Meet Civicwatch — What's happening at city hall this week
Civicwatch is a personal subscription to the goings-on of your city: city council meetings, school board meetings, planning commission hearings, and public comment windows.
News
Civicwatch
What's happening at city hall this week.
Every feature, from the first launch.
No account, no login, no cloud. Everything runs on your device and works fully offline — nothing in this post is hidden behind a wall.
What Civicwatch does
Civicwatch is a personal subscription to the goings-on of your city: city council meetings, school board meetings, planning commission hearings, and public comment windows. Each one is a card with the date, the location, the agenda topics, and a one-paragraph plain-English summary written by you, the user, after you watch — turning a public-meeting watch into a journal that future-you can search.
What's in v1:
— Subscribe to one city: enter your city + state. Civicwatch ships a starter pack of 5 sample meeting types (City Council, School Board, Planning, Parks, Library). Add your own. — Calendar: upcoming meetings with date/time/location and a link to the public agenda PDF (if you've added one). — Add an agenda: paste a URL or import a PDF; tag the topics that matter to you (zoning, school budget, housing). — Watch journal: after the meeting, write a 200-word summary of what was decided. Bookmark for FOIA follow-ups. — FOIA log: track open-records requests — submitted-to, date, request text, status. The civic-Newsletter calendar that doesn't yet exist as a personal tool. — Plain-text export: every entry exports as Markdown for your own newsletter / Substack / Notion.
Free. There is no paid tier in v1.
A look inside
Tap any screenshot to open the full-resolution version.
What's inside
- Meeting calendar — Per-city upcoming + past meetings.
- Agenda + tags — Paste a URL, tag topics.
- Watch journal — Post-meeting 200-word summary.
- FOIA log — Submitted requests + status.
Why we built it
1,800+ US counties are news deserts (Northwestern Local News Initiative). 2,900+ newspapers lost since 2005. The civic information vacuum has measurable consequences (corruption up, participation down). Ground News $15M+ on aggregation, Patch struggling. The mobile-native, personal-civic-watch app doesn't yet exist.
What makes it different
Civicwatch is the only iOS app whose primary surface is YOUR city's public meetings, with YOUR notes attached. Not a news app (NextDoor, Patch). Not a journalism tool (Hoodline, Ground News). A personal civic journal — for the resident, the parent, the freelance reporter.
Who it's for
Built for anyone who values fast, private, on-device software with a calm, focused UX.
In one line: What's happening at city hall this week.
Try it
See the Civicwatch app page for the full feature list, the info table, and support links.
Use Civicwatch, found a bug, or have a feature request? Comments are open below — anonymous is fine.
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