Products
Open source tools born from studying how civic systems actually work. Each one amplifies a signal that already exists — public feedback, government structure, neighborhood connection — and makes it easier to act on.
Open word-of-mouth protocol
Recc
An open protocol for traceable word-of-mouth commerce. Five steps that make honest recommendations profitable without creating a new middleman. A Civic Studio research project.
Civic data
Jurisdictional
Jurisdictional was created to explore the idea of a single citizen interface to all of government; local to federal. Jurisdictional is a registry of government entities in the United States.
Peer-to-peer commerce tools
Qart
Peer-to-peer commerce tools including a mobile wallet. Direct transactions between sellers, referrers, and buyers with transparent settlement and portable reputation.
Bitcoin smart contract editor
TermsTx
A browser-based editor for writing and deploying Bitcoin smart contracts, making on-chain agreement logic accessible to builders.
Collaborative beat making
HiHat
Collaborative, web-based sequencer for making beats. Create and remix drum patterns together in the browser.
Local displays and community
Commons
Platform for managing digital displays in retail and community spaces, connecting neighborhoods through dynamic content and community tools.
Lightweight civic intelligence
Civic Bot
Lightweight civic intelligence — a simple interface for answering questions about government services, programs, and processes.
Feedback and service design
Touchpoints
Open source platform for managing public feedback forms across government agencies, with centralized dashboards for publishing forms and monitoring responses.
How we work with you
These products grow out of the same curiosity we bring to client work — studying how organizations operate, finding where good effort goes unnoticed, and building tools that close the gap. The same team is available to work with you directly.
Strategic guidance
Fractional CTO
Part-time technology leadership for organizations without a full-time hire. Strategy, vendor oversight, team mentorship, and architecture review.
8 to 20 hours per month
Ongoing care
Retainer
Reserved capacity for support, maintenance, and advisory. We stay familiar with your systems and available when you need us.
10, 20, or 40 hours per month
Defined scope
Project-based
A clear scope of work with deliverables, timeline, and fixed price. Best for new website builds, redesigns, migrations, and integrations.
Discovery phase, then milestone payments
Flexible scope
Time and materials
Pay for the hours worked. Best when scope is uncertain, priorities shift, or you want to steer direction in real time.
Hourly or daily rate, no minimum commitment
Data services
Understand what you have, move it where it needs to go, and make sense of what it means.
Know what you have
Data inventory
Catalog the data your organization holds — where it lives, who owns it, what it's for, and where it's duplicated. The starting point for almost any serious data work.
Move it reliably
Data pipeline architecture
Design and build the plumbing that moves data between systems. Sources, transformations, destinations, and the monitoring that keeps it running.
Make sense of it
Analysis
Turn raw data into answers. Reports, dashboards, one-off investigations, and the questions worth asking in the first place.
Check the work
Auditing
Review existing data systems for accuracy, completeness, privacy, and compliance. Independent eyes on the numbers that matter.