Pinpoints

landing page
main map homepage
article summary display + read more options

Inspiration

Canadian politics affects us all, but staying informed shouldn't feel impossible. News algorithms trap us in echo chambers, complex legislation passes with little explanation, and most Canadians have no idea how new policies actually impact their daily lives. We built Pinpoints to fix that through making Canadian issues accessible, transparent, and personally relevant, curated from Canada's most trustworthy publications.

What it does

Pinpoints revolutionizes how people learn about current events and legislation by:

Aggregating diverse news sources on the same topic, providing multiple perspectives at a glance
Visualizing legislation geographically on an interactive map, showing which bills affect specific regions, and where decisions are being made.
Summarizing complex articles using AI to distill key points in seconds
Detecting political bias to help users recognize left, center, and right-leaning perspectives
Personalizing impact analysis with "How it affects you" insights based on user profile

How we built it

We used Next.js, React, Tailwind CSS, and Framer Motion on the frontend for responsive, animated visualizations with Mapbox. On the backend, we built an Express.js server that orchestrates a data pipeline: fetching articles from Current News API, and analyzing with its content Google's Gemini API for summarization, bias detection, and impact assessment.

Challenges we ran into

Our biggest challenge was coordinating separate APIs (Current News and Gemini) in a reliable pipeline while managing rate limits and costs. Getting consistent JSON outputs from Gemini required significant prompt engineering. Geocoding legislation to map coordinates was complex, as not all bills have clear geographic associations. Balancing instant results with API costs forced tough decisions about on-demand versus pre-processing strategies.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We built a complete pipeline that transforms raw article URLs into actionable, bias-aware, personalized insights in seconds. Our interactive map successfully plots political issues geographically, and our AI-powered bias detection works reliably. Most importantly, we created something that we would actually use to keep up with our world.

What we learned

Architecture matters more than features—our initial monolithic approach taught us the value of separation of concerns. AI is powerful but unpredictable; prompt engineering requires iteration. Working with multiple external APIs taught us defensive programming and the importance of caching. We learned that users don't want every feature—they want the ones that work flawlessly.

What's next for Pinpoints

We plan to integrate Congress.gov API for real-time bill tracking, add community discussion forums with AI moderation, develop a mobile app, and implement personalized news digests that break filter bubbles. Long-term, we envision educational partnerships with schools and international expansion to cover legislation worldwide. Our ultimate goal: create an informed generation that engages with democracy through understanding, not outrage.