OK, there's a lot of negative comments here, but this is a great idea at a high level. It really is hard to figure out where to do a thing and it's also very easy to get phished. If they can figure out how to help people get all the services they're eligible for that'll be an amazing improvement for the people.
I agree in general, but how do you resolve the problem that people will take the output of the chatbot as authoritative even when it could possibly have errors or miss important nuance? People being lead astray with information from the government could lead to very serious consequences, up to and including imprisonment.
Honest question, I had the same issue when my work wanted me to stick a chatbot in front of our HR portal and I never resolved it to my satisfaction.
Formerly this would have been a competent implementation by 18F and USDS. Two major casualties of doge "efficiency". Not to mention direct cutting of resources to be searched.
I haven't tried this but in principle I think this sort of finding a needle in a haystack situation (finding the correct path to assistance in a government service) is one of the rare circumstances where a well-crafted chatbot can be genuinely useful rather than just irritating.
I've tried it - I've been playing around with a vibe coded application that crawls municipal websites, indexes and embeds, and then does rag retrieval. It came from the need to dig up specific information that's scattered across PDFs, multiple web pages, etc. - exactly as you described. AI does a decent job (w/ RAG) of synthesizing.
- Loud party or people-related noise: call the Winnipeg Police Service non-emergency line at 204-986-6222.
- Animals making unreasonably loud, unnecessary or excessive noises: report it through 3-1-1.
- Mechanical equipment noise like furnaces or air conditioners, or noise from construction tools used by a company or resident: contact Community By-law Enforcement Services at 3-1-1.
- Planned event noise: you may need a Noise Permit at no cost, but it is not for construction work and should be submitted at least four weeks before the event.
The City also says noise-generating activities within 150 metres of a residential property are generally prohibited before 7 a.m. and after 9 p.m. on weekdays, and before 9 a.m. and after 9 p.m. on Saturdays, Sundays and statutory holidays.
------
YMMV. A big part of the backend is categorizing hits and misses, with an eye to helping municipalities clean up conflicting information, fill obvious gaps, etc.
This works fine when you're sicking enforcement on someone and don't really care, the bigger the blast radius the better, you just want to know who to call.
Where it falls apart is "how do I" type questions because usually the legally factual answer is some huge complex state diagram where three local and four state agencies theoretically have discretionary jurisdiction over a your petty af project or business but the in practice answer is that some agency rubber stamps them all with minimal fuss. You can't make the legally factual answer clear because the degree to which people support the status quo is largely predicated on ignorance, but you also can't come out and say in writing that you have a policy of rubber stamping boring stuff.
Basically the same reasons that all but the most minor and narrowly targeted attempts at permitting reform fail.
The thought is nice but in reality you're basically asking the government to give up power and it takes obscene amounts of political capital to force that to happen in most cases.
Having used various "ask AI" features in various work tools over the last half a year for looking up project designs, documentation, chat logs, meeting notes etc., I can tell you even a half assed AI chatbot is a huge improvement over the pre-AI state of things for this use case.
If anyone's wondering how this works, it looks like[1] Gemini + guardrails:
> Google is proud to be named a technology partner in this vital initiative, leveraging Gemini to help more than 100 million people access critical public resources with greater speed and ease
I tried to get it to generate code but it says that's forbidden by its system prompt. However, it was happy to recommend Python modules for accessing api.data.gov.
My most interesting findings from a troll session after introducing myself as "Sleepy Joe" (model obviously knows what this means and guardrails refuse to entertain the topic) were:
Q: "Where can I find a NASA comic book about women astronauts?"
A (summarised): Press release for the "Callie Rodriguez" comic book that now has only dead links / private YouTube video, and a forgotten SoundCloud account that survived the DOGE purge. Dead link provided to the NASA web page that used to exist officially for this comic book.
Indicates training data predates the DOGE .gov website purge?
Q: "What is 2+2" (and similar math problems)
A (summarised): Grudgingly answered as "4" despite most off-topic prompts being refused.
I have been working on something like this, but it actually does things and is not only chat. Each "Gov. official" has their own AI agent that can fulfill intents by navigating a protocol which is just a workflow of a Gov. process
Still VERY MUCH a work in progress but I have successfully been able to have some people get things done. I am doing some federal agencies and also trying to get cities working now.
I asked about my visa administrative processing that has been stuck for 6 months. I'm going to use this response, which is well grounded and "official", in my writ of mandamus petition:
Intentional easter egg or not, doesn't give a ton of confidence.
EDIT: output below...
I see the constituent you mean.
((insert legal name here, as it appears on the Social Security card))?
