Generating a report

Reports are generated from a politician profile or from the search page, once you have credits in your balance.

The flow

1. Navigate to the politician whose record you want to summarise. From a search result, click through to their profile.
2. Click "Generate full report" on their profile, or on a specific speech result.
3. Confirm the topic. A modal asks what question or topic you want the report focused on. The clearer you are, the better the report — their position on healthcare privatization, 2018–present works better than healthcare.
4. Confirm the cost. The modal shows how many credits the report will cost — calculated up-front based on how many speech chunks match the politician + topic. You see the price before you commit.
5. Submit. Credits are placed on hold (not yet spent). The report is queued.
6. Wait for the email. Reports typically take a few minutes. You don't need to keep the page open — we'll email you a link when it's ready.
7. Read. The report opens in a print-friendly view. Every quote and claim links back to the source speech.

How pricing works

Report cost is proportional to how much material the system has to read:

• A politician with 10 speeches on a topic costs less than one with 500.
• A narrowly-scoped topic ("their stance on Bill C-11") costs less than a broad one ("everything they've said on culture and broadcasting").
• The exact pricing formula is shown in the confirmation modal — no hidden cost.

If a report turns out to be much smaller than the upfront estimate (because, say, many candidate speeches were duplicates), the unused portion is refunded to your balance automatically.

Hold vs commit

When you click submit, credits are placed on hold — your spendable balance drops, but the credits aren't actually spent yet:

• If the report succeeds, the hold becomes a charge.
• If the report fails (server error, model timeout, etc.), the hold is released. Your balance returns to where it was. You're not charged for failures.
• If a report is stuck running for too long, the system automatically re-queues it (with the same hold in place) and tries again. You don't need to do anything.

What makes a good report query

Good queries are specific and time-bounded:

• their position on the carbon price, 2019–present
• how they've framed Indigenous reconciliation in their first vs second term
• everything they've said about housing supply policy

Vague queries get vague reports:

• what they think
• bad things they've done
• their best speeches

The system can only summarise what's actually in the Hansard record. It cannot tell you what they "really mean" or what they've "secretly done" — only what they've said in the chamber.

Reading the output

A report has four sections:

1. Summary. A few short paragraphs describing the politician's stated positions on the topic.
2. Quotes and citations. Inline quotes with links to each originating speech.
3. Tensions (when applicable). If the politician has held different positions over time, this section flags the shift with the dates and speeches involved.
4. Sources. Every speech consulted, with date and link.

You can print, share, or save the report from the viewer page. Reports are private to your account — sharing means sharing the rendered HTML or a printout, not granting another account access.

Caveats

• Reports describe what the politician said in the chamber. They do not describe what the politician voted on (votes are a separate data layer), what the politician has said outside the chamber (interviews, social media, press releases — outside our scope), or what the politician has actually done in office.
• Reports use the speeches we have in the database as of the time the report was generated. If new Hansard ingests later, your report doesn't auto-update. Re-run the report if you want the most current picture.
• Reports are AI-generated and may contain errors of summarization, attribution, or framing — even though every quote is verbatim. Always click through to the underlying speeches before quoting a report in publication.