Civic Data Contribution Skill

A reusable skill that teaches AI tools how to research and structure civic data about your city's government.

View on GitHub

What is a Skill?

A Skill is a reusable prompt package that teaches an AI tool how to perform a specific task. Skills are invoked with a slash command and can use tools like web search, file editing, and browser fetching. Any tool that supports skills can use this one.

This skill guides you through researching and structuring civic data — jurisdictions, agencies, services, officials — from public sources into a standard open data format. You and the AI work together: it does the legwork of finding and structuring public information, and you correct and complete it with local knowledge.

Compatible tools

Claude Code

Install as a plugin and invoke with /openclaw

OpenClaw

An open platform for civic data skills. This skill was built for it.

Install

Add the skill to your Claude Code environment:

$ claude plugin add jurisdictional-skill

Requires the Claude Code CLI. Once installed, the skill is available in any project directory.

How it works

The skill walks you through 5 phases, pausing after each one for your review.

1

Identify the jurisdiction

Confirm the city or county, find the official website, Wikipedia article, and governance structure.

2

Survey agencies

The AI crawls the government website to find departments, bureaus, commissions, and offices. You review and correct the list.

3

Detail each agency

For each agency: description, contact info, head official, services offered. Work in batches, review as you go.

4

Structure the data

Everything gets written as individual JSON files — one per entity — with provenance metadata and cross-reference slugs.

5

Commit to the data repo

Submit your contribution to the jurisdictional-data repo as a pull request.

Run it

Invoke the skill with a slash command and a city/state argument:

$ /openclaw Austin, TX

The AI will start Phase 1 and pause after each phase for your review. You're in control the whole time.

Data format

The skill outputs one JSON file per entity, each with a _meta provenance block tracking the source URL, retrieval date, and contributor. 

{
  "_meta": {
    "source": "https://www.austintexas.gov/police",
    "retrieved_at": "2026-03-01",
    "contributor": "your-github-username"
  },
  "name": "Austin Police Department",
  "agency_type": "department",
  "jurisdiction": "austin-tx",
  "url": "https://www.austintexas.gov/police",
  "phone": "512-974-5000"
}

See the full schema reference for all entity types and fields.

Guidelines

  • ✓ Cite everything. Every fact should trace to a source URL.
  • ✓ Don't guess. Missing data is better than wrong data.
  • ✓ Prefer official sources. Government .gov websites first, then Wikipedia, then other.
  • ✓ Be incremental. Five agencies with no services is still a useful contribution.

Ready to contribute?

Pick your city and start documenting your local government.

Get the Skill Contribute in-app