What this service keeps, and where it goes.

Last updated September 18, 2026.

Asking a question

When you ask a question on a city's page or through the widget, the question and the answer are stored, so that city staff can see what residents ask and how well the code answered. Alongside each question is a short code derived from your network address and browser. It is one-way, it is re-keyed every time the service restarts, and it exists only to slow down someone sending questions by the thousand. It is not tied to a name or an account.

To produce an answer, the text of your question is sent to two outside services: an AI model that writes the answer from the relevant sections of the code, and a second that checks whether the question is on topic and whether the answer's citations hold up. Neither receives anything about you but the question itself.

No account is needed and no cookie is set on the public pages. There is no advertising and no analytics script.

Asking for a pilot

The form on the front page stores the name, role, city, email address and message you enter, and emails them to the people who run this service so they can reply. That is all it is used for.

Staff accounts

City staff sign in with an email address and a password. The password is stored only as a salted hash. A cookie keeps staff signed in for up to thirty days; it holds a random session identifier and nothing else. Invitation and password-reset links are emailed and work once.

Where it lives

The service runs on Fly.io in the United States, and its database lives there. Email is sent through Amazon Web Services. The pages load their typefaces from Google Fonts, which means Google's servers see the network address of anyone who opens a page, as they would for any site that uses Google Fonts.

How long

Questions are kept for as long as the city uses the service, so that its staff can see how the answers hold up over time. Pilot requests are kept until deleted. This service does not sell anything it holds, share it for advertising, or use it to train a model; what the two AI services do with the text of a question is governed by their own terms.

Questions about any of this, or a request to see or delete what is held about you: leads@cityordinanceai.com.