Civic Tech DC · Archive Dig
Ideas Graveyard
Since 2012, Code for DC and Civic Tech DC have piled up nearly a hundred repositories. We went through all of them. Here's what's worth reviving, what's been superseded by better tools, and what's still active.
Why projects died
The same four patterns account for most of the graveyard.
Tied to one cycle
Built for one election, budget, or event. Dead the day it passed.
Infra outlived the team
Self-hosted stacks rotted once the one person running them left.
No path to the data
The dataset or partner never materialized, so the prototype stayed one.
One maintainer deep
One volunteer left and the project went with them.
No files match that search.
How this was made. In July 2026, AI agents read all 97 public repos and scored each idea's revival potential. In August we checked every dormant idea against what exists now and ran a second round of agents to verify the results. Treat each note as a lead, not a verdict. Private repos, empty stubs, and internal tooling are left out.
Have an idea? Pitch it at a project night or post in Slack.
Every repo lives at github.com/civictechdc.