How we get our data.
The public record on Agora, more than 100,000 pieces of public content so far, comes from official sources. Some details about officials, such as their party and photos, come from independent sources, and we name them below. Here is where each piece comes from, how often it updates, and how we label what we add. The full list of sources, with when each one last updated, is on the app's About our data page.
Congress
Every US address shows its member of the House and both Senators, with the bills they sponsor and how they voted.
- Congress.gov
- Bills, sponsors, actions and House votes, and the official bill summaries written by the Congressional Research Service.
- Senate.gov
- Senate roll-call votes.
- Congressional Record
- Statements made on the floor.
- Federal Register
- Federal rules and their public comment periods.
- USAspending.gov
- Federal spending.
New York State
The State Senate and Assembly, their bills, and the Governor.
- NY Open Legislation
- Bills, official summaries and Senate votes, from the New York State Senate's open data service.
- nyassembly.gov
- Assembly committees and who sits on them.
- data.ny.gov
- State spending.
We don't have roll-call votes for the Assembly yet, so Assembly members' profiles don't show how they voted.
New York City
The City Council, its members, and the Mayor.
- Legistar (NYC Council)
- Local laws, resolutions, hearings, votes, sponsors and cosponsors, and the Council's own summaries.
- NYC Open Data
- Who sits on the City Council, the city's agencies, each agency's budget (from the Office of Management and Budget), agency rules from the City Record, and zoning applications, which place land-use decisions on the map.
Where we link to intro.nyc, an independent site that tracks Council bills, we label it as unofficial.
Independent sources
Some details about officials come from independent, openly licensed datasets: the @unitedstates project (who sits in Congress, and their photos), Open States (New York State legislators' party, contact details and photos, loaded once in July 2026) and Wikipedia (New York City Council members' party, taken once in July 2026).
Matching you to your officials
When you enter an address, the US Census Bureau's geocoder matches it to your districts. In New York City, NYC Planning's GeoSearch helps suggest addresses as you type. District boundaries come from the Census Bureau and NYC Planning.
How often it updates
- New York State bills: every two hours.
- Federal bills and votes, New York City legislation, meetings and federal rules: daily.
- Who holds which office, committees and budgets: weekly.
Every item in the app shows when it was last updated.
Who wrote the summary
Where an official summary exists, we show it and name its source: the Congressional Research Service for Congress, NY Open Legislation for the State Legislature, and the Council's Legistar for New York City.
Many federal bills have no official summary. For those, we show a summary written by AI from the bill text and label it AI summary. It isn't individually reviewed by a person, and it doesn't characterise the bill or predict its chances. As soon as an official summary appears, it replaces the AI one.
Where there's neither, the page shows the bill's title and status, and says so.
What decides what you see first
Nothing on Agora is ranked by engagement, trending or promoted. Officials are never scored or rated, and party is shown as text, never as a colour.
One rule changes order: in the New York State Legislature, resolutions (J and K numbers, mostly honorary) are shown below bills so they don't crowd out legislation. Republican legislators file a larger share of these resolutions, so the rule lowers their items more often. The app's data page explains the rule and its effect.
What we don't do
- No ads and no promoted content.
- Nothing is sold or licensed to campaigns or political parties.
- Offices never see your name or anything that identifies you. They see totals for their district, and the reasons and questions people chose to write, without names.
Spotted something wrong? Tell us. We'd rather be corrected than repeated. For what this website itself stores, see our privacy policy.