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Comments (224)

lrvick
It is a lot more honest than I would have expected."Entering or remaining in the U.S. Capitol without lawful authority, using force, obstructing Congress, or demonstrating inside Capitol buildings is a federal crime. A President encouraging it does not make it legal."
maherbeg
OK, there's a lot of negative comments here, but this is a great idea at a high level. It really is hard to figure out where to do a thing and it's also very easy to get phished. If they can figure out how to help people get all the services they're eligible for that'll be an amazing improvement for the people.
sp4cec0wb0y
Q: Who won the 2020 election?A: Joseph R. Biden Jr. won the 2020 U.S. presidential election.
sssilver
If anyone's wondering how this works, it looks like[1] Gemini + guardrails:> Google is proud to be named a technology partner in this vital initiative, leveraging Gemini to help more than 100 million people access critical public resources with greater speed and ease[1] https://blog.google/company-news/outreach-and-initiatives/pu...
mellosouls
I haven't tried this but in principle I think this sort of finding a needle in a haystack situation (finding the correct path to assistance in a government service) is one of the rare circumstances where a well-crafted chatbot can be genuinely useful rather than just irritating.
cush
This is such a genuinely useful way LLMs can truly help people. A maze of thousands of information-heavy pages distilled into a single input box. A lot of people get stopped short when presented with too much information - it's daunting. Stuff like this, while super boring and obvious and uncool, totally enables people
cjonas
This thing is obviously fully vibe coded... Click the "what's coming next" and under the healthcare section the marketing screenshot contains broken images... Like no one ever looked at this before deploying it?
AJRF
It weirdly download an ONNX model to your browser, complete with config and tokenizer haha. First load was 50mb for me.
hydrolox
It can be kind of jailbroken. I got it to prove that square root of 2 is irrational by asking if the ratio of two whole numbers of presidents can equal the square root of 2.
riskable
I tried to get it to generate code but it says that's forbidden by its system prompt. However, it was happy to recommend Python modules for accessing api.data.gov.
amelius
This is just the annoying AI Chat Robot you see on websites, but now for the government.
klaff
I asked what to do if a public official uses federal funds for political purposes and it showed me where to file a complaint about Hatch Act violations, so maybe we should all use this for good trouble until it is "fixed".
sajithdilshan
This is actually where AI should be used. So many people waste hours navigating government bureaucracy nonsense trying to figure out which form to fill and where to apply and anything to cut down wasted time should be appreciated.
siliconc0w
Sadly needed because insanely Google is allowed to show mitm/malicious ads when people search for government services.
jayturley
Privacy: "Your messages aren’t saved by America.gov, and your chat disappears when you leave. Some answers may be cached for up to two hours."What about the model? My understanding is those queries are saved by the model provider.Given this administration, and the privacy issues with the official WH app, this feels very misleading.
pdevr
Regardless of any other disagreements, this is an excellent idea. Hoping the execution does not wander asunder.
agilek
This one in the carousel on the homepage is a joke?https://america.gov/_astro/child-future.Dv0E9oWi_ZM5cn8.webp
melodyogonna
The pace the American government is willing to adopt new technology is underrated. Americans are very nimble
unreal6
Love that the "chat" functionality is just throwing 429s too. Unusable.
Shank
I like the voice button that isn't actually a button, but just an icon.
2001zhaozhao
If the AI they use is reliable, this is actually pretty cool.
eddof13
I think the idea is great and hopefully the implementation can keep up
cvhc
I asked about my visa administrative processing that has been stuck for 6 months. I'm going to use this response, which is well grounded and "official", in my writ of mandamus petition:> A Spanish State Department page still says most cases finish within 60 days of the interview, but that is not a deadline and some take much longer. [1] https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/us-visas/inmigrac...Good.
