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CouncilSim

AI-powered city council debate simulator for data center proposals

Problem Statement 3: Amplify Human Judgment

Built for the Built with Opus 4.6: Claude Code Hackathon (Feb 10–16, 2026)

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CouncilSim

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The Problem

Over $64 billion in data center projects have been blocked or delayed by local opposition. Petitioners walk into city council meetings unprepared for the intensity of community pushback — emotional arguments about water usage, property values, noise, and environmental impact. Critical AI infrastructure isn't getting built.

The Solution

CouncilSim creates a realistic multi-agent debate simulation where:

• AI residents raise the exact concerns your real neighbors will
• An AI petitioner defends your proposal with data and empathy
• An AI council moderator asks the tough questions
• Post-debate analysis scores your approval likelihood and gives you battle-tested rebuttals

Upload a real proposal PDF — the kind found on any city council meeting agenda — and watch five AI personas debate it live. Walk into your next council meeting knowing every concern before it's raised. (We built and tested CouncilSim using this Van Buren Township, MI planning commission packet — download it and try it yourself!)

Go from rejected to approved — with confidence.

Features

• Multi-agent debate simulation — 5 AI personas with distinct personalities, concerns, and speaking styles
• Real-time streaming — Watch the debate unfold token-by-token via WebSocket
• 5-phase meeting structure — Opening, Public Comment, Rebuttal, Council Q&A, Deliberation
• Community research — Agent scans real Facebook groups and forums for actual resident concerns
• PDF document upload — Upload your actual proposal document for AI analysis
• Approval scoring — Weighted 0-100 score with "Likely Approved" / "Uncertain" / "Likely Denied" labels
• Actionable rebuttals — Specific responses with supporting data for real meetings
• Strengths & weaknesses — Full breakdown of your proposal's strongest and weakest points
• Transcript export — Download the full debate as markdown

Architecture

Hybrid AI Approach

CouncilSim uses a hybrid architecture that leverages both the Claude Agent SDK and the direct Anthropic API:

Claude Agent SDK (intelligence layer):

• Persona Agent — Researches the city, creates locally-grounded debate personas (Opus 4.6)
• Document Agent — Extracts structured data from uploaded proposals (Sonnet 4.5)
• Analysis Agent — Scores approval likelihood, identifies key arguments, generates rebuttals (Opus 4.6)
• Community Research Agent — Scans real social media for actual community sentiment (Opus 4.6)

Anthropic API (debate engine):

• Each persona gets a rich system prompt and the growing transcript as context
• Tokens stream via WebSocket to the frontend in real-time
• Temperature 0.85 for natural speech variety

3 Custom MCP Tools:

• research_city — Structures city demographic queries
• parse_proposal_document — Extracts structured proposal data
• compute_approval_score — Weighted scoring formula with 6 debate factors

Tech Stack

Project Structure

├── backend/
│   ├── main.py                     # FastAPI app entry point
│   ├── config.py                   # Settings (pydantic-settings)
│   ├── api/
│   │   ├── routes.py               # REST: POST /simulations, GET /simulations/:id
│   │   └── websocket.py            # WebSocket: /ws/simulation/:id
│   ├── agents/
│   │   ├── orchestrator.py         # Coordinates 4 Agent SDK subagents
│   │   ├── persona_agent.py        # Persona generation (Opus 4.6)
│   │   ├── document_agent.py       # Document analysis (Sonnet 4.5)
│   │   ├── analysis_agent.py       # Debate analysis (Opus 4.6)
│   │   ├── community_research.py   # Real community sentiment (Opus 4.6)
│   │   └── tools/                  # Custom MCP tools
│   ├── debate/
│   │   ├── engine.py               # 5-phase debate orchestration
│   │   ├── personas.py             # System prompt templates
│   │   ├── turns.py                # Streaming turn generation
│   │   └── transcript.py           # Context management
│   ├── models/                     # Pydantic data models
│   └── services/
│       ├── simulation_manager.py   # In-memory state store
│       └── stream_manager.py       # WebSocket broadcast
├── frontend/
│   └── src/
│       ├── components/
│       │   ├── landing/            # LandingPage with PDF upload
│       │   ├── chamber/            # CouncilChamber, TranscriptFeed, SpeakerPanel
│       │   └── results/            # ResultsDashboard, ApprovalMeter, TranscriptExport
│       ├── hooks/useSimulation.ts  # WebSocket + state management
│       └── types/                  # TypeScript types mirroring backend
├── Dockerfile
├── railway.toml
└── CLAUDE.md

Setup

Prerequisites

• Python 3.10+
• Node.js 18+
• Anthropic API key

Backend

cd backend
pip install -r requirements.txt

# Set environment variables
cp ../.env.example ../.env
# Edit .env and add your ANTHROPIC_API_KEY

# Run the backend (from project root)
cd ..
uvicorn backend.main:app --reload

The backend runs at http://localhost:8000.

Frontend

cd frontend
npm install
npm run dev

The frontend runs at http://localhost:5173.

Environment Variables

Deployment

Backend (Railway)

1. Connect your GitHub repo to Railway
2. Set ANTHROPIC_API_KEY environment variable
3. Railway will auto-detect the Dockerfile

Frontend (Vercel)

1. Import the frontend/ directory to Vercel
2. Set VITE_API_BASE_URL and VITE_WS_BASE_URL to your Railway URL
3. Vercel will auto-detect Vite

How It Works

1. Upload a proposal PDF — Drop in a real data center proposal from a city council agenda
2. Agents research the community — Scans Facebook groups, forums, and local data for real concerns
3. Agents analyze the document — Extracts every detail from the proposal
4. 5-phase debate simulation — AI personas debate live, streaming in real-time
5. Strategic analysis — Approval score, opposition arguments, rebuttals, strengths & weaknesses
6. Walk in prepared — Know every concern before it's raised

Hackathon Context

Problem Statement 3: Amplify Human Judgment — CouncilSim helps petitioners prepare for city council meetings without replacing human decision-making. It surfaces the arguments they'll face, tests their responses, and provides data-backed rebuttals — dramatically sharpening preparation while keeping humans in the loop.

Built with Claude Code: The entire codebase — backend, frontend, agent orchestration, MCP tools, and even the demo video (built with Remotion) — was written by Claude Opus 4.6 in Claude Code. From architecture decisions to pixel-level UI polish, Claude Code was the sole development environment.

Why Opus 4.6: The multi-agent debate requires nuanced persona management (each agent has conflicting goals), deep contextual reasoning (building on previous arguments), and strategic analysis (post-debate recommendations). Opus 4.6 powers the persona generation, community research, debate turns, and analysis — the entire intelligence layer.

Real-world impact: Data centers are critical infrastructure for AI. Anthropic itself committed to covering 100% of consumer electricity price increases from data centers (Feb 2026). CouncilSim directly helps get that infrastructure built by preparing petitioners for the toughest questions.

License

MIT License

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Built entirely with [Claude Code](https://claude.ai/claude-code) — every line of backend, frontend, and video production code was written by Claude Opus 4.6 in Claude Code.

Go from rejected to approved — with confidence.

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