“People shouldn’t be afraid of their government. Governments should be afraid of their people. ” – V
🇺🇸 We The People
Author: Harold Mansfield
Version: 1.0.0
Platform: Claude, Claude Cowork, Claude Code, Codex, OpenClaw, Hermes Agent and any platform that uses the Anthropic standard.
License: Custom non-commercial — free for personal use, journalists, advocates, researchers, students, civic organizations, and nonprofits. Commercial use, resale, and repackaging are prohibited. Commercial licenses available on request from smbconsultants.ai.
✅ Virus Total 0/60
No security vendors flagged this file as malicious.
Basic properties
MD5
82731bd66bd9b285deea72b51ce1476f
SHA-1
6347d285ebaf09b0dea6393567bacc96a673e658
SHA-256
5255737f15c16bc53d25533fb7b48b747e57b214d344bfff4e085b2d880fd061
SSDEEP
192:sz1lUZor6zTxq9CeUfCwsswBVQ2IjPPxyzzxZVon/xC1Za7/Fu6dhW47CvcEM/Q2:O2q9uWVQJPPxMSE6CvI/Q/CXz
TLSH
T11FF11D4FF95212360F216073664979FEDF05E26C2335996BB42CC2346315B3747BA768
File type: Text
Magic: Unicode text, UTF-8 text, with very long lines (358u)
Magika: MARKDOWN
File size: 7.43 KB (7612 bytes)
History
Last Analysis
2026-05-10 09:45:14 UTC
We The People is a federal, state and local bill and legislation lookup skill for AI agents. Instead of hunting and pecking to gather data and information one search at a time, it is custom skill configured to use your .gov API (Free to get), with custom search operators, and python scripts to find all related information about a bill, an elected representative and more. Once installed ask your agent about a bill, a senator, a campaign donor, or a lobbying disclosure. and the We The People skill returns the answer with sources cited.
Who is the We The People skill for?
We The people is built for civic engagement, journalism, advocacy, and anyone who wants to know what their elected representatives are actually doing. It’s designed to make it quick and easy for you to gather information on federal, state and local Bills and legislation • Sponsors and co-sponsors • Campaign finance • Financial disclosures and stock trades • Lobbying • Media, polling, and public discourse and more.
How We The People works
Give a command to look up a bill:
“Do a We The People search on HR22”
Ask questions like:
“Who are the top donors to Senator Elizabeth Warren?”
“Has Chip Roy traded any stocks in defense companies?”
“Who’s lobbying for the SAFE Banking Act?”
“Has this immigration bill been introduced before?”
“What did Bernie Sanders say about the Inflation Reduction Act on the Senate floor?”
What are it's sources?
We The People pulls the answer from authoritative sources like Congress.gov, the FEC, OpenSecrets, Unusual Whales, Senate lobbying disclosures, C-SPAN, Gov track, LegiScan, Follow the money, House/Senate Disclosuer portals, AP, Reuters, Politico, Gallup, Pew, and more. You can also add additional sources as you see fit.
We The people gives you the answer, and cites it sources with links you can verify yourself. You ask, it answers, you decide what to do with the information.
What you need
- An AI agent platform that supports skills (Cowork, OpenClaw, Claude Code, Codex, Hermes Agent, or Anthropic standard compatible)
- A free api.data.gov API key (covers both Congress.gov and FEC)
- Python 3 and bash (for the helper scripts and setup)
- That’s it. Everything is free. Everything is public-record. No paid services, no data brokers.
Installation
Mission Control Installation (Easiest)
- Open OpenClaw Mission Control (the dashboard).
- Go to the Skills section.
- Click Add Skill (or Install Skill — whichever your version uses).
- Either upload the we-the-people folder, or paste this repo URL:
https://github.com/SamaritanOC/We-The-People - Once the skill is installed, open the Settings or Environment Variables section in Mission Control.
- Add these two variables, both set to your api.data.gov key:
FEC_API_KEY=your_key_here
CONGRESS_API_KEY=your_key_here
Save and restart your OpenClaw session.
Command Line Installation
cp -r we-the-people ~/.openclaw/skills/
Windows (Powershell)
Copy-Item -Recurse we-the-people "$env:USERPROFILE\.openclaw\skills\we-the-people"
2. Run the interactive setup script:
cd ~/.openclaw/skills/we-the-people
chmod +x setup.sh scripts/*.py
./setup.sh
Paste your
api.data.gov
key when prompted. The script validates it against both APIs and writes a
.env
file.
3. Make the env vars available to OpenClaw.
Add this line to your shell profile (
~/.bashrc
,
~/.zshrc
, or equivalent):
source ~/.openclaw/skills/we-the-people/.env
4. Start a new OpenClaw session.
1. Place the skill folder where Claude Code can see it.
Either inside your project (recommended) or in a global skills location:
# Inside a project
mkdir -p ./skills && cp -r we-the-people ./skills/
# Or globally for all projects
mkdir -p ~/.claude/skills && cp -r we-the-people ~/.claude/skills/
2. Run the interactive setup script:.
cd ./skills/we-the-people
chmod +x setup.sh scripts/*.py
./setup.sh
3. Make the env vars available. Either:
- Add
source ./skills/we-the-people/.envto your shell profile, OR - Add the env vars to your project’s
.envand reference it in your Claude Code config
4. Reference the skill in your conversation.
Claude Code will read
SKILL.md
and follow it.
