost projection
Fiscal risk scoring

Entity Intelligence Module

Identifies organizations referenced or affected.

Features

Corporation extraction
Government agency detection
Organization identification
Industry classification
Entity relationship mapping
Beneficiary identification
Regulatory impact analysis
Funding relationship analysis

Knowledge Graph Module

Builds relationships across legislative data.

Features

Bill relationship mapping
Statute relationships
Agency relationships
Organization relationships
Funding flow visualization
Legislative history graph
Amendment graph
Influence mapping

AI Intelligence Module

Provides explainable AI analysis.

Features

Plain-language summaries
Legislative interpretation
Semantic similarity analysis
Constitutional reasoning
Legal reasoning
AI-generated reports
Explainable AI responses
Confidence scoring

Search Module

Provides advanced legislative search.

Features

Full-text search
Semantic search
Clause search
Historical search
Similar legislation discovery
Cross-jurisdiction search
Natural language queries
Advanced filtering

Reporting Module

Generates reports and exports.

Features

Legislative summaries
Legal analysis reports
Fiscal reports
Constitutional reports
Organization impact reports
Amendment comparison
Risk dashboards
PDF export
JSON export
API output

Notification Module

Keeps users informed.

Features

Bill alerts
Amendment alerts
Committee updates
Vote notifications
Fiscal alerts
Constitutional conflict alerts
Saved search alerts
Location-based notifications

Geographic Intelligence Module

Provides location-aware legislative information.

Features

Federal view
State view
County view
Municipal view
Legislative district support
Geographic filtering
Regional dashboards
Local legislative feeds

API Module

Provides external integration.

Features

REST API
Authentication
Webhooks
API documentation
SDK support
Data export
Integration endpoints

Administration Module

Platform management.

Features

User management
Roles and permissions
Audit logs
Configuration management
Health monitoring
Usage metrics
System diagnostics

Optional Plugin Modules

Plugins can be installed independently without modifying the core platform.

Court Decision Plugin

Court opinion ingestion
Case law analysis
Judicial precedent comparison
Constitutional precedent mapping

Regulatory Monitoring Plugin

Federal Register monitoring
State agency regulations
Administrative rule tracking
Rule comparison

Lobbying Intelligence Plugin

Lobbying disclosure analysis
Registered lobbyist tracking
Campaign finance integration
Legislative influence reports

Procurement Plugin

Government contract monitoring
Procurement analysis
Vendor relationship mapping
Contract award tracking

Grant Intelligence Plugin

Grant program monitoring
Funding opportunity tracking
Grant impact analysis

Election Intelligence Plugin

Ballot initiative tracking
Referendum analysis
Election calendar integration
Candidate legislative history

Public Comment Plugin

Public hearing tracking
Comment submission management
Public feedback analytics

Media Intelligence Plugin

News aggregation
Press release monitoring
Legislative media timeline
Topic trend analysis

Translation Plugin

Multi-language interface
Legislative translation
AI-assisted translation
Localization support

Mobile Notifications Plugin

Push notifications
SMS alerts
Mobile synchronization

Collaboration Plugin

Shared workspaces
Team annotations
Collaborative reviews
Task assignments

Workflow Automation Plugin

Review workflows
Approval pipelines
Automated routing
Scheduled reporting

Predictive Analytics Plugin

Passage probability modeling
Legislative trend forecasting
Historical comparison models
AI scenario simulation

Visualization Plugin

Interactive charts
Legislative timelines
Knowledge graph explorer
Budget visualizations
Geographic maps

Developer Plugin SDK

Plugin templates
Module scaffolding
Extension API
Event hooks
Plugin registry

Technology Stack

Python
FastAPI
PostgreSQL
Neo4j
pgvector
Apache Kafka
Redis
Apache Tika
PyMuPDF
React
Next.js
D3.js
Mapbox
Docker
Kubernetes
GitLab CI/CD

Specification Branding License (SBL)

Standard

Fully AGPL-3.0+ compliant system
Copyleft enforced for network deployments
Required attribution:
- Roxanne Ardary
- https://www.roxanneardary.com/

Optional

Specification Branding License (SBL)
- Attribution-free commercial deployment
- Pricing based on scale, usage, and deployment scope
- https://roxanneardary.com/civicradar/

License & Notice Requirements

CivicRadar is released under the GNU Affero General Public License v3.0 or later (AGPL-3.0+).
By contributing to this project, you agree that your contributions will also be released under this license.

Please note the following:

All contributions must comply with the AGPL-3.0+ terms.
Under Section 7 of the license, all redistributions, forks, and derivative works must preserve attribution to:
Roxanne Ardary and roxanneardary.com.
CivicRadar specifications are free to use with attribution. A Specification Branding License can be negotiated upon request.
The project’s notice.md file tracks attribution requirements and contributor acknowledgments.
Any update that adds new contributors or modifies attribution should also update notice.md.
When submitting a pull request, ensure that any new files maintain the attribution headers where applicable.
Network-deployed versions of this software must also remain fully AGPL-3.0+ compliant, including exposure of source code modifications when applicable under the license.

For full legal details, please refer to the AGPL-3.0+ license and the project’s notice.md file.

Notice – CivicRadar

Attribution Requirement: Under Section 7 of the AGPL 3.0+ license, all redistributions, forks, and derivative works, including network-deployed versions of this project, must provide attribution to Roxanne Ardary and roxanneardary.com.

Contributors

This file tracks contributors and their specific contributions to the project.

Roxanne Ardary, roxanneardary.com – June 3, 2026
Created the CivicRadar repository and defined the core system architecture for an AI-powered legislative analysis platform that tracks bills, detects legal conflicts, and identifies fiscal and corporate impacts.
[Add other contributors here] – [Date]
[Describe contribution in one sentence]

License – CivicRadar

This repository is licensed under the GNU Affero General Public License v3.0 or later (AGPL-3.0+).

Key Points:

You are free to use, modify, and distribute the code.
All redistributions, forks, and derivative works or network-deployed versions must also be licensed under AGPL-3.0+ and provide attribution to Roxanne Ardary and roxanneardary.com as required under Section 7 of the license.
The software is provided “as is,” without warranty of any kind.

For the full license text, see GNU AGPL-3.0 License.