SpicyRegs
A platform that turns federal regulations and public comments into accessible, actionable insights.
Why This Matters
Our work unlocks public comment data from Regulations.gov and other federal portals, making complex regulatory information accessible to both technical and non-technical users. By creating tools that analyze and summarize this data, we are empowering citizens to engage meaningfully with policymaking processes.
Our Story
On July 26, 2025, over 80 civic technologists, policy experts, and government staff came together to make federal regulations and public comments more transparent and actionable. In a single day, they built 13 open-source tools that combined technical innovation with real-world needs.
Building on Moravian University's Mirrulations project, which mirrors 27 million regulatory documents, the teams created tools for easy data access, AI-powered Q&A, data pipelines, and dashboards. SpicyRegs is a continuation of the hackathon to build a open, contributor-friendly platform for exploring and analyzing regulations.gov data, usable by both technical and non-technical users. Read more in our blog.
Geography / Reach
DMV-based with our platform aggregating nationwide federal regulatory data.
Community Partners
Our project collaborates with Moravian University and DataKindDC.
Current Project Volunteer Contacts
| Name | Role & Focus | Slack |
|---|---|---|
| Eugene Kim | Project Volunteer | @Eugene Kim |
Come Join Us
Everyone is welcome no matter your skill level or background. We especially need help with:
- Regulatory & Policy Expertise Understanding federal regulations, public comment processes, and domain-specific nuances.
- Data Analysis Working with large regulatory datasets and identifying trends.
- Machine Learning & NLP Implementing RAG workflows, semantic search, embeddings, and text analysis for public comments.
- Backend Development Building APIs, ETL pipelines, and managing large-scale data with DuckDB, LanceDB, or SurrealDB.
- Frontend Development Creating dashboards and interfaces with React or other web frameworks.
- UX/UI Design Making complex regulatory data understandable and accessible to users.
- Data Engineering Cleaning, transforming, and integrating 27M+ regulatory documents into usable formats.
- Community Engagement Partnering with civic tech volunteers, government staff, and researchers to ground-truth tools and workflow.