Method & sources
The Council Beat is an automated city hall beat reporter. Each night a pipeline on a private server downloads the current term's official council data, detects new decisions, and writes cited briefs. A human is not in the loop; every claim is traceable to a numbered agenda item.
Sources (City of Toronto Open Data, 2022-2026 term)
- Members of Toronto City Council — Voting Record
- Members of Toronto City Council — Meeting Attendance
- Registry of Declared Interest
Editorial rules (enforced in code)
- Only items with a split vote, an amendment, or a declared interest get a written brief. Unanimous items roll into a consent line.
- The writer model is instructed: facts only, exact numbers, no speculation, no opinion, no invented names or figures.
- Vote counts come from the official result strings (e.g. “Carried, 19-5”), not from the model.
- Briefs are generated from aggregate vote data only; no member's personal information beyond their public vote record is used.
License
Source data is used under the City of Toronto Open Data Licence. This site itself is open source.