CivicAI is an open-source browser extension for Chrome and Edge that turns selected webpage text into a structured, editable civic report. It classifies the issue, estimates urgency, suggests a public recipient, identifies missing details, and creates a report draft. All AI inference runs locally in the browser: no backend, API key, account, telemetry, or cloud processing.
What could you build with GPT-5.6 that wasn’t practical before?
Maker
GPT-5.6 made it practical for me, as an independent developer, to design and ship a complete local-first AI browser extension in only a few days.
CivicAI combines product reasoning, Manifest V3 architecture, multilingual semantic classification, ONNX model integration, privacy design, debugging, browser testing, documentation, licensing, and launch preparation.
Before GPT-5.6, coordinating all of these areas quickly enough to produce a working, reproducible, open-source release would have required far more time and specialized support.
The result is a browser extension that turns selected web text into a structured civic report while keeping all inference on-device, with no backend, API key, account, telemetry, or cloud processing.
Report
Maker
📌
Hi Product Hunt! 👋
I’m Alessandro, the maker of CivicAI.
Civic issues are often described informally across local news, websites, forums, and social platforms. Turning that text into a clear report still requires time, context, and an understanding of what information may be missing.
CivicAI lets you select text on any webpage, right-click, and turn it into a structured civic report directly inside the browser.
It can provide:
• an issue category
• a semantic similarity score
• an urgency estimate
• a suggested public recipient
• missing-information prompts
• an editable report draft
The key decision was to make the entire workflow local-first.
The multilingual model and ONNX Runtime run directly inside Chrome or Microsoft Edge. There is no backend, API key, user account, telemetry, analytics, or cloud inference. Selected text is not sent to an external AI service.
CivicAI is open source and was built during OpenAI Build Week. GPT-5.6 Sol supported the primary architecture, implementation, debugging, privacy design, testing, and submission preparation. Codex later performed an independent engineering audit and implemented the v0.3.1 technical consolidation.
The source code and a ready-to-run release are both available publicly.
I’d especially value feedback on:
• the local-first approach
• the civic-report workflow
• useful categories or report fields that are currently missing
• how CivicAI could become more useful to residents and local communities
Thanks for checking it out!