u/cmatera

I've been building LegisTrack — a tool for following legislation across all 50 states and Congress — and wanted to share it here since this community actually cares about the guts of civic tech.

The problem I kept hitting: state legislation is impossibly fragmented. 50 sites, 50 data formats, dense bill text, and no easy way to see the bigger patterns. So I tried to fix a few things at once:

- Bill DNA (the part I'm most proud of): it detects when a near-identical bill turns up in 5+ statehouses — the tell-tale sign of model legislation drafted once and introduced everywhere. You get a map of where a bill is "spreading." Genuinely eye-opening to watch.

- Follow the Money: pulls top donor industries for a bill's sponsor straight from official campaign-finance disclosures (20+ states + FEC so far).

- AI summaries + Q&A: plain-language explanations of dense bills, and you can ask any bill a question.

- A personalized "For You" feed: describe who you are, and it surfaces the bills that actually affect you with a one-line reason why — then drafts a message to your legislators you review and send.

- Real-time alerts on status changes, hearings, and votes.

Data comes from OpenStates + LegiScan; cross-state similarity is done with Postgres full-text + trigram matching (pg_trgm/tsvector) rather than anything fancy, which has held up surprisingly well. Stack is React/Node/Postgres, self-hosted.

It's live on the web (legis-track.com) and an iOS app is in App Store review now.

I'd genuinely love feedback from people who work in/around gov tech — especially on the model-legislation detection (false positives, edge cases) and what data sources or features would make this actually useful in your work. Happy to answer anything about how it's built.

I've been building LegisTrack — a tool for following legislation across all 50 states and Congress — and wanted to share it here since this community actually cares about the guts of civic tech.

The problem I kept hitting: state legislation is impossibly fragmented. 50 sites, 50 data formats, dense bill text, and no easy way to see the bigger patterns. So I tried to fix a few things at once:

- Bill DNA (the part I'm most proud of): it detects when a near-identical bill turns up in 5+ statehouses — the tell-tale sign of model legislation drafted once and introduced everywhere. You get a map of where a bill is "spreading." Genuinely eye-opening to watch.

- Follow the Money: pulls top donor industries for a bill's sponsor straight from official campaign-finance disclosures (20+ states + FEC so far).

- AI summaries + Q&A: plain-language explanations of dense bills, and you can ask any bill a question.

- A personalized "For You" feed: describe who you are, and it surfaces the bills that actually affect you with a one-line reason why — then drafts a message to your legislators you review and send.

- Real-time alerts on status changes, hearings, and votes.

Data comes from OpenStates + LegiScan; cross-state similarity is done with Postgres full-text + trigram matching (pg_trgm/tsvector) rather than anything fancy, which has held up surprisingly well. Stack is React/Node/Postgres, self-hosted.

It's live on the web (legis-track.com) and an iOS app is in App Store review now.

I'd genuinely love feedback from people who work in/around gov tech — especially on the model-legislation detection (false positives, edge cases) and what data sources or features would make this actually useful in your work. Happy to answer anything about how it's built.

I've been working on this as a side project - it's a web app that tracks legislation/legislators...You can check it out here: [**https://legis-track.com\*\*\](https://legis-track.com/)

**Some problems I'm trying to solve**

* Legislative websites are inconsistent across jurisdictions and hard to compare.
* It’s difficult for advocates, journalists, and engaged residents to keep a coherent view of bills across multiple states or bodies.
* Existing tracking tools often focus on Congress or are locked behind paywalled / enterprise products.
* Want to tie together eventually whether one states legislation is based on another states using AI/similarities
* Track who gives money to who in a standard way across states, even though state data is varied

**What LegisTrack tries to do**

* Aggregates legislative data (bills, sponsors, status, committees) from multiple states/federal into a single interface.
* Normalizes fields so you can search and filter by topic, sponsor, status, and timeline across jurisdictions.
* Lets you save searches and (in-progress / early) alerts for things like “new bills about X topic.”

**Who it’s for**

* Civic tech practitioners building tools or workflows on top of legislative data.
* Advocacy organizations tracking specific issue areas.
* Journalists and watchdogs who care about patterns, not just individual bills.
* Power users and policy nerds who want better tools than the default legislative sites.
* Eventually people looking to create clients/lobying

**What I’d love feedback on**

* Are there specific **workflows** (for advocates, journalists, public officials, etc) that LegisTrack doesn’t address yet?
* What additional data would make this significantly more useful (e.g., committee agendas, hearings, budgets, etc)?
* What do you consider non-negotiable for a civic tool like this to be trustworthy (e.g., transparency requirements, audit logs, provenance, governance)?
* For folks who’ve worked with legislative data before: anything I should be especially careful about in terms of naming, normalization, or jurisdiction-specific quirks?

