CoCivicWatch is a civic transparency project that automatically tracks, transcribes, and summarizes Colorado public meetings. The goal is to make local government more accessible — turning hours-long recordings into searchable, navigable summaries that anyone can read in minutes.
See the About page for the full story.
No. CoCivicWatch is an independent project built and maintained by Skylar Youngblood, a private citizen and data engineer. It is not affiliated with any government agency, the City of Denver, or any other official body.
Yes, completely free. No account, login, or payment required.
Meeting metadata (agendas, dates, bodies, and agenda items) is pulled from Legistar, the official meeting management system used by the City of Denver and many other Colorado municipalities. Video recordings are sourced from official city YouTube channels and Granicus (the city's video platform).
CoCivicWatch currently covers Denver-area public bodies including the Denver City Council and its committees. Coverage will expand to additional Colorado municipalities and governing bodies over time.
Want to see a specific body covered? Reach out — see the contact section below.
Coverage currently includes meetings from 2025 and 2026. Historical meetings may be added over time as the project grows.
Transcripts are generated using Whisper, an open-source speech recognition model developed by OpenAI. Whisper is one of the most accurate publicly available transcription models, but it is not perfect — especially with proper nouns, acronyms, and overlapping speakers.
Speaker identification (diarization) is performed automatically and may occasionally misattribute a line to the wrong speaker.
Summaries, meeting chapters, key quotes, and voting decisions are generated using large language models — primarily Claude (by Anthropic) and DeepSeek-R1. The AI reads the full transcript and produces structured summaries broken into navigable chapters with timestamps.
AI-generated content is clearly labeled throughout the site. These summaries are assistive tools, not official records.
Summaries are generally accurate but should not be treated as authoritative. AI models can occasionally mischaracterize nuanced debate, miss context, or produce imprecise descriptions of procedural votes.
Always refer to the official meeting recording or the city's official minutes for matters of legal or factual record.
Processing a meeting takes time — audio must be downloaded, transcribed, and summarized. Meetings that have recently occurred may show as Pending while the pipeline runs. Upcoming meetings that haven't happened yet show as Upcoming with the agenda if available.
Errors in AI-generated content are expected and taken seriously. If you find a significant misquote, factual error in a summary, or incorrect vote attribution, please reach out with:
- The meeting name and date
- The specific error and what the correct information should be
- A timestamp or reference if possible
Corrections will be made as quickly as possible.
Yes — expanding statewide is the plan. If you'd like to see a specific city, county, or special district covered, get in touch. Priority will be given to bodies with public video recordings available online.
CoCivicWatch is built and maintained by Skylar Youngblood. For errors, coverage requests, or general feedback, reach out via the contact info on the About page.