Policy Brief Generator

Inspiration

We noticed how communities, journalists, and NGOs struggle with lengthy, jargon-heavy policy documents. Important reforms and climate plans often stay inaccessible, leaving citizens out of conversations. Inspired by the vision of “tech for democracy”, we wanted to build a tool that bridges the gap between policy and people.

What it does

The Policy Brief Generator transforms long policy documents into clear, structured summaries:

• A professional brief for policymakers, NGOs, and journalists.
• A plain-language version for communities, so everyone can understand what policies mean for their daily lives.
• It makes documents faster to digest, easier to share, and more inclusive.

How we built it

• Designed a Next.js + Tailwind frontend for file upload and results display.
• Used Firebase for storage, hosting, and quick API deployment.
• Integrated OpenAI GPT-5 with structured prompts to extract key facts, synthesize briefs, and rewrite in accessible language.
• Added jsPDF export so users can download/share the generated briefs instantly.
• Designed the flow to be fast, bilingual (English/Vietnamese), and citation-based.

Challenges we ran into

• Ensuring AI outputs were factual and grounded to original documents.
• Balancing professional policy language with plain-language summaries.
• Optimizing for speed and low cost in a hackathon setting.
• Creating a UX that felt trustworthy for sensitive policy topics.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

• Built a working demo that converts a 40+ page report into a 2-page brief in minutes.
• Produced dual outputs: one for experts, one for citizens.
• Added a citations tab so users can trace every claim back to the source.
• Created clean, branded PDFs that look professional for NGOs and media use.

What we learned

• Prompt engineering matters: structured output formats deliver higher accuracy.
• Accessibility is as important as accuracy, citizens need summaries in simple, plain language.
• Transparency builds trust: showing sources and ethical safeguards makes people more confident using AI in governance.

What's next for Policy Brief Generator

• Add multilingual support for more regions (e.g., Spanish, French, Tagalog).
• Enable collaborative editing: NGOs and journalists can annotate and co-create briefs.
• Develop an API & integrations for governments and newsrooms.
• Expand beyond policies: adapt tool for research papers, NGO reports, legal docs.

Built With

• firebase
• gpt-5
• nextjs
• openai
• tailwindcss