Skip to content

For contributors

This section is for developers, researchers, and operators who want to run the system themselves, work with the underlying dataset, or understand how the pieces fit together.

There are two paths, depending on what you need:

  • Run the whole stack

    Spin up the full system on your own hardware via Docker Compose: Postgres, the API, the React frontend, the Python scanner, and the embedding service. Bootstraps its own dataset by ingesting from the same upstream sources we do.

    Best for: developers contributing to the codebase, operators running a private mirror, or anyone who wants the live ingestion pipeline.

    Local installation

  • Just the data

    Want the dataset for your own SQL without standing up the full stack? Run the scanner's ingestion pipeline locally to bootstrap a fresh corpus from the same upstream sources — the local-install path above covers it end to end.

    Bootstrapping the dataset

What's coming

Detailed reference for the scanner CLI, the HTTP API surface, the ingestion playbook for new jurisdictions, and the architectural deep-dive will land in this section in subsequent passes. For now, see the inline README and source comments in the codebase, or contact us if you're trying to do something specific and the public docs don't cover it yet.

Source

The codebase is public on GitHub: adminatthebunker/CanadianPoliticalData. The internal name is sovpro (a contraction of SovereignWatch + project); the public brand is Canadian Political Data. Both names refer to the same project — you'll see sovpro in path names, the CLI, and container labels.

Issues, pull requests, and discussion are welcome on the GitHub repo. For larger contributions or institutional partnerships, get in touch so we can talk before you sink time into a substantial branch.

Reuse and citation

  • For citing data you found through the site, link to the speech / bill / politician page directly. Each page URL is stable.
  • For bulk reuse, the underlying records come from public legislative sources under their respective open-government licences — see the per-jurisdiction notes in the repo's docs/data-sources.md.
  • For UI screenshots in publications, no permission needed — credit canadianpoliticaldata.org.