PublicRecord
A consumer-facing personalized tracker that watches federal agencies for new releases, decisions, and memos on the topics you care about, and delivers plain-language summaries with the original documents attached.
Civically engaged US adults who want to follow specific federal agencies or policy areas without reading 200-page PDFs
- Topic channels for issues (DOJ, FBI, EPA, FDA, DOD) plus subtopics (Epstein files, FISA, climate disclosure)
- Plain-English AI summary of each new release in 200-400 words with a one-sentence bottom line
- Comparison to the previous version when an agency re-releases an updated document
- 'Why this matters' context pulled from prior coverage so you don't have to research from scratch
High-profile fights over document releases (Epstein, JFK, UFOs) are driving spikes in public interest in agency transparency, but most people bounce off the raw PDFs; a guide layer that connects the headlines to the actual records is missing.
Real spikes tied to high-profile releases (Epstein files Dec 2025, 30k+ pages via House Oversight) and a federal FOIA infrastructure (foia.gov) that already directs traffic, but 200 searches is modest and consumer interest is event-driven rather than sustained.Justice Department releases Epstein files, with redactions and ... ↗FOIA.gov - Freedom of Information Act ↗
FOIA Tracker, Apify Federal Register Monitors, and the official Federal Register API already serve parts of this need (request tracking, B2B alerts, raw data); a true consumer-facing plain-English summarizer with attached source docs is a narrower gap than it appears.FOIA Tracker ↗Federal Register Monitor: Rules + Notices Alert API · Apify ↗
Adjacent B2B tools (FiscalNote, Bloomberg Gov, Quorum) charge thousands per year to professionals, but consumer willingness to pay for civic-engagement alerts is historically weak; freemium plus heavy B2B2C/professional pivot is the realistic path.apifyforge/regulatory-change-tracker - GitHub ↗Federal Register Alternatives (2026) — Best Open Data APIs ↗
Federal agencies are permanent, document releases are continuous, and recurring transparency fights (Epstein, JFK, FOIA reform) keep the topic evergreen regardless of administration.Public access to Epstein FBI records after 2024 unseal ↗
Public Federal Register API and FOIA.gov data plus current LLMs make the core 'watch + summarize + link to source' pipeline straightforward to build for a small team.Federal Register :: API Documentation ↗