policypatterns

What if policy research scaled liked web search? policypatterns is an experiment in building cross-jurisdiction policy datasets using web-enabled LLMs, saving researchers hundreds of hours of time.

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policypatterns is an experimental tool to help researchers, analysts, and advocates collect public policy data, one question, one jurisdiction at a time.

Across the internet, public policy is published in thousands of formats, websites, PDFs, and local statutes. We believe access to this information shouldn’t be a barrier to research, compliance, or public understanding.

With policypatterns, you can:

  • Ask a structured question (e.g. "Is there a plastic bag ban in each U.S. state?")
  • Select an answer type (measure, category, list)
  • Automatically generate a structured dataset from web-based sources using large language models (LLMs)
  • Explore previous outputs in a searchable catalog

💡 Why We Built This

We’ve worked in government, policy, and research and kept running into the same problem:

Public policy is a patchwork, but nobody wants to stitch it together.

So we started with a simple goal: make it faster and easier to ask policy questions across jurisdictions and return structured, inspectable answers.

🔍 What This Is (and Isn’t)

This is a prototype. We’re testing whether AI-assisted search can produce trustworthy, useful policy data and how humans might review or build on it.

This is not a replacement for expert legal research yet. But it could become a valuable tool for those seeking to understand policy landscapes, track changes, or analyze trends.

🤝 How We Built This

This MVP is powered by:

  • LLM-based search (via Perplexity API's structured outputs feature)
  • Lightweight frontend tools (Made with Streamlit)
  • Feedback from a small group of domain experts and researchers

We’re experimenting with open data and responsible AI — and your feedback shapes what comes next.

🧪 Built by Humans

This tool is built by humans, for humans. We’re not perfect, and neither is this tool. Want to collaborate, share feedback, or request a dataset not achievable via the UI?

📬 [Submit a note to our request form](https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfViFhKM6OmmuWfHmU6yfd4_F4uNC-Ni1WUPoyDuqOxe1bFAg/viewform?usp=header .

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