Democracy Distributed

See how organizations actually make decisions and spend money.

Every tracked organization gets a public page with its finances drawn as an interactive Sankey diagram. Where the records connect, you can follow a dollar back to the project it funded, the vote that approved it, and the suggestion that started it.

• Live: democracydistributed.com
• Docs: democracy-distributed.gitbook.io

How it works

Browser → Next.js app (this repo) → Corteza → PostgreSQL

Corteza is an open-source low-code platform that sits between the app and the database. It holds the data, the API, login, and permissions, and it's where data is imported in bulk and edited.

• Reads come from Corteza's Integration Gateway. The gateway can't be called directly from the browser, so browser-side reads go through our proxy at /api/gateway, and server-rendered pages call it directly.
• Writes (like suggestions) go to Corteza's REST API using the signed-in member's token, or a service account for anonymous visitors. See src/lib/corteza-write.ts.
• Caching is off by default. See the Caching docs page.
• The chart is drawn with D3 in SankeyChart.tsx. Its graph-building logic is in src/lib/sankey.ts.

Getting started

You'll need Node.js 18.18 or newer.

git clone https://github.com/democracydistributed/democracy-distributed.git
cd democracy-distributed
npm install
npm run dev

Open http://localhost:3000/org/406019364987666433 to see Toronto with live data. You don't need any credentials. If the live gateway is unreachable, http://localhost:3000/?org=toronto loads a bundled offline copy.

Anyone can create an account on the live site to sign in and post suggestions there. Running sign-in and suggestions on your own machine is different: it needs Corteza OAuth client credentials, which only the core team has for now. If you have them, copy .env.example to .env.local and fill it in.

Other commands: npm run build, npm start (serve the build), npm run lint.

Project layout

src/app/         Pages and API routes (org, item, project, transaction, browse, ...)
src/components/  UI, including the Sankey chart and the trace drawer
src/lib/         Data fetching (api.ts, server-api.ts), Corteza writes, Sankey logic
src/auth.ts      Login with Corteza (Auth.js)

Contributing

Bug reports, questions, ideas, and pull requests are all welcome here on GitHub. Feel free to open an issue.

For code changes:

1. Fork, branch, and make your change.
2. Run npm run lint and npm run build.
3. Open a pull request describing what changed and why.

You can also help with the data itself, like spotting missing records, on the platform (still growing), or see more ways to get involved.

License

The code is released under the MIT License.