4c86a5b9ca
Self-hosted US Congress monitoring platform with AI policy briefs, bill/member/topic follows, ntfy + RSS + email notifications, alignment scoring, collections, and draft-letter generator. Authored by: Jack Levy
57 lines
2.5 KiB
Markdown
57 lines
2.5 KiB
Markdown
# PocketVeto
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A self-hosted platform for monitoring US Congress. Follow bills and legislators, get AI-generated policy briefs, track trending legislation, and receive alerts when bills you care about move.
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## Features
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- **Bill tracking** — search and browse all active legislation with full text and status history
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- **AI policy briefs** — LLM-generated summaries, key points, risks, and deadlines for each bill
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- **Member profiles** — legislator bios, effectiveness scores, sponsored bills, vote history, and news
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- **Follows & alerts** — follow bills, members, or policy topics; choose between neutral, pocket-veto, or pocket-boost mode per follow
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- **Notifications** — ntfy, RSS, and email (SMTP); per-channel alert filters with quiet hours
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- **Collections** — curate shareable lists of bills with a public share link
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- **Alignment view** — see how legislators vote relative to your followed bills and stances
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- **Draft letter** — AI-assisted letter generator to contact your representative on any bill
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- **Admin panel** — pipeline controls, LLM switching, user management, API health checks
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## Tech stack
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| Layer | Technology |
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| Backend | FastAPI, SQLAlchemy (async), Alembic, Celery, PostgreSQL, Redis |
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| Frontend | Next.js (App Router), TypeScript, Tailwind CSS, React Query, Zustand |
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| AI | OpenAI, Anthropic, Google Gemini, or Ollama (switchable at runtime) |
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| Infrastructure | Docker Compose, Nginx |
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## Quick start
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**Prerequisites:** Docker Engine 24+ and Docker Compose v2 on a Linux server (2 GB RAM minimum).
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**API keys you'll need:**
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| Key | Where to get it | Required? |
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| `DATA_GOV_API_KEY` | [api.data.gov/signup](https://api.data.gov/signup/) — free, instant | Yes |
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| LLM key (OpenAI / Anthropic / Gemini) | Provider dashboard | Yes (or use Ollama) |
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| `NEWSAPI_KEY` | [newsapi.org](https://newsapi.org) — free tier (100 req/day) | Optional |
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```bash
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git clone https://github.com/YOUR_USERNAME/pocketveto.git
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cd pocketveto
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cp .env.example .env
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# Edit .env — set JWT_SECRET_KEY, ENCRYPTION_SECRET_KEY, DATA_GOV_API_KEY, and your LLM key at minimum
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docker compose up --build -d
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```
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Open `http://YOUR_SERVER_IP` in a browser. The first registered account becomes admin.
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After registering, go to **Settings** and click **Trigger Poll** to load the initial bill data, then **Sync Members** to load legislator profiles.
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For detailed instructions — including SSL setup, email configuration, and updating — see [DEPLOYING.md](DEPLOYING.md) and [UPDATING.md](UPDATING.md).
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## License
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[GNU General Public License v3.0](LICENSE)
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