Local government is where decisions most directly shape daily life — and where local journalism has retreated furthest. CivicCast turns the public record of city government — hours of meeting video almost nobody watches — into journalism people actually use. It’s an open source project, run as civic infrastructure and funded by the communities it serves.
The code is being prepared for open release under the MIT license. The methodology of an AI journalism tool should be inspectable.
The State of Local News 2025 counts news deserts at a record high, with roughly 50 million Americans having limited access to local news. Meanwhile, cities record thousands of public meetings every week — zoning, budgets, public safety, infrastructure — that are posted online and watched by almost no one.
The Bozeman Brief proved a different path works: a twice-weekly podcast recapping every commission and advisory board meeting, plus a searchable chronicle of transcripts and public comment that adds to the permanent public record. CivicCast is that pipeline, being reshaped into a form built to outlast any business — an open source project, funded by the communities it serves, not a product sold to city hall.
The proof that this works — running live on Bozeman, Montana city government, and the template every other community copies.
20+ hours of meetings → ~1 hour of audio each week
Automated, conversational recaps of Bozeman city government. From the City Commission to 13 advisory boards, every public session is covered — so residents never miss a decision that affects their community. Browse every episode, transcript, and public-comment record at bozeman.civiccast.ai.
Every public meeting flows through the same automated pipeline — with a human producer in the loop before anything publishes.
Meeting video is pulled automatically from Granicus, Swagit, EvoGov, and other municipal platforms after each session.
AI transcribes the full audio and identifies speakers — commissioners, staff, and public commenters — by name, with timestamps.
AI writes the podcast script and written recap under a wire-service standard: attributed claims, no editorializing, no loaded language.
A human producer verifies speaker identification and reviews every episode before it publishes to the podcast feed and the searchable archive.
An engaging, two-host conversational recap of the meeting — on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and a dedicated city feed, usually within a day.
A plain-language article covering what was decided — the motions, votes, and public comment — ready to read or share as local news.
Timestamped, speaker-identified transcripts linked to the source video. Search any word, jump to the moment, and rely on it as a permanent public record.
Two halves that reinforce each other — one keeps the project trustworthy and forkable, the other keeps cities live.
The full pipeline, dashboard, and editorial prompts are being prepared for public release under the MIT license. Open code serves trust (the methodology of an AI journalism tool should be inspectable), continuity (any community can keep going, no matter what happens to the maintainer), and contribution (new platform adapters, prompt improvements, output formats).
Anyone may self-host — including commercially. Self-hosters get documentation and a friendly wave.
Code being prepared for open release — the public repository goes live at launch.
CivicCast centrally operates the pipeline for cities that have been adopted by a community sponsor. A sponsor pays $50–100/month — sized to break even on processing and hosting, not to profit — and takes on the producer role: reviewing speakers and episodes before they publish.
Sponsorships are shareable — neighbors, a civic group, a library, a local business, or the city itself can split one.
Adopt Your City →These aren’t marketing promises — they’re rules the project holds itself to.
If a sponsorship lapses, new episodes pause after a grace period and the city moves to “seeking sponsor” status — but every transcript and published episode stays up permanently. The archive is the civic asset.
Every city site carries a visible corrections policy and a plain-language “how this is made” page. When we get something wrong, we say so in the open.
Each recap points back to the original meeting video and transcript, so anyone can check the record for themselves. Trust is verifiable, not asserted.
Sponsorships are priced to cover costs, not to profit. At launch, every dollar will be visible in a public ledger (via Open Collective) — so every sponsor, and every skeptic, can see exactly what each city costs.
CivicCast keeps a local human accountable in every city and keeps the maintainer’s per-city labor near zero — the constraint that has killed prior efforts in this space.
Runs the hosted infrastructure, maintains the codebase, stewards the editorial standards, and onboards new cities.
Residents, civic groups, League of Women Voters chapters, libraries, local businesses — or the city itself. Funds a city and reviews its episodes before they publish.
The open source community: platform adapters, prompt refinement, dashboard features, and documentation. Adapters are the most natural place to start.
Anyone can run their own instance under the MIT license, supported by documentation. Fork it and keep your community informed.
Want to adopt your city, help fund the network, contribute code, or run your own instance? Tell us what you have in mind and we’ll be in touch.
Maintainer & operator, CivicCast
A city costs roughly $30–45/month to operate, and onboarding is a config file — a video source, a board list, and voice settings — not a weekend of custom work.
