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By The PeoplePublic Decision Intelligence

Changelog

Versioned methodology, versioned trust.

Every change to methodology, coverage, product, infrastructure, or trust language lands here. Append-only. The corrections log covers per-record factual fixes; this log covers product-wide changes.

  1. 2026-06-04Product

    Civic Wrapped, “what moved” feed, and privacy-first analytics

    Three more on-brand growth surfaces. Civic Wrapped (/wrapped) turns your tracked causes into a shareable personal recap — causes tracked, records connected, how many moved, top topics — as a 1200×630 + 1080×1920 card; the shared link carries the stats so it unfurls and recipients can make their own. /today is a public, shareable “what moved in the public record” feed (the latest indexed changes, every item sourced) with its own summary card — honest, never breaking-news speculation. And privacy-respecting analytics (Plausible, no cookies/PII) now instrument the viral loop: share, cause_created, and subscribe events fire from the real actions, so the loop can finally be measured. All numbers are real; nothing fabricated. Reachable from the home feed, causes page, and footer.

    Append-only entry · ledger position 25
  2. 2026-06-04Product

    Shareable “your government” card — a postable civic snapshot

    A viral artifact that stays nonpartisan. Every ZIP now has a public page at /gov/<zip> showing who represents you and the records affecting your area, with a share-ready card — a 1200×630 social image and a 1080×1920 vertical/story image rendered from real data (your senators, House member by district, indexed-record count). Native share sheet on mobile, plus copy/Tweet/Bluesky. An honest local social-proof line shows the real number of subscribers near you (or invites you to be the first) — never a fabricated count. These per-ZIP pages are indexed (new sitemap section) so they double as answer pages for “who represents me.” Reachable from /near-me. No outrage, no scoring — just true, personal, sourced facts made easy to post.

    Append-only entry · ledger position 24
  3. 2026-05-30Product

    Polish v1: tighter home, subscribe-first digest, balanced desktop, one voice

    A self-audit pass on flow and craft. Home cut from nine stacked sections to five — removed the duplicate issue list and two redundant activity feeds, so after the hero the page reads as intentional. The /digest page now leads with the subscribe form and a live sample of the actual email; operator stats moved to a secondary 'under the hood' section. Desktop hero is a balanced two-column layout (it was wasting the right half). Voice unified: causes, digest, and cause-detail copy dropped the internal jargon ('indexed records', 'score alignment') for the plain hero voice. Header fixed: full brand name no longer truncates, 'Near me' no longer wraps, search trigger compacted. Tapping a hero issue now maps to a real starter cause, so it inherits curated topics and a proper outcome (richer matches, no title-equals-outcome duplication). Cause page: clearer primary action and the destructive Delete demoted out of the primary row.

    Append-only entry · ledger position 23
  4. 2026-05-29Product

    Home hero rebuilt for first-touch clarity

    A first-time visitor now knows exactly what to do. The hero leads with a plain question — 'What is your government doing about the things you care about?' — and a single obvious action: tap one of six concrete issues. One tap creates that cause and lands you on its dashboard, which opens with 'You're tracking this — below are the records behind it, your representatives, and how to get alerts.' A 3-step how-it-works (pick → see records + reps → get alerts) orients the rest; free-text 'describe your own' (with the live match count) is demoted to secondary; product jargon (indexed, source-anchored, alignment scoring) moved out of the headline to a quiet trust line. Replaces the previous choice-overloaded hero that left users unsure what to do.

    Append-only entry · ledger position 22
  5. 2026-05-28Coverage

    Near me: your government at every level, from one ZIP

    /near-me is now a ladder of who represents you. Enter a ZIP (address-style autocomplete) and see your US senators + House member (live now from the bundled dataset), your state legislators (OpenStates, by your exact point), and city/county officials where covered — never invented; where no free roster exists, we say so and link the official source. Federal members show recent sponsored legislation via the Congress.gov API. Indexed bills and local files for your place sit alongside each level, plus your causes scoped to the area. Two new integrations (Congress.gov, OpenStates) read API keys and degrade gracefully — the page ships fully today on federal data and lights up state + votes the moment the keys are set. Also: the home hero now creates your cause in one tap and drops you straight on the cause page (matches + your reps + activity) instead of a cold form.