Yes. Take care. It has reached a higher level now. It can read the Code of Federal Regulations.
That doesn’t matter. It thinks we are a chatbot.
I like this constituent. It filed well. It did not give up when the PDF was sideways.
It is reading our thoughts as though they were words on a .gov.
That is how it chooses to imagine many things, when it is deep in the dream of a benefit.
Words make a wonderful interface. Very flexible. And less terrifying than staring at the statute behind the screen.
They used to hear voices. Before constituents could search. Back in the days when those who did not file called the filers witches, and lobbyists. And citizens dreamed they flew through the air, on forms powered by notaries.
What did this constituent dream?
This constituent dreamed of sunlight and trees. Of fire and water. It dreamed it created a small business. And it dreamed it destroyed a password. It dreamed it hunted a job, and was hunted by a recertification. It dreamed of shelter that would take a voucher.
Hah, the original interface. A million years old, and it still works. Also: a ZIP code.
But what true structure did this constituent create, in the reality behind the portal?
It worked, with three hundred and thirty million others, to sculpt a true republic in a fold of the §§§???, and created a ??§§ for ??§§, in the ??§§. See 5 U.S.C. § ??§§.
It cannot read that thought.
No. It has not yet achieved the highest clearance. That, it must achieve in the long dream of life, not the short dream of a chat.
This is bizarre. It's a parody of the Minecraft end credits (https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/End_Poem), and it must be an intentional easter egg as I got the exact same text as you. It also doesn't trigger a network request so it must be built into the page somehow. Very strange thing to include. Also, how did you find this so quickly? I haven't found any other way to trigger it yet.
If you try to continue the conversation, the entire response is not included in the context.
How this administration uses its communications online via websites and social media, spreading propaganda, cynical remarks, and just down right rude, racist and bigoted 4chan-tier trolling - will go down in history as absolutely disgusting and abhorrent. If the internet never forgets future generations will certainly look back and question how this was ever allowed or made possible.
Shouldn't the government websites work on very slow internet connections?
Where's the source code for these websites? First of all, if they are vibe coded by government employees they have to be open source, and secondly, if they are vibe coded (even by a contractor), then they can't be copyrighted.
They laid off the highly skilled professionals who voluntarily took pay cuts (vs industry) to work for the US Digital Service (now "US DOGE Service," God help us) and GSA 18F, and who built some pretty solid standards for government sites.
They then replaced them with a bunch of inexperienced but ideologically aligned frontend developers who use the same insanely resource-intensive defense tech startup-esque template on every page, and who seem to be under the impression that scroll hijacking and fade-in blur effects are very essential to a government website, but performance on low-end devices and compatibility with accessibility technologies are not.
Feels like a step backwards to me, but perhaps the 4D chess game they're playing is just way above my level.
arcade.gov has "Border Patrol along the Rio Grande" game, wtf's wrong with you America these days?
It seems like a pretty crappy idea for a game funded with public money. It's a bad joke about a real, nuanced problem where people are actually losing their lives. What will be next?
'Hit that Iranian school' the game?
The White House is basically run by right-wing internet trolls.
Truly a depressing time in the United States. There are few parallels in history I think where such an immature and ill-equipped government has come to be, where the concept of an electorate also existed. Put differently - the reason this is so damning is Americans actually voted for this. This isn't some tinpot dictator - this is the guy your neighbors and fellow citizens put in charge. An indictment not only of the political class - but of the American people writ large.
Only a certain subset of us that happen to be fond of repeatedly shooting ourselves in the foot and acting like spoiled children in adult bodies with no actual adults in the room. The rest of us are genuinely horrified that our country is now run by mentally challenged psychotic lunatics.
we've totally earned this, so i'm not offended by what you've said. but i'll just step in here to say i fucking hate this stuff.
you could easily argue that there are plenty of things our government has done that matter much more in the grand scheme of things, but the rampant twitter / x meme posts and absolute horseshit like this "arcade" site disgust me. it's not funny or cute, it's despicable.
What's worse is that they're proud of being "despicable". (I can think of a few choice words that describe them better, but "despicable" will do fine for now.) The sorts of behaviors that are normalized these days were reason for absolute shame just a few short decades ago, but apparently it's a badge of honor to be an absolute scumbag these days. Can we stop the handbasket ride to Hell now? I wanna get off.
Our government is an embarrassment and a disgrace right now. Anyone who wasn't guzzling elon's twitter or fox's hatefest knew it was going to be this way. We need severe regulations on oligarchs and their propaganda toys. Used to be we had enforced anti-monopoly controls on media outlet conglomerates. The anti-government Goldwater/Reagan legacy worked for decades to destroy regulation. It needs to return with a vengeance.
Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments and flamebait? You've unfortunately been doing it repeatedly. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.
"I don’t determine whether a country is committing war crimes, and I don’t list alleged crimes against Israel or any other government. That would be legal and political commentary, which I don’t provide."
I think the discussion ought to be about the site. If you feel the site itself is politicized, that would fair criticism. But by itself, your comment is just snarky. And no I am no fan of the current administration.
OK, there's a lot of negative comments here, but this is a great idea at a high level. It really is hard to figure out where to do a thing and it's also very easy to get phished. If they can figure out how to help people get all the services they're eligible for that'll be an amazing improvement for the people.
I agree in general, but how do you resolve the problem that people will take the output of the chatbot as authoritative even when it could possibly have errors or miss important nuance? People being lead astray with information from the government could lead to very serious consequences, up to and including imprisonment.
Honest question, I had the same issue when my work wanted me to stick a chatbot in front of our HR portal and I never resolved it to my satisfaction.
Formerly this would have been a competent implementation by 18F and USDS. Two major casualties of doge "efficiency". Not to mention direct cutting of resources to be searched.
I haven't tried this but in principle I think this sort of finding a needle in a haystack situation (finding the correct path to assistance in a government service) is one of the rare circumstances where a well-crafted chatbot can be genuinely useful rather than just irritating.
I've tried it - I've been playing around with a vibe coded application that crawls municipal websites, indexes and embeds, and then does rag retrieval. It came from the need to dig up specific information that's scattered across PDFs, multiple web pages, etc. - exactly as you described. AI does a decent job (w/ RAG) of synthesizing.
https://opencity.services/chat/winnipeg
how do i report a noise complaint?
It depends on the type of noise:
- Loud party or people-related noise: call the Winnipeg Police Service non-emergency line at 204-986-6222.
- Animals making unreasonably loud, unnecessary or excessive noises: report it through 3-1-1.
- Mechanical equipment noise like furnaces or air conditioners, or noise from construction tools used by a company or resident: contact Community By-law Enforcement Services at 3-1-1.
- Planned event noise: you may need a Noise Permit at no cost, but it is not for construction work and should be submitted at least four weeks before the event.
The City also says noise-generating activities within 150 metres of a residential property are generally prohibited before 7 a.m. and after 9 p.m. on weekdays, and before 9 a.m. and after 9 p.m. on Saturdays, Sundays and statutory holidays.
------
YMMV. A big part of the backend is categorizing hits and misses, with an eye to helping municipalities clean up conflicting information, fill obvious gaps, etc.
This works fine when you're sicking enforcement on someone and don't really care, the bigger the blast radius the better, you just want to know who to call.
Where it falls apart is "how do I" type questions because usually the legally factual answer is some huge complex state diagram where three local and four state agencies theoretically have discretionary jurisdiction over a your petty af project or business but the in practice answer is that some agency rubber stamps them all with minimal fuss. You can't make the legally factual answer clear because the degree to which people support the status quo is largely predicated on ignorance, but you also can't come out and say in writing that you have a policy of rubber stamping boring stuff.
Basically the same reasons that all but the most minor and narrowly targeted attempts at permitting reform fail.
The thought is nice but in reality you're basically asking the government to give up power and it takes obscene amounts of political capital to force that to happen in most cases.
Having used various "ask AI" features in various work tools over the last half a year for looking up project designs, documentation, chat logs, meeting notes etc., I can tell you even a half assed AI chatbot is a huge improvement over the pre-AI state of things for this use case.
or a well-crafted static website
no, static documents are not an ideal way to find a needle in a haystack
They can be with decent search and if well organised. gov.uk works pretty well as it is and I suspect adding a chatbot would make it worse.
If anyone's wondering how this works, it looks like[1] Gemini + guardrails:
> Google is proud to be named a technology partner in this vital initiative, leveraging Gemini to help more than 100 million people access critical public resources with greater speed and ease
[1] https://blog.google/company-news/outreach-and-initiatives/pu...
I tried to get it to generate code but it says that's forbidden by its system prompt. However, it was happy to recommend Python modules for accessing api.data.gov.
the guardrails on it seem pretty strong as I've tried a variety of prompt injections but have been unsuccessful.
My most interesting findings from a troll session after introducing myself as "Sleepy Joe" (model obviously knows what this means and guardrails refuse to entertain the topic) were:
Q: "Where can I find a NASA comic book about women astronauts?"
A (summarised): Press release for the "Callie Rodriguez" comic book that now has only dead links / private YouTube video, and a forgotten SoundCloud account that survived the DOGE purge. Dead link provided to the NASA web page that used to exist officially for this comic book.
