- Handle terms as list or dict (Congress.gov API inconsistency)
- Infer 'House of Representatives' from district presence as fallback
- Convert district to int before str() to avoid leading zeros / 'None'
Authored by: Jack Levy
Member Effectiveness Score
- New BillCosponsor table (migration 0018) with per-bill co-sponsor
party data required for the bipartisan multiplier
- bill_category column on Bill (substantive | commemorative | administrative)
set by a cheap one-shot LLM call after each brief is generated
- effectiveness_score / percentile / tier columns on Member
- New bill_classifier.py worker with 5 tasks:
classify_bill_category — triggered from llm_processor after brief
fetch_bill_cosponsors — triggered from congress_poller on new bill
calculate_effectiveness_scores — nightly at 5 AM UTC
backfill_bill_categories / backfill_all_bill_cosponsors — one-time
- Scoring: distance-traveled pts × bipartisan (1.5×) × substance (0.1×
for commemorative) × leadership (1.2× for committee chairs)
- Percentile normalised within (seniority tier × party) buckets
- Effectiveness card on member detail page with colour-coded bar
- Admin panel: 3 new backfill/calculate controls in Maintenance section
Representation Alignment View
- New GET /api/alignment endpoint: cross-references user's stanced bill
follows (pocket_veto/pocket_boost) with followed members' vote positions
- Efficient bulk queries — no N+1 loops
- New /alignment page with ranked member list and alignment bars
- Alignment added to sidebar nav (auth-required)
Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 4.6 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Roll-call votes:
- Migration 0017: bill_votes + member_vote_positions tables
- Fetch vote XML directly from House Clerk / Senate LIS URLs
embedded in bill actions recordedVotes objects
- GET /api/bills/{id}/votes triggers background fetch on first view
- VotePanel on bill detail: yea/nay bar, result badge, followed
member positions with Sen./Rep. title, party badge, and state
Alert filter fix:
- _should_dispatch returns True when alert_filters is None so users
who haven't saved filters still receive all notifications
Authored-By: Jack Levy
ZIP lookup (GET /api/members/by-zip/{zip}):
- Two-step geocoding: Nominatim (ZIP → lat/lng) then Census TIGERweb
Legislative identify (lat/lng → congressional district via GEOID)
- Handles at-large states (AK, DE, MT, ND, SD, VT, WY)
- Added rep_lookup health check to admin External API Health panel
congress_api.py fixes:
- parse_member_from_api: normalize state full name → 2-letter code
(Congress.gov returns "Florida", DB expects "FL")
- parse_member_from_api: read district from top-level data field,
not current_term (district is not inside the term object)
Celery beat: schedule sync_members daily at 1 AM UTC so chamber,
district, and contact info stay current without manual triggering
Members page redesign: photo avatars, party/state/chamber chips,
phone + website links, ZIP lookup form to find your reps
Draft letter improvements: pass rep_name from ZIP lookup so letter
opens with "Dear Representative Franklin," instead of generic salutation;
add has_document filter to bills list endpoint
UX additions: HelpTip component, How It Works page, "How it works"
sidebar nav link, collections page description copy
Authored-By: Jack Levy
Notifications:
- New /notifications page accessible to all users (ntfy + RSS config)
- ntfy now supports no-auth, Bearer token, and HTTP Basic auth (for ACL-protected self-hosted servers)
- RSS enabled/disabled independently of ntfy; token auto-generated on first GET
- Notification settings removed from admin-only Settings page; replaced with link card
- Sidebar adds Notifications nav link for all users
- notification_dispatcher.py: fan-out now marks RSS events dispatched independently
Action history:
- Migration 0012: deduplicates existing bill_actions rows and adds UNIQUE(bill_id, action_date, action_text)
- congress_poller.py: replaces existence-check inserts with ON CONFLICT DO NOTHING (race-condition safe)
- Added backfill_all_bill_actions task (no date filter) + admin endpoint POST /backfill-all-actions
Authored-By: Jack Levy
Lazy-enriches member profiles on first view via Congress.gov detail API.
Adds office address, phone, official website, congress.gov link, birth
year, terms history, leadership roles, and sponsored/cosponsored counts.
Includes DB migration 0007 for new member columns.
Co-Authored-By: Jack Levy