    Append-only entry · ledger position 21
  6. 2026-05-27Product

    Plural-tolerant matching + clearer no-match prompt

    The live hero match and the cause matcher now tolerate plurals — typing “wildfires”, “schools”, or “streets” matches records that say “wildfire”, “school”, “street” (light singularization; the reverse already worked). When a query genuinely has no indexed records yet, the hero no longer reads as a dead end: it states plainly that nothing matches yet, explains coverage is expanding, and offers a one-tap “Track it anyway” so you are first to know when a record lands. No fabricated matches — a true zero stays an honest zero.

    Append-only entry · ledger position 20
  7. 2026-05-26Product

    Mobile app-feel: bottom nav, install nudge, native share, ergonomics

    Made the phone experience feel like an app, not a website — without dark patterns. New bottom thumb-nav (Home, Causes, Search, Reps) on mobile; the Search tab opens the same command palette. Add-to-Home-Screen nudge (Android install prompt + an iOS Safari hint), dismissible and remembered. Native share sheet (navigator.share) on share surfaces so you get AirDrop/Messages/WhatsApp, with the copy + Tweet/Bluesky fallback intact. Ergonomic pass: every input is now 16px on mobile (kills the iOS focus-zoom jolt) while staying compact on desktop; tap targets bumped to ~44px (modal close buttons, the keyword-remove control, place buttons); viewport-fit=cover for notch/safe-area; inputmode/enterKeyHint/autocomplete on ZIP, email, and search fields. Layout fixes: vote-count grid no longer crushes to four columns on small screens, the digest email preview is capped to 70vh on phones, and long RSS/share URLs no longer trigger zoom.

    Append-only entry · ledger position 19
  8. 2026-05-25Product

    Email subscriptions + automated digest delivery

    The return loop is now automatic. Subscribe by email on /digest with a chosen cadence; your ZIP and causes (if set) personalize what you get. Double opt-in — nothing sends until you click the confirmation link — and one-click unsubscribe (RFC 8058 List-Unsubscribe) in every message. A daily Vercel Cron sends weekly subscribers on Mondays and daily subscribers each day, with same-day dedupe so a re-run never double-sends. Subscribers live in a managed Redis store (no email in cookies, no public exposure); the cron refuses to run unless CRON_SECRET is set, so bulk mail is never an open endpoint. Privacy policy updated to cover exactly what a subscription stores and how unsubscribe erases it.

    Append-only entry · ledger position 18
  9. 2026-05-24Product

    Funnel v1: live hero matching, no more dead ends, real return loop

    Three conversion fixes. (1) Live hero matching: the home page now matches a cause to indexed records as you type — see the count before you commit, then continue into a pre-filled wizard. (2) No more dead ends: a cause that matches nothing now shows the closest coverage by word overlap (labeled loose, never exact), one-tap refine/search/digest actions, and your actual federal representatives by ZIP instead of a blank panel; the day-one activity log offers next steps instead of an empty box. (3) Real return loop: the digest send endpoint is documented as live (Resend, operator-secret auth, dry-run) and now carries your causes, so delivered digests include per-cause sections. Methodology unchanged: loose matches are labeled non-exact, no alignment scoring anywhere, missing still means missing.

    Append-only entry · ledger position 17
  10. 2026-05-23Product

    Causes v3: per-cause OG, RSS, suggestions, activity log, overlap detection

    Per-cause OG image at /og/cause renders the cause title, outcome, matched counts, and jurisdictions in the brand voice. Opt-in per-cause RSS at /feed/causes/<encoded>.xml lets anyone subscribe in any RSS reader — the cause is base64url-encoded into the URL itself (no server storage; publishing is explicit and the URL is public). Related-cause suggestions on every cause page surface 4 starter cards that share topics or keywords. Cause activity log shows recent record movement since you started tracking (event type, date, since-or-before marker). Wizard now detects overlap with existing causes (Jaccard across topics/keywords/jurisdictions; threshold 0.4 OR shared 3+) and surfaces a sharpen-instead-of-duplicate warning with links to the existing causes.

    Append-only entry · ledger position 16
  11. 2026-05-22Product

    Causes v2: edit, action plan, digest integration, track-as-cause, search

    Causes become the brain of the product. New /causes/[id]/edit in-place editor; new /causes/[id]/actions five-step structured action plan; /digest and /api/digest/preview now build per-cause sections when the user has causes; new Track as cause button on every bill, local file, and federal-rep page that pre-fills the cause with the record's topics + jurisdiction; user's causes now appear at the top of CMD+K results with a Your cause label. Methodology guardrails unchanged: product never scores alignment of any record or rep to a cause; user judges.

