About & Methodology | OpenUSPolitics.org

Our Mission

Congressional legislation affects every American, yet most bills are written in dense legal language that's nearly impossible for ordinary citizens to understand. OpenUSPolitics.org solves this problem by translating every major bill into plain English—with complete transparency and zero political bias.

We believe that:

• Every citizen deserves to understand what Congress is doing
• Political information should be free from partisan spin
• Technology should empower, not manipulate
• Transparency builds trust in democratic institutions

How It Works

1️⃣

Data Collection

We fetch bill text directly from the official Congress.gov API daily, ensuring our analysis is based on the authoritative source.

2️⃣

Document Processing

Bills are parsed, chunked into manageable sections, and converted into vector embeddings for efficient retrieval.

3️⃣

AI Analysis

Claude 3.5 Sonnet analyzes the bill using carefully engineered prompts designed to eliminate bias and maintain strict objectivity.

4️⃣

Traceability

Every phrase in our analysis is linked to the exact source passage, making it 100% verifiable and eliminating AI hallucinations.

Methodology

Data Source

All bill text comes from the official Congress.gov API. We do not modify, interpret, or editorialize the source text in any way.

AI Model

We use Anthropic's Claude 3.5 Sonnet (claude-sonnet-4-5-20250929), a state-of-the-art language model known for its accuracy and reasoning capabilities. The model is instructed to act as a non-partisan Congressional Research Service analyst.

RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation)

We use a hybrid RAG system combining vector similarity search (sentence-transformers) and BM25 keyword matching. This ensures the AI only analyzes text actually present in the bill, preventing hallucinations.

Prompt Engineering

Our prompts explicitly forbid:

Political opinions or editorializing
Loaded language or partisan framing
Speculation beyond the bill text
References to current events not in the bill
Predictions about political feasibility

View Technical Stack Details

Frontend: Next.js 14, React, TypeScript, Tailwind CSS

Backend: Python 3.11, FastAPI

AI: Anthropic Claude API, sentence-transformers

Vector DB: ChromaDB with persistent storage

Hosting: Cloudflare Pages (frontend), Railway (backend)

Data: Congress.gov API v3

Limitations

Important Disclaimers

Not Legal Advice: Our analysis is educational only. For legal questions, consult an attorney.
AI-Generated: While we use best practices, AI can make mistakes. Always verify important details.
Coverage: We focus on major legislation. Not all bills are analyzed.
Report Issues: Found an error? Please report it.