Again, the app is at [**https://legis-track.com\*\*\](https://legis-track.com/). I’m very open to constructive criticism (UX, data model, performance, governance model, etc.) and would appreciate any feedback 

I've been working on this as a side project - it's a web app that tracks legislation/legislators...You can check it out here: https://legis-track.com

Some problems I'm trying to solve

• Legislative websites are inconsistent across jurisdictions and hard to compare.
• It’s difficult for advocates, journalists, and engaged residents to keep a coherent view of bills across multiple states or bodies.
• Existing tracking tools often focus on Congress or are locked behind paywalled / enterprise products.
• Want to tie together eventually whether one states legislation is based on another states using AI/similarities
• Track who gives money to who in a standard way across states, even though state data is varied

What LegisTrack tries to do

• Aggregates legislative data (bills, sponsors, status, committees) from multiple states/federal into a single interface.
• Normalizes fields so you can search and filter by topic, sponsor, status, and timeline across jurisdictions.
• Lets you save searches and (in-progress / early) alerts for things like “new bills about X topic.”

Who it’s for

• Civic tech practitioners building tools or workflows on top of legislative data.
• Advocacy organizations tracking specific issue areas.
• Journalists and watchdogs who care about patterns, not just individual bills.
• Power users and policy nerds who want better tools than the default legislative sites.
• Eventually people looking to create clients/lobying

What I’d love feedback on

• Are there specific workflows (for advocates, journalists, public officials, etc) that LegisTrack doesn’t address yet?
• What additional data would make this significantly more useful (e.g., committee agendas, hearings, budgets, etc)?
• What do you consider non-negotiable for a civic tool like this to be trustworthy (e.g., transparency requirements, audit logs, provenance, governance)?
• For folks who’ve worked with legislative data before: anything I should be especially careful about in terms of naming, normalization, or jurisdiction-specific quirks?

Again, the app is at https://legis-track.com. I’m very open to constructive criticism (UX, data model, performance, governance model, etc.) and would appreciate any feedback 

I've been working on this as a side project - it's a web app that tracks legislation/legislators...You can check it out here: https://legis-track.com

Some problems I'm trying to solve

• Legislative websites are inconsistent across jurisdictions and hard to compare.
• It’s difficult for advocates, journalists, and engaged residents to keep a coherent view of bills across multiple states or bodies.
• Existing tracking tools often focus on Congress or are locked behind paywalled / enterprise products.
• Want to tie together eventually whether one states legislation is based on another states using AI/similarities
• Track who gives money to who in a standard way across states, even though state data is varied

What LegisTrack tries to do

• Aggregates legislative data (bills, sponsors, status, committees) from multiple states/federal into a single interface.
• Normalizes fields so you can search and filter by topic, sponsor, status, and timeline across jurisdictions.
• Lets you save searches and (in-progress / early) alerts for things like “new bills about X topic.”

Who it’s for

• Civic tech practitioners building tools or workflows on top of legislative data.
• Advocacy organizations tracking specific issue areas.
• Journalists and watchdogs who care about patterns, not just individual bills.
• Power users and policy nerds who want better tools than the default legislative sites.
• Eventually people looking to create clients/lobying

What I’d love feedback on

• Are there specific workflows (for advocates, journalists, public officials, etc) that LegisTrack doesn’t address yet?
• What additional data would make this significantly more useful (e.g., committee agendas, hearings, budgets, etc)?
• What do you consider non-negotiable for a civic tool like this to be trustworthy (e.g., transparency requirements, audit logs, provenance, governance)?
• For folks who’ve worked with legislative data before: anything I should be especially careful about in terms of naming, normalization, or jurisdiction-specific quirks?

Again, the app is at https://legis-track.com. I’m very open to constructive criticism (UX, data model, performance, governance model, etc.) and would appreciate any feedback 

I've been working on this as a side project - it's a web app that tracks legislation/legislators...You can check it out here: https://legis-track.com

Some problems I'm trying to solve

• Legislative websites are inconsistent across jurisdictions and hard to compare.
• It’s difficult for advocates, journalists, and engaged residents to keep a coherent view of bills across multiple states or bodies.
• Existing tracking tools often focus on Congress or are locked behind paywalled / enterprise products.
• Want to tie together eventually whether one states legislation is based on another states using AI/similarities
• Track who gives money to who in a standard way across states, even though state data is varied

What LegisTrack tries to do

• Aggregates legislative data (bills, sponsors, status, committees) from multiple states/federal into a single interface.
• Normalizes fields so you can search and filter by topic, sponsor, status, and timeline across jurisdictions.
• Lets you save searches and (in-progress / early) alerts for things like “new bills about X topic.”