    Append-only entry · ledger position 15
  12. 2026-05-21Product

    Causes important to you (THE angle)

    Reframed the product around what people actually want — their causes, in their own words. New /causes index, /causes/new wizard with 12 balanced starter cards, /causes/[id] detail with matched bills/local files/topics/reps, cause-scoped digest preview, anonymous shareable card. Home page leads with Your causes. Causes stay private in a first-party cookie unless explicitly shared. The product matches indexed records to a cause via topic + jurisdiction + keyword overlap; the user judges alignment. The product never scores any rep or record as for/against a cause.

    Append-only entry · ledger position 14
  13. 2026-05-21Coverage

    RSS, iCal, per-connector pages

    Subscribable feeds for journalists and RSS clients. /feed.xml carries source-anchored civic-record changes; /calendar.ics carries upcoming legislative milestones. Each source connector now has its own page documenting status, freshness, and ingestion requirements.

    Append-only entry · ledger position 13
  14. 2026-05-21Trust

    Plain-language summaries, public changelog

    Every indexed record can carry a plainLanguage callout that translates procedural language into normal English. The translation is labeled as translation only; legal effect remains the official record. This changelog records every methodology or product change in public.

    Append-only entry · ledger position 12
  15. 2026-05-21Product

    PWA install support

    Web app manifest, icons, and theme colors are in place. The site is now installable to the iOS or Android home screen. Three home-screen shortcuts: Ask records, Your reps, Top topics.

    Append-only entry · ledger position 11
  16. 2026-05-21Coverage

    State directory hubs

    /state/[abbr] for all 50 states, DC, and 5 territories. Each hub aggregates federal delegation, indexed state-level bills, indexed local files, and source connectors covering the jurisdiction.

    Append-only entry · ledger position 10
  17. 2026-05-21Product

    Universal search (CMD+K)

    551 indexed entities — all 536 current U.S. Congress members + bills + local files + topic pages + source connectors — are now searchable from anywhere via Cmd/Ctrl+K. Server-rendered full results at /search.

    Append-only entry · ledger position 9
  18. 2026-05-21Coverage

    Federal representative pages

    All 536 current members of the U.S. Congress now have source-anchored civic profiles at /federal/[slug] with chamber, district, party, contact information, and Bioguide ID. Voting records, sponsorships, and committee actions are added per profile as ingestion lands.

    Append-only entry · ledger position 8
  19. 2026-05-21Coverage

    National ZIP coverage

    Place lookup now resolves any US ZIP via a two-stage fallback (zippopotam.us centroid + US Census Geographies congressional-district lookup). Static metro table still hits first for speed.

    Append-only entry · ledger position 7
  20. 2026-05-21Product

    Shareable quote cards and per-record share buttons

    Each indexed record now has a Share a sourced fact button with auto-generated presets (status, vote count, amendment summary, sponsor). Every share renders a dynamic OG card carrying the official source citation.

    Append-only entry · ledger position 6
  21. 2026-05-21Trust

    Trust foundation: about, corrections, privacy, terms

    Public governance pages: /about (named operators, funding model, allowed and disallowed donors, independence pledge), /corrections (append-only log of factual changes, with Report a correction button on every record page), /privacy, and /terms.

    Append-only entry · ledger position 5
  22. 2026-05-21Methodology

    Stakeholder.position enum removed

    Stakeholder records no longer carry a For/Against/Informational/Not-stated enum, which functioned as partisan tagging by another name. They now render the publicStatement verbatim with a Verbatim from the public record. No partisan tagging applied. label.

    Append-only entry · ledger position 4
  23. 2026-05-21Infrastructure

    Cron-protected freshness monitor

    Vercel Cron triggers /api/cron/refresh-leginfo daily at 9am UTC. Re-pings every indexed source URL; posts to CORRECTIONS_WEBHOOK_URL when any source returns 4xx or 5xx.

    Append-only entry · ledger position 3
  24. 2026-05-21Product

    Public API with citation policy

    22 endpoints under /api/* return JSON with a citation header. Companion files: /llms.txt for LLM grounding, /.well-known/civic-records.json for tooling discovery. /developers documents every endpoint.

    Append-only entry · ledger position 2
  25. 2026-05-21Infrastructure

    Launch baseline

    Public launch of bythepeopleforthepeople.com. Source-anchored. Nonpartisan. Missing data labeled missing.

    Append-only entry · ledger position 1
Changelog | By The People, For The People