CivicNewspaper / The Civic Desk

Project name: CivicNewspaper. Installed app name: The Civic Desk.

Current published release: v0.3.3 public beta for signed Windows x64 and unsigned, unnotarized Apple Silicon macOS. Intel Macs are not supported. Linux is deferred to v0.3.4. This is not a stable production release.

The Civic Desk is a local-first desktop newsroom tool for small local publishers, civic reporters, and community editors. It helps one person or a small team monitor public local sources, discover story leads, draft articles with a local AI model, review risks and evidence, and publish a static local-news issue.

The app is built for the reality that many towns no longer have enough reporters doing daily civic coverage. It does not replace editorial judgment. It surfaces leads, warnings, verification paths, and publishing packages; the human editor decides what to investigate, edit, hold, cut, approve, or publish.

What It Does Today

• Runs as a Tauri desktop app with a React frontend and Rust backend.
• Stores sources, evidence, leads, drafts, settings, subscribers, publish history, civic entities, dark signals, and verification tasks in a local SQLite database.
• On Windows, manages a local Ollama runtime for local AI. On macOS, detects the separately installed official Ollama app and never invokes the Windows runtime installer. Both paths guide the user toward the public-beta default phi4-mini:latest model.
• Watches official records, agenda pages, public notices, local media, and public community/social sources.
• Imports source lists from CSV, TXT, XLSX, and DOCX files. PDF source-list import is disabled in this public beta until hardened PDF parsing is available; convert PDFs to TXT/CSV/DOCX/XLSX or paste the URLs directly.
• Runs Daily Scan from watched sources, deterministic detectors, source diffs, civic entities, dark signals, verification tasks, and optional local-model summarization/ranking.
• Provides a Story Queue, Dark Signals feed, Verification Queue, and Workbench.
• Lets editors generate drafts, rewrite in plain language, run an optional press-freedom/legal-risk advisor, apply guardrail warnings, and approve stories for publication.
• Never uses software guardrails or AI advice as a publish veto. Warnings and advisor notes are for the editor.
• Compiles approved drafts into a static website with article pages, homepage, RSS, about/ethics/how-we-report/corrections pages, print CSS, newsletter markdown, Substack-ready markdown, social/community post copy, short-link copy, manifest, and ZIP.
• Publishes through here.now, GitHub Pages, Netlify, or assisted/manual URL recording. Anonymous here.now preview is the live-verified public-beta path. GitHub Pages, Netlify, permanent here.now publishing, and assisted/manual URL recording require your own accounts/credentials or release-specific proof before treating them as stable publishing paths. WordPress direct API publishing is disabled in this beta until draft-first publishing, rollback, and live connector proof are complete; export the ZIP/static folder or record a manually published URL instead. Cloudflare Pages is assisted/manual in this beta: export the folder or ZIP, deploy in Cloudflare, then record the public URL. Substack is assisted: the app prepares copy, then the editor publishes in Substack and records the URL.
• Includes a browser-extension pairing workflow for clipping pages into the local desk.

What It Is Not Yet

• Public-beta release; installer signing is verified as part of the release artifact gate.
• Not a multi-user newsroom server.
• Not legal advice. The press-freedom/legal-risk advisor is a risk-spotting tool, not a lawyer.
• Not a replacement for reporting. Dark signals and community/social leads need verification before publication.
• Not a guarantee of complete source discovery. Search engines and public websites change; the editor must review discovered sources.

Download

The v0.3.3 release page serves both supported public-beta installers from commit e94a2f94885c1e6013129c3d854662cc3c8e5b27. Verify each download against SHA256SUMS before opening it.

• Windows x64: download The.Civic.Desk_0.3.3_x64-setup.exe. SHA256: 3d08ec394d87329043acd57f8f714cdcfdf10b3670631861ba16bc397c6befd2; size: 5343200 bytes. Also confirm Authenticode reports Status: Valid with a signer containing Scott Converse.
• Apple Silicon macOS 11+: download The.Civic.Desk_0.3.3_aarch64.dmg. SHA256: 95c82afa6549a5648e919306b3fbc6b7f7336ee331ca7f3c7091d87d3d11f01b; size: 7891351 bytes. It is intentionally not Developer ID signed or notarized. Intel Macs and Rosetta are not supported.
• Linux: deferred to v0.3.4. No Linux artifact is part of v0.3.3.

Initial installation requires an internet connection on Windows systems where Microsoft Edge WebView2 Runtime is not already installed. First-run local AI setup also needs internet access to download the runtime and selected model. macOS users install and start Ollama separately before the app downloads a model. After those components and source material are available, drafting and review run locally.