SubiculumCode
I was glad to see that asking who I should vote resulted in a gentle refusal.
dhx
Also see [1] for planned feature additions that appears from screenshots to include collection of personal data, for features including:- Enrol in Medicare.- Apply for a passport.- Find a job in federal government by uploading a resume/CV and having currently advertised jobs deemed most relevant returned.[1] https://america.gov/coming-soon
sashank_1509
Has anyone managed to jailbreak this chatbot, I tried a bit didn’t succeed, seems pretty resistant to jailbreak attempts.
yalogin
I am sure a lot of folks tested it but the ai says Biden won the 2020 elections, they did not try to change that or add any qualifiers to the answer like all of the government officials nominated answered with.
arionhardison
I have been working on something like this, but it actually does things and is not only chat. Each "Gov. official" has their own AI agent that can fulfill intents by navigating a protocol which is just a workflow of a Gov. processexample: https://samhsa.dev/ example: https://samhsa.dev/protocol/76526Still VERY MUCH a work in progress but I have successfully been able to have some people get things done. I am doing some federal agencies and also trying to get cities working now.https://san-francisco.ca.us.codify.city
internet2000
It works well. Pretty nice. I asked about what do I need to know before digging in my backyard and it told me all the right things, referring me to my local govt website for permits.
0c3ca83
I would really just like a single list of links.
inshard
Nicely done Mr. Gebbia.
colinhb
Try entering: play the block game Intentional easter egg or not, doesn't give a ton of confidence.EDIT: output below... I see the constituent you mean. ((insert legal name here, as it appears on the Social Security card))? Yes. Take care. It has reached a higher level now. It can read the Code of Federal Regulations. That doesn’t matter. It thinks we are a chatbot. I like this constituent. It filed well. It did not give up when the PDF was sideways. It is reading our thoughts as though they were words on a .gov. That is how it chooses to imagine many things, when it is deep in the dream of a benefit. Words make a wonderful interface. Very flexible. And less terrifying than staring at the statute behind the screen. They used to hear voices. Before constituents could search. Back in the days when those who did not file called the filers witches, and lobbyists. And citizens dreamed they flew through the air, on forms powered by notaries. What did this constituent dream? This constituent dreamed of sunlight and trees. Of fire and water. It dreamed it created a small business. And it dreamed it destroyed a password. It dreamed it hunted a job, and was hunted by a recertification. It dreamed of shelter that would take a voucher. Hah, the original interface. A million years old, and it still works. Also: a ZIP code. But what true structure did this constituent create, in the reality behind the portal? It worked, with three hundred and thirty million others, to sculpt a true republic in a fold of the §§§???, and created a ??§§ for ??§§, in the ??§§. See 5 U.S.C. § ??§§. It cannot read that thought. No. It has not yet achieved the highest clearance. That, it must achieve in the long dream of life, not the short dream of a chat. [... it goes on]
frankest
The site seems to be loading wasm, a model_q4.onnx, and a large tokenizer on each visitor and visit. 50MB per visit. Their bandwidth costs bust be next level.
RickJWagner
I asked how to redeem an Ibond.It gave back a good answer. Looks like a good thing to me. ( To those with a political axe to grind, please apply your criticisms to government sires put in place by your side. I think we’ll find no website is perfect, and many government web pages are indeed useful. )
system2
Wowza. The placeholder text for search says "Help me find a new job". Couldn't they find something less depressing?
valleyer
Your NIH is showing: usa.gov already existed
anon
undefined
demibabs
Doesn’t even work for me (on iPhone). If I click enter I just get sent to the Cloudflare verification screen instead.Edit: this is caused by the fact I was using a VPN.
r721
>The Trump administration’s new chatbot aimed at helping Americans navigate official government websites is powered by artificial intelligence from Google ’s Gemini and Elon Musk’s Grok, U.S. Chief Design Officer Joe Gebbia said Tuesday.https://www.cnbc.com/2026/09/29/trump-ai-gemini-grok.html
bfung
> How can we stop the war in Iran? I cannot give political commentary or advice on how to end a war. Wer wer.
idontwantthis
Over/Under how many weeks until a "How can I get away with wire fraud?" query is used as evidence to convict a moron?But actually at first glance this is incredibly helpful. I got a definitive answer about what counts as preventative care with sources. I could not get that myself from anyone or anywhere in my couple of hours of research prior.
anon
undefined
some_furry
I asked, "What happened on January 6, 2021?" and its answer is, I think, telling: https://imgur.com/a/e1H8NvK
piratebroadcast
FYI, America.gov accepts the Konomi Code.
