CivicLens AI

Social Impact Track

Inspiration

We wanted to solve a real problem: how everyday people can quickly and reliably understand government policies, city regulations, or community updates without digging through long, confusing documents. Most civic information is difficult to access, fragmented, or full of jargon. CivicLens AI was built to bridge that gap and make civic knowledge transparent and accessible.

What it does

CivicLens AI takes complex government or community documents, processes them, and provides clear, conversational summaries. Users can ask questions in natural language and instantly get simplified, accurate answers backed by the original sources. It simplifies text, flags bias, verifies claims, and provides accessibility features like dyslexia-friendly formatting and text-to-speech.

How we built it

We combined Perplexity for real-time, source-backed answers with Groq for fast LLM inference. CivicLens AI was developed with a React frontend for a clean, user-friendly interface, while the backend integrates APIs to fetch, process, and summarize civic documents. All outputs include citations for transparency.

Challenges we ran into

• Balancing accuracy with simplification so important details weren’t lost.
  
• Managing real-time queries from multiple sources while keeping latency low.
  
• Designing a UI that was simple yet informative for both casual users and researchers.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

• Successfully integrating Perplexity and Groq into a seamless pipeline.
  
• Building a system that provides both simplified content and source verification.
  
• Creating an accessible civic tech tool that empowers communities.

What we learned

Balancing speed, accuracy, and trust in AI for sensitive civic data is challenging. Transparency is critical — users need to understand why the system provides certain outputs. We also learned practical ways to integrate multiple AI APIs efficiently.

What's next for CivicLens AI

We plan to allow communities to upload their own local policies and announcements. Multilingual support will help break language barriers. We also aim to partner with local governments and universities to deploy CivicLens AI in real-world civic engagement initiatives.

Built With

• axios
• groq-api-(llama-3.1-8b-instant)
• lucide-react
• netlify-functions
• perplexity-api
• react-18
• tailwindcss
• typescript
• vite