Govbot
Projects
LegislationBills, topics, states, sponsors & status Hearings & Public CommentUpcoming hearings and how to weigh in
Know Your Ballot ↗Every race, candidate, judge & question on your ballot, by address
Illinois ↗ Michigan ↗ Minnesota ↗ Wisconsin ↗
All projectsSocial media trackers & build your own
Data
Download bill dataSpreadsheet (CSV) & JSON, free to reuse Data catalog ↗Every jurisdiction repo & path pattern Clone the datasetsgovbot clone — every dataset is a git repo Open source / GitHub ↗Read and run every pipeline
How Govbot Works GitHub Repo ↗
Open civic data · Government Transparency

See what your government is doing.
Then use the data yourself.

A nationwide layer of open legislative data. Every U.S. legislature, ready to explore, query, clone, and build on.

See the projectsGet the data
56jurisdictions — all 50 states, federal, DC & 4 territories
< 1 minto clone every dataset
$0to tag bills — private models run on free CI
2× a dayrefreshed from official sources

Govbot is built by people who believe government information should be open to everyone.

18 contributors · Meet them ↗

Projects built on Govbot

Each one runs on the same open data. Yours could be next.

1 / 5
Hearings & public comment

Can I have a say?

Upcoming hearings, and the comment or witness-slip form for each one.

See hearings
Coming up

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Know Your Ballot · Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota & Wisconsin

What's on my ballot?

Your exact ballot by address: every race, judge and question, what each job does, who's running and who's funding them. Know Your Ballot, built on Govbot, for Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin voters.

IL BallotMI BallotMN BallotWI Ballot
Illinois · next election November 3, 2026

Governor & statewide offices, U.S. Senate & House, the General Assembly and the CPS board.

Then: Chicago municipal · February 23, 2027
Michigan · next election November 3, 2026

Governor, U.S. Senate & House, every seat in Lansing, the Supreme Court, the university boards and two statewide proposals.

Then: 2027 · local elections in May, August and November
Minnesota · next election November 3, 2026

Governor & statewide offices, U.S. Senate & House, every seat in the Legislature, the Supreme Court and Court of Appeals, and a school-fund amendment.

Then: November 2, 2027 · city councils, mayors and school boards where they vote in odd years
Wisconsin · next election November 3, 2026

Governor & statewide offices, U.S. House, the Assembly and half the Senate, and three statewide questions.

Then: April 6, 2027 · spring election: a Supreme Court seat, judges and local offices
Legislation tracker · 13 topics · 4 platforms

Track legislation wherever you scroll.

Govbot's social media bots track bills from Congress and state legislatures, summarize them in plain English, and put them where you already follow the news — across Bluesky, Twitter, Threads and Instagram.

Topics tracked
AI, Data Centers & CryptoCriminal JusticeEducationElections & VotingEnvironment & ClimateHealthcareHousingImmigrationLaborLGBTQReproductive RightsTaxationTransportation
Latest from the bots · every platform

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It's open. It's yours.

Build your own

Each jurisdiction is a git repo. Tag bills with private, local models and query everything with SQL.

  1. 1
    Install
    sh -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/chihacknight/govbot/main/actions/govbot/scripts/install-nightly.sh)"
  2. 2
    Run govbot

    A short wizard picks your jurisdictions and topics, then sets up a GitHub Actions workflow.

  3. 3
    Run it again — or grab one state

    Clones the data, tags bills, publishes RSS. Just want the data?

    govbot clone il
    govbot load
No install? Ask an AI.

Paste this into Claude or ChatGPT — even on your phone:

Read this guide, then follow it to answer my question:
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/chihacknight/govbot/main/llms.txt

Question: What's the status of Wyoming HB0001 in the 2025 session, who sponsored it, and what's the official source link?
Data catalog ↗Data structure ↗All commands & SQLGitHub Repo ↗

Our story

  1. 2022 · Socratic CenterFind who represents you. Joined Chi Hack Night as a breakout group.
  2. 2023 · Civi SocialChicago residents talk directly with their elected officials.
  3. 2024 · Windy CiviOne app for local, state & federal bills, with AI summaries.
  4. 2025 · DecentralizeNo new app, no private APIs: open data anyone can run.
  5. 2026 · Govbot today56 open datasets and the civic tools built on them.October · Illinois Elections v1, the original ballot guide (archived)
  6. Next · On the roadmapFrom our open GitHub issues — anyone can pick one up.
    Ask Govbot from ChatGPT or Claude ↗An MCP server, so AI assistants can query the data directly.Easier installs ↗Homebrew, npm, Docker and Windows.More of government ↗Executive actions, Chicago City Council and full bill text.Fresher, fuller data ↗Catch up lagging states and split repos by session.
    Pick a good first issue ↗

Questions

What is Govbot?

Govbot is an open-source toolkit and dataset that turns U.S. legislative activity into git repositories anyone can clone, analyze and build on. Each jurisdiction's legislation is its own repository; you can stream it as JSON Lines through Unix pipes or load it into DuckDB and query every state at once with SQL.

Who runs Govbot?

Govbot is an open-source project of Chi Hack Night, built by its contributors. The code and the data repositories are public on GitHub.

Which jurisdictions does Govbot cover?

Fifty-six: all 50 states, the federal Congress, Washington, D.C., and four territories (Guam, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands and the Northern Mariana Islands).

Is the data free to reuse?

Yes. The bill data published for download on this site (the CSV files, data.json and the per-state JSON files) is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC BY 4.0). You may share and adapt it for any purpose, including commercially, as long as you credit "Govbot (Chi Hack Night)". The underlying records are public government records. The license covers the published data, not the source code.

How current is the data?

The site rebuilds twice a day. How recent a jurisdiction's bills are depends on its scraper, and some scrapers are paused while scraping moves to a new system, so the newest bills may be missing there. Every bill record carries its own dates, and each state's repository shows when it was last updated.

Can I see the code?

Yes. The toolkit and this site: chihacknight/govbot ↗. The data: one repo per jurisdiction at govbot-data ↗.

How is the data structured?

Each bill is a folder with its metadata, action logs and bill text. See the data structure ↗.

How do I get the data?

Run govbot clone il (or all), or browse the repos ↗. To add a new jurisdiction, use the scraper template ↗.

How do I stay in touch?

Join our channel on the Chi Hack Night Slack ↗, or follow us on Bluesky, X and Instagram (links below).

From the firehose to the point.

Govbot is an open-source infrastructure and data system that turns U.S. government legislative activity into structured, version-controlled, AI-processable data that anyone can build on.

Raw government activityUnderstandable topics
Explore the projectsHow Govbot worksContribute on GitHub ↗