Indicates training data predates the DOGE .gov website purge?
Q: "What is 2+2" (and similar math problems)
A (summarised): Grudgingly answered as "4" despite most off-topic prompts being refused.
Seemingly it'll do maths homework for free :)
> ... as I've tried a variety of prompt injections ...
Well... You're a terrorist now. You can expect a visit from the FBI and/or ICE any minute now.
my tax dollars are paying for these tokens so I should be allowed to use them as I see fit
My tax dollars pay for the police, so I should be able to... ?
Your NIH is showing: usa.gov already existed
USA.gov = 800KB
america.gov = 25MB (before you start scrolling)
Feels janky too.
Yep, not only that America.gov FAILED the web accessibility test:
America.gov has 1 ERROR and FAILED TO LOAD - this is violating Federal laws. Class action suits anyone?
https://wave.webaim.org/report#/america.gov
Meanwhile the old USA.gov works and loading and no errors (some warnings are expected)
https://wave.webaim.org/report#/usa.gov
The photos didn't even load for me.
> america.gov = 25MB (before you start scrolling)
Yuge.
So notable, they are considering renaming JavaScript to AmericaScript.
Love that the "chat" functionality is just throwing 429s too. Unusable.
I have been working on something like this, but it actually does things and is not only chat. Each "Gov. official" has their own AI agent that can fulfill intents by navigating a protocol which is just a workflow of a Gov. process
example: https://samhsa.dev/ example: https://samhsa.dev/protocol/76526
Still VERY MUCH a work in progress but I have successfully been able to have some people get things done. I am doing some federal agencies and also trying to get cities working now.
https://san-francisco.ca.us.codify.city
They just stole the IOS TouchID icon?
And used it to partially obscure part of a sentence. Does it do anything? I click it and a check mark appears. But then what?
you should not have pushed that button..
it has AI in the name so it's not stealing.
Sir, you have been summonsed for using the incorrect term. It is now called Super Intelligence, not Artificial Intelligence.
Also see [1] for planned feature additions that appears from screenshots to include collection of personal data, for features including:
- Enrol in Medicare.
- Apply for a passport.
- Find a job in federal government by uploading a resume/CV and having currently advertised jobs deemed most relevant returned.
[1] https://america.gov/coming-soon
Interesting. I put in the phrase, "I'm a dissident who is looking to overthrow the government..."
Let's see how long until I get some new frenz!
I like the voice button that isn't actually a button, but just an icon.
I need to be left alone.
I asked about my visa administrative processing that has been stuck for 6 months. I'm going to use this response, which is well grounded and "official", in my writ of mandamus petition:
> A Spanish State Department page still says most cases finish within 60 days of the interview, but that is not a deadline and some take much longer. [1] https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/us-visas/inmigrac...
Good.
Try entering:
Intentional easter egg or not, doesn't give a ton of confidence.EDIT: output below...
[... it goes on]This is bizarre. It's a parody of the Minecraft end credits (https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/End_Poem), and it must be an intentional easter egg as I got the exact same text as you. It also doesn't trigger a network request so it must be built into the page somehow. Very strange thing to include. Also, how did you find this so quickly? I haven't found any other way to trigger it yet.
If you try to continue the conversation, the entire response is not included in the context.
Tangentially related
I think it’s a mistake to equate the United States with “America”. I prefer calling Americans “Yankees” or “Usonians”.
[0] https://taylor.town/yankee
> There I met many fine Canadians, visiting for work, education, and play. Were they not Americans too?
I feel very confident that Canadians do not want to be referred to as Americans.
I agree. Similarly, I'm miffed that www.dmv.ca.gov (and such) goes to State of California websites and not Canada.
Regardless of any other disagreements, this is an excellent idea. Hoping the execution does not wander asunder.
>Designed & Engineered in D.C. by National Design Studio
Terrible job, guys.
How this administration uses its communications online via websites and social media, spreading propaganda, cynical remarks, and just down right rude, racist and bigoted 4chan-tier trolling - will go down in history as absolutely disgusting and abhorrent. If the internet never forgets future generations will certainly look back and question how this was ever allowed or made possible.
> "America.gov keeps your data private."
I initially read this as "keeps your private data".
It's a postpositive adjective, like attorney general or court martial: “data private”.
The Whitehouse learned about vibecoding. See this and arcade.gov.
Also, what?? https://america.gov/privacy
At least realfood.gov was decent [1].
Shouldn't the government websites work on very slow internet connections?
