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Thank you all for the feedback! I have already started to incorporate some design changes based on suggestions and am looking into AI analysis improvements.

I am also launching on Product Hunt tonight 12am PST if anyone sees this. Would love the support!

https://www.producthunt.com/products/govbase

super cool to see a similar project! I'll take a look. Yes I use a mix of Gemini and Claude for certain simple categorizing to full impact analysis.

to be clear impact groups are things like government programs (e.g. snap benefits), disabilities, immigration status, etc. They're not "democrat vs republican". The whole point of Govbase is for users to be able to follow things that matter to them and see how the government is impacting their lives.

You can take a look at https://govbase.com/methodology for more info.

This is what "stories" are which I agree will be the headline eventually but its still in development.

I think if you found me on LinkedIn you'd find this comment very ironic. I'm trying to perfect "stories" more before I make them the main feed since they're the core of bringing news, policy, and social posts together.

The idea is to have ordinary people read their news with the facts and the impacts. You don't need to engage with MSF or your food bank for them to make an impact. Bringing policy impact to news does require engagement - it requires interest. This tool isn't for policy researchers and that is exactly why it's not the exact thing you described. Every day people need to use it not people starving or in a war zone.

Right and the goal with Govbase is to show that disconnect in plain view. Hold representatives accountable to their actions against their words having them right next to each other.

So policy feeds are dynamic news headlines because no one really wants to click on or understands:

"Making further consolidated appropriations for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2026, and for other purposes."

This is similar to how most people don't want to read the raw source bill text which is why it's at the bottom. The reason policies aren't direct links to congress.gov is because I've spent more time than most on congress.gov and the federal register and on one wants to do that.

My first commit on this project was Feb 22, 2025 so I'm sure you're happy to find out there is plenty of "why" to my answers and that these are all my design decisions.

Yes! If you go to the engage tab you can look up some reps and the policies they're sponsoring but I plan on giving impact scores and where certain reps are focusing their time in the future.

Thanks! I'll look into these UX/UI ideas. As for the news, it's front and center because I want Govbase to be a site/app people regularly visit and policy does move slow. Even when a bill is introduced it can take weeks for the actual text content of the bill to show up on congress.gov. Plus on weekends/recess the government doesn't move.

I am planning to bring out more of the impact highlights from the policies to see what's "trending" or what certain reps are working on but just plans for now.

Checkout has been fixed for anyone who wanted to try Pro!

Yes I just noticed this bug today where there is some character limit impacting story headlines. I appreciate the feedback and will be looking into it today.

For context, this is a solo project I've been building over the past year while working full-time. I've been responding as "we" in the comments since I got used to doing it other places lol

Looking for feedback and advice. I'm an engineer, not a journalist or policy researcher, so a lot of this domain is still new to me despite working on it for a year.

Thanks for the feedback! We've tested it on a few different browsers. Can I just get what browser you're using and if on mobile? Thanks!

Thanks! This actually started as a mobile app. I hope you check that out too!

We're early stage, but I believe there's a space between news and actual policy that no one's filling well. If you can show people that their representatives are making their lives better or worse, with real policy behind it, they'll care.

Right now, too many people are consuming misinformation from sources they believe are legitimate, and increasingly from social media where real people are getting their news. We need to connect the policy, the personal impact ("you're losing your insurance because of X"), the news, and what politicians are actually saying, all in one place, to bring real facts to the misinformation and make government more transparent.

Thanks! The original goal of Govbase is to make US Policy impact easy to understand for citizens. For more government transparency so people know how their representatives are spending their time and who they're actually working for.

I agree and will be taking this feedback seriously. Daily briefings need more refinement since that is the first thing a user reads.

I think that's a good idea to highlight "unexpected impact". Our system gets the whole policy for analysis so if there is something like housing impacts within a medical focused bill, Renters and Home Owners impacts should show up.

Understandable. Our priority right now is politician and agency posts though and these accounts are just not very active on mastodon or threads. We can look further into it and another comment mentioned this too.

Should be fixed! If you'd like to try again. Thank you.

Thanks for the feedback! We mainly include Truth social since Trump and a few of his closest administration are active on there and a large goal of Govbase is to follow the story from Trump posting about tariffs, the news reacting, the EO happening, etc.

I would love to include more Bluesky posts, besides it seeming more balanced - it's also free data compared to X. However, most political social posts happen on X. Even AOC, who is the most followed account on Bluesky still I think is more active on X than Bluesky.

Thank you! The web app launched less than a month ago so definitely still working on bugs. I will get this fixed today. I appreciate the notice.

Very true. We're constantly trying to refine this and eventually plan on hiring policy researchers for a human in the loop but we just don't have the funding for that currently. We are trying to be transparent for how our scoring does work which you can read more about here: https://govbase.com/methodology

The biggest issue we have found, as you have mentioned, is just the larger context. For example (I don't think this is a real example and would need to check), the TikTok purchase deal could be ranked as an overall benefit for gig workers making content since the outlined alternative was a flat out ban hurting their income. So a deal going through, alleviating that alternative of a ban, in a vacuum is good. However, that ignores the larger context of where that option even came from and the surrounding political context around that deal. So we know the system isn't perfect right now and we're constantly trying to optimize to get the larger picture.

Yes but state level actions are definitely on the roadmap!

Thanks for the info!