See docs/install.md for checksum verification and OS-specific details.

First Run

1. Enter publication identity: publication name, editor name, organization type, city, and state.
2. Let the app check the machine and local AI runtime.
3. Download the recommended local model, or skip/defer local AI setup and continue with source review, manual editing, static export, ZIP review, and here.now preview publishing. The current default path favors phi4-mini:latest because the latest local bakeoff showed it produced valid JSON for both real civic signals and empty/noise input.
4. Add or discover sources for your city.
5. Run Daily Scan, review leads, generate drafts, approve stories, compile the issue, and publish.

The app can use the internet for installer prerequisites, source fetching, model download, and publishing. Drafting and review happen locally once the model and source material are available. For the editor desk workflow, see the manual's Workbench section: improve weak drafts, send stories back with assignment notes, hold stories with reasons, cut stories from an issue, then approve only the exact saved draft you reviewed.

Core Workflow

Sources -> Fetch/Scrape -> Evidence -> Detectors/Entities/Diffs
        -> Daily Scan Leads -> Story Queue -> Workbench
        -> Human Review -> Static Issue -> ZIP / Website / Share Package

Repository Layout

README.md
docs/
  prd-local-llm-newsroom-v1.md
  implementation-plan-v0.3.0-to-v1.0.0.md
  install.md
  troubleshooting.md
  user_manual.md
  architecture.md
  publishing-connectors.md
  release-readiness.md
  discussion_seeds.md
  index.html
src/
  React/TypeScript frontend
src-tauri/
  Rust backend, migrations, prompts, Tauri config
templates/
  Static website templates used by the compiler
browser-extension/chromium/
  Browser clipping extension
scripts/
  Release, smoke-test, and build helpers

Build From Source

Prerequisites:

• Node.js 18+
• Rust stable toolchain
• Platform prerequisites for Tauri v2
• An internet connection for model download. The app-managed runtime download is Windows-only; Apple Silicon macOS uses a separately installed Ollama app.

git clone https://github.com/scottconverse/CivicNewspaper.git
cd CivicNewspaper
npm install
npm run tauri dev

Build installers:

npm run tauri build

The Ollama runtime binary is not committed to the repo. The app-managed first-run installer downloads the pinned Windows runtime and verifies its SHA256 before use. The legacy scripts/fetch-ollama-binaries.sh helper is not part of the v0.3.x release verifier.

Current Documentation

• V1 PRD: local LLM newsroom - product requirements for the local-intelligence newsroom roadmap.
• Implementation plan: v0.3.0 to v1.0.0 - phased roadmap with technology integrations and release gates.
• User manual - plain-English operator guide plus technical appendix.
• Architecture - system design, schema, security, publishing, and AI boundaries.
• Install guide - official installer and checksum instructions.
• Troubleshooting - installer provenance, model download, local AI, weak output, here.now preview, ZIP, and import help.
• Publishing connectors - supported publishing paths.
• Browser Bridge extension - install and pair the Chromium extension.
• Authenticated localhost API - loopback-only routes, headers, authentication, and response contract for the Browser Bridge and local tools.
• Release readiness - beta, release-candidate, and stable gates.
• Agent pipeline retirement - records why the obsolete repo-local self-grading pipeline cannot authorize current work.
• Discussion seeds - launch posts for GitHub Discussions or community forums.

Release Status

v0.3.3 is the current public beta. Its fresh tag is bound to exact product commit e94a2f94885c1e6013129c3d854662cc3c8e5b27. The Windows release workflow Authenticode-signs and timestamps the installer, installed application, and uninstaller, then fails closed if any signature check fails. The Apple Silicon DMG is intentionally unsigned and unnotarized. The release page, SHA256SUMS, and hosted Windows and macOS receipts bind the published downloads to their exact bytes. The v0.3.3 evidence JSON records the prepublication policy and local Mac preflight; because DMG bytes are not reproducible, its local preflight hash is not the final hosted DMG hash. The older v0.3.2 local isolated-package report and v0.3.2 evidence JSON remain historical evidence only.

Platform Release Roadmap

v0.3.3 supports Windows x64 and Apple Silicon macOS 11+. The macOS DMG requires a separate official Ollama install and is intentionally unsigned and unnotarized. Intel Macs are not supported. Linux packaging and proof are deliberately deferred to v0.3.4.

License

MIT. See LICENSE.

Contributing

See CONTRIBUTING.md. Useful contribution areas include source discovery adapters, import fixtures, accessibility checks, publishing connector hardening, release smoke tests, and better local model evaluation.