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Promise Tracker Specification

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Promise Tracker

Overview

Promise Tracker is an open-source specification for tracking, organizing, and verifying campaign promises made by elected officials and candidates. It provides a standardized framework for collecting promises from speeches, websites, interviews, debates, policy platforms, and public statements, then monitoring their progress through completion, partial fulfillment, reversal, or non-delivery.

The specification enables transparent accountability systems by combining structured promise records, source verification, timeline tracking, evidence management, analytics, and AI-assisted promise extraction.

Promise Tracker is designed for civic platforms, government transparency applications, journalism tools, research organizations, and public accountability systems.

Source Collection

Collects promises from multiple public sources.

Supported sources:

  • Campaign websites
  • Policy platforms
  • Candidate statements
  • Speeches
  • Interviews
  • Debates
  • Press releases
  • Social media posts
  • Public announcements
  • Government documents
  • Legislative records

Source tracking includes:

  • Source URL
  • Source type
  • Publication date
  • Archived copy reference
  • Transcript storage
  • Citation metadata
  • Source reliability rating

Promise Categorization

Organizes promises by issue area and policy domain.

Built-in categories:

  • Economy
  • Healthcare
  • Education
  • Housing
  • Transportation
  • Energy
  • Environment
  • Taxes
  • Immigration
  • Public Safety
  • Foreign Policy
  • Labor
  • Technology
  • Government Reform
  • Veterans
  • Agriculture

Features:

  • Multiple category assignment
  • Custom categories
  • Hierarchical category structures
  • Keyword tagging
  • Topic classification

Promise Status Tracking

Tracks promise progress using standardized fulfillment states.

Supported statuses:

  • Proposed
  • In Progress
  • Delivered
  • Partially Delivered
  • Not Delivered
  • Reversed
  • Blocked by Legislature
  • Blocked by Courts
  • Abandoned

Features:

  • Status history tracking
  • Status change timestamps
  • Reason tracking
  • Evidence requirements
  • Confidence scoring

Promise Timeline System

Provides chronological tracking of promise progress.

Timeline features:

  • Promise announcement date
  • Implementation milestones
  • Legislative actions
  • Executive actions
  • Funding events
  • Program launches
  • Court decisions
  • Completion milestones
  • Status changes

Timeline views:

  • Chronological history
  • Progress visualization
  • Milestone tracking
  • Election cycle comparison

Evidence Management

Maintains supporting documentation for every promise.

Evidence sources:

  • Government records
  • Legislation
  • Executive orders
  • Budget documents
  • Official statements
  • Public reports
  • News coverage
  • Archived webpages

Evidence metadata:

  • Source link
  • Source type
  • Collection date
  • Verification status
  • Reliability rating
  • Reviewer notes

AI-Assisted Promise Extraction

Provides AI tools for identifying promises from public communications.

AI capabilities:

  • Extract promises from speeches
  • Analyze campaign websites
  • Process debate transcripts
  • Analyze interview transcripts
  • Extract policy commitments
  • Identify measurable goals
  • Detect duplicate promises
  • Categorize promises automatically
  • Generate summaries
  • Suggest related evidence
  • Identify changes in commitment language

Supported inputs:

  • Web pages
  • HTML documents
  • PDFs
  • Text documents
  • Audio transcripts
  • Video transcripts
  • Public statements

Verification Framework

Creates transparent verification workflows.

Features:

  • Human review workflows
  • Evidence-based verification
  • Multi-source confirmation
  • Reviewer comments
  • Confidence scoring
  • Verification history
  • Audit trails

Verification levels:

  • Unverified
  • Low Confidence
  • Moderate Confidence
  • High Confidence
  • Verified

Analytics Dashboard

Provides accountability metrics and reporting.

Analytics include:

  • Total promises made
  • Promises delivered
  • Partial fulfillment rate
  • Non-delivery rate
  • Reversal rate
  • Average completion time
  • Fulfillment by issue category
  • Fulfillment by election cycle
  • Administration comparison
  • Progress trends

Search and Discovery

Advanced search tools for exploring promises.

Search features:

  • Full-text search
  • Candidate search
  • Official search
  • Issue category search
  • Jurisdiction filtering
  • Status filtering
  • Date filtering
  • Election cycle filtering
  • Source filtering

Public Transparency Features

Designed for public accountability platforms.

Features:

  • Public promise pages
  • Shareable records
  • Open data exports
  • Citation visibility
  • Source transparency
  • Timeline visualization
  • Community review submissions

API Specification

Promise Tracker supports integrations through standardized APIs.

API capabilities:

  • Create promise records
  • Retrieve promises
  • Update promise status
  • Add evidence
  • Add timeline events
  • Search records
  • Generate analytics
  • Export datasets

Data Model

Promise Object

Fields:

  • Promise ID
  • Title
  • Description
  • Candidate
  • Organization
  • Jurisdiction
  • Election cycle
  • Categories
  • Status
  • Sources
  • Evidence
  • Timeline events
  • Confidence score
  • Created date
  • Updated date

Evidence Object

Fields:

  • Evidence ID
  • Promise ID
  • Source URL
  • Source type
  • Description
  • Verification status
  • Confidence score
  • Date collected

Timeline Event Object

Fields:

  • Event ID
  • Promise ID
  • Event date
  • Event type
  • Description
  • Supporting evidence

Optional Extensions

Promise Tracker can be extended with:

  • Legislative Tracker integration
  • Executive action monitoring
  • Budget analysis
  • Fact-checking systems
  • Public submissions
  • Crowdsourced verification
  • AI accountability scoring
  • Notification systems
  • Comparative government dashboards
  • Open civic data platforms

Specification Branding License (SBL)

Standard

Optional

License & Notice Requirements

Promise Tracker is released under the GNU Affero General Public License v3.0 or later (AGPL-3.0+).

By contributing to any Open Arsenal 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.
  • Promise Tracker 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 – ActionCheck

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 – March 10, 2026
    Created the repository for ActionCheck. Designed the platform to track politicians’ promises, votes, financial activity, and board memberships for public accountability.
  • [Add other contributors here] – [Date]
    [Describe contribution in one sentence]

License

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.

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