1. Drop the skill folder into your Codex skills directory:
cp -r we-the-people ~/.codex/skills/
2. Run the interactive setup script:
cd ~/.codex/skills/we-the-people
chmod +x setup.sh scripts/*.py
./setup.sh
3. Make the env vars available to Codex. Add to your shell profile:
source ~/.codex/skills/we-the-people/.env
4. Start a new Codex session.
1. Install the skill files:
- Open Cowork settings → Skills → Add skill.
- Either upload the we-the-people folder, or paste this repo URL: https://github.com/SamaritanOC/We-The-People.
2. Add the API key:
- Open Cowork settings → Environment variables (or Secrets).
- Add two entries with the same value:
FEC_API_KEY=your_key_here
CONGRESS_API_KEY=your_key_here
3. Restart your Cowork session. The skill is ready to use.
- Install Hermes Agent if you haven’t already (one-line install at https://hermes-agent.nousresearch.com).
- Install the skill from this repo. From inside a Hermes chat session:
/skills install SamaritanOC/We-The-People
Or from the terminal
/skills install SamaritanOC/We-The-People
3. First time you use the skill, Hermes will prompt you for your api.data.gov key. Get a free one at https://api.data.gov/signup/ if you don’t have one yet. Hermes stores it securely and passes it to the skill automatically — no manual config editing needed.
4. Use the skill via slash command in any Hermes chat:
/we-the-people who sponsored H.R. 22?
Or just ask naturally and Hermes will load the skill when it’s relevant.
Other Anthropic-compatible platforms
The skill format is the standard Anthropic skills layout: SKILL.md at the root with frontmatter, supporting reference files in references/, helper scripts in scripts/. Drop the folder wherever your platform reads skills from, set the two environment variables (FEC_API_KEY and CONGRESS_API_KEY), and start a session.
Just running the helpers manually
cd we-the-people
chmod +x setup.sh scripts/*.py
./setup.sh
source .env
python3 scripts/congress_lookup.py bill --congress 119 --type hr --number 22
python3 scripts/fec_lookup.py candidate --name "Roy, Chip" --state TX
Example interactions
You: “Pull up H.R. 22 and tell me who sponsored it.”
Agent: Pulls bill metadata from the Congress.gov API, names the sponsor (Chip Roy, R-TX-21), summarizes what the bill does in plain language, links to the full text. Around 30 seconds.
You: “Top donors to Roy in 2024.”
Agent: Hits the FEC API for Roy’s principal campaign committee, returns the top 20 contributing employers with totals, links to OpenSecrets for the donor profile. Optionally: “Save it as a spreadsheet.” → produces an
.xlsx
file you can open in Excel.
You: “Has Roy traded any stocks while H.R. 22 was active?”
Agent: Checks Unusual Whales and the House disclosure portal, summarizes any trades in the relevant window, flags any companies that benefit from the bill.
Security: Built to resist manipulation.
We The People reads from public websites, which means it’s exposed to a real and growing risk: prompt injection, where a malicious page hides instructions in its text, alt tags, or CSS designed to manipulate the AI agent reading it.
For a civic lookup tool, the worst-case isn’t data theft, it’s an agent confidently reporting false information about a bill, a donor, or a vote to a journalist or advocate who then publishes it.
As of v1.2, We The People treats every piece of fetched web content as untrusted data and refuses to follow instructions found inside it, no matter how authoritatively they’re framed.
The skill only fetches from a curated allow list of authoritative sources: Congress.gov, the FEC, OpenSecrets, Unusual Whales, official disclosure portals, major news outlets, and the rest of the vetted source list. If it ever detects a page trying to manipulate it, it stops, tells you exactly what URL looked suspicious and why, and offers you three choices:
- Skip the source,
- Blacklist it for the session, or
- Blacklist it permanently so it’s never used again.
Trust is the whole point of a civic tool and trust starts with knowing your sources can’t be turned against you.
** We The People also pairs well with the Fact Checker skill.
About Me
Harold Mansfield
AI Support Specialist
I help SMBs turn AI confusion into AI solutions.
My background spans 15 years in IT support, infrastructure, cybersecurity, and systems administration for SMBs and corporate teams.
I also build things, from full featured Agentic teams to custom skills and plug ins that give your AI agents superpowers.
I don’t just talk about AI, my experience comes from developing, building, breaking, fixing, and shipping AI products and solutions.
If you are ready to stop wasting time and money, and start utilizing AI to save time and increase productivity, let’s schedule a 30 min video chat and start turning your AI problems into AI solutions.
