AffordaBot

Automated Affordability Analysis for California Legislation

AffordaBot is a "Dependabot for government" - continuously monitoring new bills and regulations, analyzing their cost-of-living impact on typical families using SOTA LLMs, and presenting results through an interactive dashboard.

Tech Stack

• Backend: FastAPI (Python) + Instructor (LLM orchestration)
• Frontend: Next.js 16 + Tremor (analytics UI)
• Database: Supabase (PostgreSQL)
• Infrastructure: Railway
• LLMs: OpenRouter (Grok-beta) / OpenAI / Anthropic

Quick Start

Prerequisites

• Python 3.9+
• Node.js 18+
• Railway CLI (npm i -g @railway/cli)
• Supabase account
• OpenRouter or OpenAI API key

Local Development

1. Clone & Install

   git clone https://github.com/YOUR_USERNAME/affordabot.git
   cd affordabot
   ./scripts/bootstrap.sh
   
   # Backend
   cd backend
   python3 -m venv venv
   source venv/bin/activate
   pip install -r requirements.txt
   
   # Frontend
   cd ../frontend
   npm install
   

2. Set Environment Variables See RAILWAY_ENV.md for full list.

   # Backend (.env)
   OPENROUTER_API_KEY=sk-or-v1-...
   SUPABASE_URL=https://xxxxx.supabase.co
   SUPABASE_SERVICE_ROLE_KEY=eyJhbGc...
   
   # Frontend (.env.local)
   NEXT_PUBLIC_API_URL=http://localhost:8000
   

3. Run Services

   # Terminal 1 - Backend
   cd backend
   railway run uvicorn main:app --reload
   
   # Terminal 2 - Frontend
   cd frontend
   railway run npm run dev
   

4. Visit Dashboard Open http://localhost:3000

Deployment

See RAILWAY_ENV.md for Railway deployment instructions.

Project Structure

affordabot/
├── backend/
│   ├── main.py                 # FastAPI app
│   ├── services/
│   │   ├── scraper/           # Legislation scrapers
│   │   └── llm/               # LLM analysis
│   └── schemas/               # Pydantic models
├── frontend/
│   ├── src/
│   │   ├── app/               # Next.js pages
│   │   ├── components/        # React components
│   │   └── lib/               # API client
│   └── tailwind.config.js
├── supabase/
│   └── migrations/            # Database schema
└── railway.toml               # Deployment config

Features

• ✅ Automated bill scraping (Saratoga MVP)
• ✅ LLM-powered impact analysis (Instructor + OpenRouter)
• ✅ Interactive dashboard with percentile sliders
• ✅ Structured output validation (prevents hallucination)
• ✅ Evidence-based analysis with citations
• 🚧 Multi-jurisdiction support (planned)
• 🚧 Real-time notifications (planned)

License

MIT

Contributing

See CONTRIBUTING.md (coming soon)

Lockfile Management

We use a single root lockfile (pnpm-lock.yaml) for the entire workspace.

If you see lockfile errors in CI:

1. Run pnpm install at the repo root.
2. Commit the updated pnpm-lock.yaml.
3. Do NOT commit frontend/pnpm-lock.yaml or backend/pnpm-lock.yaml (these are gitignored).