"Separating light into its components, without adding colour of its own."
Status: Founding / Pre-alpha
License: Open Source (TBD — MIT or Apache 2.0)
Donations: Traceable via Open Collective (planned)
Founded: March 2026
Help ordinary people understand public reality more clearly.
Prism is a free, open-source civic intelligence platform that maps verified policy and performance evidence to a user's own priorities — then explains fit, trade-offs, and uncertainty. It does not tell anyone how to vote. It does not profile users secretly. It does not optimise for persuasion.
- Transparent evidence — every output is traceable to a source
- Explainable alignment — not recommendations, but reasoned comparisons
- No hidden persuasion — the algorithm is open; anyone can audit it
- User sovereignty — raw opinions and notes stay on-device by default
Prism maps verified policy and performance evidence to user priorities, then explains alignment, trade-offs, and uncertainty.
A user can say: "Rent is rising, NHS access is worse, and I don't trust campaign promises."
Prism turns that into structured issues, researches public evidence, and returns a balanced, sourced explainer — not a verdict.
- Tell users how to vote
- Profile them secretly
- Optimise for a political outcome
- Present contested claims as settled facts
Prism has four layers. Each has a specific job. None of them overlap.
┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ WORLD MIND (frontier reasoning) │
│ Cross-country synthesis · international law · geopolitics │
│ Multiple nodes, multiple continents, no single point of failure│
├─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ COUNTRY MIND (national intelligence) │
│ Ingests parliament records, manifestos, voting histories │
│ Scores candidates · generates evidence packs · signs output │
│ Multiple redundant nodes per country, community-operated │
├─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ LOCAL NODE (optional, volunteer-run — a spare Raspberry Pi) │
│ Scrapes genuinely hyperlocal sources: council portals, │
│ parish minutes, local crime data, community forums │
│ Pushes hyperlocal intelligence up to the country mind │
├─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ YOUR PHONE (private — nothing leaves without your consent) │
│ Local AI model re-ranks your feed using your preference │
│ profile — stored only on your device, never on a server │
│ Offline Q&A from cached evidence packs │
│ Synthesises a local briefing for your town / constituency │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
Everything personal stays on your phone. The country mind sends a batch of articles and evidence. Your phone's local AI model decides what to show you first — based on a profile that never leaves your device. No server knows what you read, what you care about, or where you live.
This is not a privacy policy. It is an architectural guarantee. You cannot extract data that is never collected.
BBC and Reuters cannot cover every parish council meeting, every local planning dispute, every community issue in every town. But a volunteer in that town can. Any Prism local node — a Raspberry Pi, a spare laptop — can scrape hyperlocal sources and contribute that intelligence to the country mind, which distributes it to all users in that area. The more volunteers, the more complete the picture.
Full architecture: docs/AI_ARCHITECTURE.md
Local intelligence deep-dive: docs/LOCAL_INTELLIGENCE.md
The repo currently includes a pre-alpha UK Country Mind backend under src/prism_country_mind.
Current local capabilities include:
- deterministic refresh and signed evidence-pack generation from the UK source registry
- read APIs for health, topics, packs, pack explainers, and transparency-log access
- read-only CLI commands for listing packs, showing a pack, and filtering transparency-log entries
Developer runbook: docs/COUNTRY_MIND.md
The repo now includes a standalone website app under website.
- Stack: Next.js 15 App Router + Tailwind CSS
- Current scope: public homepage, living-network visual placeholder, stats bar, how-it-works explainer, contribution links
- Privacy posture: no cookies, no analytics, no tracking code
Run locally:
cd website
npm install
npm run devStats data defaults to a bundled mock snapshot. Set PRISM_STATS_ENDPOINT to point the site at a future heartbeat/node API. If the live endpoint fails, the site falls back to mock data and labels that state clearly.
Website-specific notes: website/README.md
Prism is internationally governed but locally operated.
- The core team maintains the protocol, node software, security, and the core alignment algorithm
- Country chapters are self-organised by people living in that country — they own and operate their local data pipelines, source registries, and regional nodes
- The international node network provides resilience, verification, and security — contributed by the community
- No central authority decides what counts as a credible local source — the local community does
- Fork the
prism-country-packtemplate (coming soon) - Define your approved source registry (parliamentary records, national statistics, party manifestos, etc.)
- Set up at least one Collector node and one Verifier node
- Apply to join the international node network
- Maintain and update your source registry as elections and policies change
The node system is opt-in, role-based, and layered.
| Role | Purpose | Trust Level |
|---|---|---|
| Collector | Fetches and normalises public sources | Low → Medium |
| Verifier | Re-runs analysis to confirm reproducibility | Medium → High |
| Archive | Stores source snapshots for resilience | Low |
| Analytics | Runs trend aggregation and statistics | Medium |
| Regional | Country/language-specific collection and verification | Medium → High |
Nodes cannot write to canonical scoring rules, user profiles, or final outputs. Their power is to contribute and verify — not to silently alter the system.
Prism uses layered trust, not invasive identity collection.
- Layer 1: Standard app account with device binding
- Layer 2: Regional confidence estimated from language, timezone, and location consent
- Layer 3: Optional verified citizen path for contributors who want higher-weight input
- Layer 4: Node operator trust tier — stronger verification required for Collector and Verifier roles
The goal is to reduce botting and coordinated manipulation — not to build a surveillance database.
All financial activity will be managed through Open Collective, where every donation and expense is publicly visible.
- Funds go toward infrastructure, security audits, and supporting country chapter onboarding
- Nothing is hidden. Ever.
Prism is designed to be community-governed over time:
- Founding phase: Core protocol and algorithm defined by founder(s) and early contributors
- Growth phase: Elected steering group representing country chapters and node operators
- Mature phase: Formal open governance model (details TBD with the community)
| Risk | Mitigation |
|---|---|
| Political backlash | Radical neutrality + transparency; open algorithm |
| Data poisoning | Multi-source validation; verifier node network |
| Loss of trust | Always show uncertainty; never claim certainty |
| Source capture | Country chapters control their own source registries |
| Funding pressure | Donation-only; traceable via Open Collective |
| Coordinated manipulation | Slow-moving reputation scores; behavioral detection |
- Finalise open source licence
- Publish core protocol specification
- Build core alignment algorithm (open source)
- Launch transparency log format
- UK pilot: first country chapter
- Open country chapter application process
- Node software released (Collector + Verifier)
- Open Collective donation page live
- First external contributors onboarded
- Multi-country comparative analysis
- Economic simulation / policy impact forecasting
- Open research platform for civic intelligence
- Elected steering group established
Prism grows by word of mouth and community contribution. If you believe in the mission:
- Build: contribute to the core protocol or country packs
- Verify: run a node in your region
- Translate: help localise the interface and documentation
- Spread: share it with people who value clarity over noise
The original steering briefs from March 2026 are preserved as historical reference in docs/archive/founding-briefs/.
They are not the current source of truth. Current authoritative documentation lives in the markdown files in docs/ and root files such as ROADMAP.md, DECISIONS.md, and CONTRIBUTING.md.
Prism is built on the belief that if people trust it is honest, it will grow. If they doubt it, it will fail. Honesty is the only strategy.