Open-source tools for AI-powered civic data access

Civic AI Tools is an open-source platform for exploring how AI can make open data more accessible. It's a website where you can try out AI-powered data queries side by side with and without tool usage. It's a package of MCP (Model Context Protocol) servers you can install to do cross-city, cross-portal analysis in the same chat. It's a directory of open data portals and the MCP servers that connect to them. And it's a growing collection of resources for AI literacy, including guidance system prompts and a model evaluation framework.

The core MCP server can access all 559 Socrata open data portals. The portal directory covers Socrata, CKAN, and ArcGIS (coming soon). The approaches to source attribution and hallucination reduction are things I'm actively developing and testing.

I started this about two years ago experimenting with connecting early versions of ChatGPT to NYC Open Data. The custom GPTs I built worked well enough to show the concept, but the tools have gotten a lot better since then — MCP in particular changes what's possible.

The gap I keep coming back to after 15 years in civic tech: cities publish thousands of datasets, but the tools to access them were built for analysts and developers. I think AI can help close that gap, and I want to build it in a way that's open, transparent, and grounded in real data.