About
Democracy is in trouble. Not because people stopped caring — but because the tools of civic life were built for institutions, not citizens.
Our mission
Information is buried in jargon. Participation requires expertise. And the platforms that promise to help often profit from the confusion.
We believe there's a remedy: tools built by citizens, for citizens. Technology that communities own and control. That's what Opus Populi exists to build.
Civic information belongs to everyone
Legislative text shouldn't require a law degree. We use AI to make it accessible to all.
Citizens should control civic infrastructure
The tools that power democracy must be transparent, auditable, and owned by communities.
Privacy is a civic right
Research your representatives, explore legislation, engage with your government — without being tracked or monetized.
Our story
Opus Populi started with a simple observation: the information citizens need to participate in democracy is public, but it's scattered across dozens of government websites, buried in legal language, and nearly impossible to navigate without expertise. We're building the infrastructure to change that — not a startup looking for an exit, not a platform looking to monetize civic engagement, but a collective effort to put democratic tools in the hands of the people they serve.
Project founded
Architecture design begins. Monorepo structure, provider pattern, and microservices architecture established.
Open source under AGPL-3.0
Entire codebase published on GitHub. Community contributions welcome from day one.
Local AI stack operational
Full RAG pipeline running locally — Transformers.js embeddings, pgvector search, Ollama LLM inference. No external API calls.
Self-healing data pipeline
AI-powered schema-on-read extraction with structural manifests. Pipeline adapts automatically when government websites change.
Federation architecture built
Prompt service with HMAC authentication, cryptographic verification, A/B testing, and node certification. Independent instances that share improvements.
Observability stack
Production monitoring with Prometheus metrics, Grafana dashboards, Loki log aggregation, and OpenTelemetry tracing.
Civic features completed
Petition scanner with OCR, proposition explorer, campaign finance tracker, geocoded representative lookup with contact forms, meeting calendar, and document Q&A.
California pilot launch
First community deployment with civic data from the Secretary of State, Assembly, Senate, and CAL-ACCESS campaign finance database.
What's built
Seven tools that give communities direct access to civic information.
Petition Scanner
AI-PoweredPoint your phone at any petition and get an instant, plain-language breakdown. A community organizer encounters a petition outside a grocery store — they scan it and share a clear analysis with their civic group in seconds.
Proposition Explorer
Browse ballot measures with plain-language summaries and full text access. Before an election, voters can read what each measure actually does — not just the campaign slogans — and understand the fiscal impact.
Campaign Finance Tracker
Follow the money behind any ballot measure or candidate. See which organizations are funding campaigns, how money is being spent, and who stands to benefit from the outcome.
Representative Directory
Find who represents you at every level and contact them directly. When a community cares about a local issue, they can identify the right official and reach out — all from one place.
Meeting Calendar
Browse upcoming legislative meetings with agendas and video links. A neighborhood association tracking a zoning change can find every relevant hearing and show up prepared.
Document Q&A
AI-PoweredUpload any civic document and ask questions in plain language. A journalist analyzing a 200-page budget document gets answers with citations pointing to exact passages — in minutes, not days.
Region Plugins
Add any jurisdiction's data sources without writing code. Communities configure their own data connections through declarative setup, so civic data from any state or city can flow into the platform.
Roadmap
- Region Plugin Marketplace — discover and install community-contributed data sources
- Mobile application — native iOS and Android with offline civic data access
- Multi-region federation — connect independently operated community instances into a shared network
- Community governance framework — collective decision-making for network policies and standards
- Expanded language support — community-contributed translations beyond English and Spanish
Interested in the community network? See how communities will connect and share improvements.
Community-owned from day one
This isn't a product you license. It's infrastructure you own. Every line of code is yours under AGPL-3.0. Fork it. Modify it. Make it serve your community. That's the point.
Fully transparent
Audit the code. Verify our claims.
Community-controlled
Your data. Your infrastructure. Your rules.
Collectively stronger
What one community builds, all communities gain.
Get in touch
Interested in bringing citizen-owned civic technology to your community?