Who it’s for

• Civic tech practitioners building tools or workflows on top of legislative data.
• Advocacy organizations tracking specific issue areas.
• Journalists and watchdogs who care about patterns, not just individual bills.
• Power users and policy nerds who want better tools than the default legislative sites.
• Eventually people looking to create clients/lobying

What I’d love feedback on

• Are there specific workflows (for advocates, journalists, public officials, etc) that LegisTrack doesn’t address yet?
• What additional data would make this significantly more useful (e.g., committee agendas, hearings, budgets, etc)?
• What do you consider non-negotiable for a civic tool like this to be trustworthy (e.g., transparency requirements, audit logs, provenance, governance)?
• For folks who’ve worked with legislative data before: anything I should be especially careful about in terms of naming, normalization, or jurisdiction-specific quirks?

Again, the app is at https://legis-track.com. I’m very open to constructive criticism (UX, data model, performance, governance model, etc.) and would appreciate any feedback 

I've been working on this as a side project - it's a web app that tracks legislation/legislators...You can check it out here: https://legis-track.com

Some problems I'm trying to solve

• Legislative websites are inconsistent across jurisdictions and hard to compare.
• It’s difficult for advocates, journalists, and engaged residents to keep a coherent view of bills across multiple states or bodies.
• Existing tracking tools often focus on Congress or are locked behind paywalled / enterprise products.
• Want to tie together eventually whether one states legislation is based on another states using AI/similarities
• Track who gives money to who in a standard way across states, even though state data is varied

What LegisTrack tries to do

• Aggregates legislative data (bills, sponsors, status, committees) from multiple states/federal into a single interface.
• Normalizes fields so you can search and filter by topic, sponsor, status, and timeline across jurisdictions.
• Lets you save searches and (in-progress / early) alerts for things like “new bills about X topic.”

Who it’s for

• Civic tech practitioners building tools or workflows on top of legislative data.
• Advocacy organizations tracking specific issue areas.
• Journalists and watchdogs who care about patterns, not just individual bills.
• Power users and policy nerds who want better tools than the default legislative sites.
• Eventually people looking to create clients/lobying

What I’d love feedback on

• Are there specific workflows (for advocates, journalists, public officials, etc) that LegisTrack doesn’t address yet?
• What additional data would make this significantly more useful (e.g., committee agendas, hearings, budgets, etc)?
• What do you consider non-negotiable for a civic tool like this to be trustworthy (e.g., transparency requirements, audit logs, provenance, governance)?
• For folks who’ve worked with legislative data before: anything I should be especially careful about in terms of naming, normalization, or jurisdiction-specific quirks?

Again, the app is at https://legis-track.com. I’m very open to constructive criticism (UX, data model, performance, governance model, etc.) and would appreciate any feedback 

I'm working on a web app called LegisTrack to make it easier and cheaper to track legislation across different states, and I’d love some feedback from this community on whether this has a niche in the broader market.

You can check it out here: https://legis-track.com

Some problems I'm trying to solve

• Legislative websites are inconsistent across jurisdictions and hard to compare.
• It’s difficult for advocates, journalists, and engaged residents to keep a coherent view of bills across multiple states or bodies.
• Existing tracking tools often focus on Congress or are locked behind paywalled / enterprise products.
• Want to tie together eventually whether one states legislation is based on another states using AI/similarities
• Track who gives money to who in a standard way across states, even though state data is varied

What LegisTrack tries to do

• Aggregates legislative data (bills, sponsors, status, committees) from multiple states/federal into a single interface.
• Normalizes fields so you can search and filter by topic, sponsor, status, and timeline across jurisdictions.
• Lets you save searches and (in-progress / early) alerts for things like “new bills about X topic.”

Who it’s for

• Civic tech practitioners building tools or workflows on top of legislative data.
• Advocacy organizations tracking specific issue areas.
• Journalists and watchdogs who care about patterns, not just individual bills.
• Power users and policy nerds who want better tools than the default legislative sites.
• Eventually people looking to create clients/lobying

What I’d love feedback on

• Are there specific workflows (for advocates, journalists, public officials, etc) that LegisTrack doesn’t address yet?
• What additional data would make this significantly more useful (e.g., committee agendas, hearings, budgets, etc)?
• What do you consider non-negotiable for a civic tool like this to be trustworthy (e.g., transparency requirements, audit logs, provenance, governance)?
• For folks who’ve worked with legislative data before: anything I should be especially careful about in terms of naming, normalization, or jurisdiction-specific quirks?

Again, the app is at https://legis-track.com. I’m very open to constructive criticism (UX, data model, performance, governance model, etc.) and would appreciate any feedback on how this might fit into existing civic tech niche.