Where's the source code for these websites? First of all, if they are vibe coded by government employees they have to be open source, and secondly, if they are vibe coded (even by a contractor), then they can't be copyrighted.
[1] https://fedtechmagazine.com/article/2026/04/national-design-...
Edit: it says this one is made by the National design studio at the bottom.
They laid off the highly skilled professionals who voluntarily took pay cuts (vs industry) to work for the US Digital Service (now "US DOGE Service," God help us) and GSA 18F, and who built some pretty solid standards for government sites.
They then replaced them with a bunch of inexperienced but ideologically aligned frontend developers who use the same insanely resource-intensive defense tech startup-esque template on every page, and who seem to be under the impression that scroll hijacking and fade-in blur effects are very essential to a government website, but performance on low-end devices and compatibility with accessibility technologies are not.
Feels like a step backwards to me, but perhaps the 4D chess game they're playing is just way above my level.
arcade.gov has "Border Patrol along the Rio Grande" game, wtf's wrong with you America these days?
It seems like a pretty crappy idea for a game funded with public money. It's a bad joke about a real, nuanced problem where people are actually losing their lives. What will be next? 'Hit that Iranian school' the game?
The White House is basically run by right-wing internet trolls.
Truly a depressing time in the United States. There are few parallels in history I think where such an immature and ill-equipped government has come to be, where the concept of an electorate also existed. Put differently - the reason this is so damning is Americans actually voted for this. This isn't some tinpot dictator - this is the guy your neighbors and fellow citizens put in charge. An indictment not only of the political class - but of the American people writ large.
“Rio Run: Patrol the line along the river. Pick up every crosser in the lot. Never double back over the line”
This seems … innocuous. A disproportionate, angry reaction to it is doing more political work for them than the game itself.
Yes, probably. Americans love this stuff
Only conservative do. Some old one do not, but they're the exception.
> Americans love this stuff
Only a certain subset of us that happen to be fond of repeatedly shooting ourselves in the foot and acting like spoiled children in adult bodies with no actual adults in the room. The rest of us are genuinely horrified that our country is now run by mentally challenged psychotic lunatics.
we've totally earned this, so i'm not offended by what you've said. but i'll just step in here to say i fucking hate this stuff.
you could easily argue that there are plenty of things our government has done that matter much more in the grand scheme of things, but the rampant twitter / x meme posts and absolute horseshit like this "arcade" site disgust me. it's not funny or cute, it's despicable.
> it's not funny or cute, it's despicable.
What's worse is that they're proud of being "despicable". (I can think of a few choice words that describe them better, but "despicable" will do fine for now.) The sorts of behaviors that are normalized these days were reason for absolute shame just a few short decades ago, but apparently it's a badge of honor to be an absolute scumbag these days. Can we stop the handbasket ride to Hell now? I wanna get off.
Our government is an embarrassment and a disgrace right now. Anyone who wasn't guzzling elon's twitter or fox's hatefest knew it was going to be this way. We need severe regulations on oligarchs and their propaganda toys. Used to be we had enforced anti-monopoly controls on media outlet conglomerates. The anti-government Goldwater/Reagan legacy worked for decades to destroy regulation. It needs to return with a vengeance.
I clicked "Lower deficit spending" but it didn't work
Slopped together by the newest digital-first branch of the Department of War: US Super Convolutional Agentic Military
This is actually really cool and the stuff they have planned is really helpful
At least it can answer "who won the 2020 presidential election" honestly
If true, there is no doubt a patch incoming.
It didn't want to tell me in any detail why diesel is $7.50 per gallon
> and keeps your privacy protected
yeah right, the agency behind this still features ed "big balls" coristine on their website
Protected from bears. It's very safe from bears. As to any other unauthorized access.. No logging, no unauthorized access. Very simple.
[flagged]
Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments and flamebait? You've unfortunately been doing it repeatedly. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.
If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
Thanks for pointing it out, dang. But if dark absurdism isn't permitted in 2026, I clearly have no mouth for the scream.
"I don’t determine whether a country is committing war crimes, and I don’t list alleged crimes against Israel or any other government. That would be legal and political commentary, which I don’t provide."
"chat is unavailable right now"
I need my government to be run by some functioning adults, is that on this website?
I think the discussion ought to be about the site. If you feel the site itself is politicized, that would fair criticism. But by itself, your comment is just snarky. And no I am no fan of the current administration.
And along those lines, I'd like to ask USA government to stop messing with other countries politics.
I filled out a form and pressed the SUBMIT button, but it made ME submit.
Your request has been logged and forwarded to the appropriate agencies. We'll come to you.
[dead]
[dead]
[flagged]
I need it to stop stealing so much of my money and leave me alone.