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Posted by foxfoxx 6 hours ago

Show HN: Govbase – Follow a bill from source text to news bias to social posts(govbase.com)
Govbase tracks every bill, executive order, and federal regulation from official sources (Congress.gov, Federal Register, White House). An AI pipeline breaks each one down into plain-language summaries and shows who it impacts by demographic group.

It also ties each policy directly to bias-rated news coverage and politician social posts on X, Bluesky, and Truth Social. You can follow a single bill from the official text to how media frames it to what your representatives are saying about it.

Free on web, iOS, and Android.

https://govbase.com

I'd love feedback from the community, especially on the data pipeline or what policy areas/features you feel are missing.

120 points | 59 commentspage 2
LPisGood 4 hours ago|
I started but could not finish a project I was calling “g(overnm)it blame” - the idea was to track each bill through committee and to the end either a sort of commit history to see which legislator (or at least which committee) added what part of the final bill.

I found it infeasible, but I’m wondering if you saw rich enough data while making this that you think such a project is viable?

jrussino 3 hours ago|
Maybe I'm too software-engineer-brained now, but to me it seems like lawmakers should just be using a tool like git directly. The legal code is a codebase, every bill is a PR, the arguments and proposed changes are captured in review comments, and the PR is accepted/rejected on a vote.

Aside from "lawmakers don't/won't understand the tool", why not do it this way?

LPisGood 3 hours ago||
I think they pretty much do, it’s just not recorded as such in an easily retrievable format.
bc569a80a344f9c 2 hours ago||
From what I understand, it depends on the stage. The United States Code certainly tracks any and all amendments, and you can fully trace which member introduced which amendment, when and where it passed, and even verbatim floor debate.

However, the draft stage isn't documented this way. Members negotiate whatever between themselves (well, really their staffers) and this happens over email, in discussions, via Word documents - whatever works.

I guess in the git metaphor, drafts are in flux while being worked on as a commit, and are squashed and then accessible as such squashed commits once initially introduced or whenever they lead to bill amendments. You can't necessarily track down what member was responsible for a specific sentence in an amendment.

LPisGood 2 hours ago||
The thing is that there is a voting process eventually so it can at least in principle be known which version is proposed by which legislator, or which committee.
showerst 1 hour ago||
The people behind changes aren't actually as attributable as it sounds though because amendment text gets collaborated on, so showerst might propose an amendment with the key parts of LPisGood's wishlist in it, and then the bill itself will die and then various parts will get cherry picked into an omnibus bill in 6 months anyway.
foxfoxx 2 hours ago||
Checkout has been fixed for anyone who wanted to try Pro!
rgeers 5 hours ago||
This looks pretty interesting. How are you linking the related news for each policy item?
cyanydeez 1 hour ago||
One would, naively assume, there's some skew that slowly happens between the source text and the social posts.

In reality, the social posts no longer need to do anything but lie about whatever the title might mean.

foxfoxx 1 hour ago|
Right and the goal with Govbase is to show that disconnect in plain view. Hold representatives accountable to their actions against their words having them right next to each other.
j16sdiz 5 hours ago||
Can you prompt the AI to highlight some "hidden/unexpected causes"?

For example, the bill title say fixing hospitals, but it contains some policy changes about housing.

foxfoxx 5 hours ago|
I think that's a good idea to highlight "unexpected impact". Our system gets the whole policy for analysis so if there is something like housing impacts within a medical focused bill, Renters and Home Owners impacts should show up.
eiiot 4 hours ago||
The dismiss button on the top banner doesn't work after I click onto the trial page.
foxfoxx 4 hours ago|
Thanks for the feedback! We've tested it on a few different browsers. Can I just get what browser you're using and if on mobile? Thanks!
OgsyedIE 6 hours ago||
Is it federal-only?
foxfoxx 6 hours ago|
Yes but state level actions are definitely on the roadmap!
pronouncedjerry 5 hours ago||
Not able to create account via Apple - invalid_request: Invalid web redirect url.
foxfoxx 5 hours ago||
Thank you! The web app launched less than a month ago so definitely still working on bugs. I will get this fixed today. I appreciate the notice.
foxfoxx 5 hours ago||
Should be fixed! If you'd like to try again. Thank you.
seany 2 hours ago||
What's the recommended way to consume this with other ai? What kind of api is available?
measurablefunc 3 hours ago|
Some of the headlines do not make sense, e.g. https://govbase.com/story/pvxDaH9fXqXUj8yu9Plc. But overall I think this is a great idea.
foxfoxx 3 hours ago|
Yes I just noticed this bug today where there is some character limit impacting story headlines. I appreciate the feedback and will be looking into it today.
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