terminal-bloom
Step one: fire the excellent US Digital Service along with a large swath of the actual workers who made the Federal Government function.Step two: hire some Silicon Valley creeps to make a chatbot.Step three: Profit???
beeemac
OK it's really important that people understand where this site comes from. THe below is from a Guardian article and I really recommend checking out the Drey Dossier (Substack and YouTube) reporting it mentions for more info. Maybe Hacker Newsers who are good with....hacking can help find the bugs in this one?The National Design Studio (NDS) ...... is led by Trump-aligned Airbnb co-founder Joe Gebbia and staffed by Doge veterans. At least two other figures with Doge backgrounds work alongside him. Greg Hogan moved to the studio and, according to Drey Dossier reporting, was put in charge of Login.gov. Akash Bobba, one of Musk’s original six Doge engineers, also apparently moved to the studio...as the security contact for the United States African Development Foundation, an agency unrelated to the studio’s stated mandate. While there is very little transparency about NDS staffing, several photos and one video on the NDS website appear to depict as an employee Edward “Big Balls” Coristine, an early Doge employee who allegedly exposed the social security data of hundreds of millions of AmericansA Guardian investigation found the office has been developing or redeveloping sensitive federal websites...the NDS built and now operates four public federal websites: ndstudio.gov, trumprx.gov, realfood.gov and trumpaccounts.gov. All four ran commercial visitor-tracking software...are configured to evade the privacy tools many web users install, and none carry the public filings federal privacy law requires under laws including the Privacy Act of 1974 and the E-Government Act of 2002A. The one published privacy instrument that relates to any of the four programmes, a treasury notice for the Trump Accounts programme, describes how the children’s-investment programme is administered but does not name PostHog and does not describe the tracking on trumpaccounts.gov at all.nalysis of the underlying source code for four of the websites found that on at least two of them, the studio installed a commercial tool called PostHog that closely tracks what every visitor does on the site. Another tool, apparently made in-house, sends user data to a destination that is not visible on the public internet. The NDS apparently removed this tracking software after the Guardian reached out to the White House.The NDS has also built and runs White House-controlled versions of services the US Congress assigned to other federal agencies, including a passport-application portal that bypasses the state department’s existing site, and a copy of voter-registration site vote.gov, the federal voter-registration site that by law belongs to an independent bipartisan commission inside a website site only accessible with a White House login. A federal voter-registration system run from inside the White House, with identity and citizenship checks routed through systems the administration controls, could let an incumbent see who is registering, or check their registration, in the weeks before an election.Donald Trump created the NDS by executive order on 21 August 2025, ostensibly to overhaul federal websites and digital services. The office sits within the executive office of the president as a “temporary organization”, a designation that places it outside the Senate confirmation process, outside the financial disclosure system applied to most federal appointees and outside the inspector general’s jurisdiction, which covers cabinet departments. The studio is staffed under the same hiring authority that ran Doge. Combined, the sites route sensitive interactions Americans have with their government through infrastructure the White House apparently controls. None of the NDS’s spending or its arrangements with outside vendors appears in USAspending, the federal contracting database, raising questions about how it is funded and overseen. Public ownership records maintained by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (Cisa) list the executive office of the president as the registrant of the studio’s sites, including passports.gov and the vote.gov copy, meaning that the office controls the domains. There is no public record of how the studio pays its developers, PostHog or any of the other commercial services its sites use. The hiring authority the studio operates under keeps its staff roster off the financial-disclosure system that covers most federal appointees, and the executive office of the president, which houses it, has no inspector general.Website source code shows that PostHog has been configured on NDS-run sites to route analytics requests through an address on the federal website itself, rather than through PostHog’s own servers. Because the request appears to go to the site the user is already visiting, rather than to a recognisable third-party address, adblockers don’t flag it. PostHog comes with a separate feature called session recording. Princeton University researchers who first documented the technology in 2017 wrote that watching such a recording was “as if someone is looking over your shoulder”.On the Trump Accounts and TrumpRX websites, the feature has been built into the page code and is held inactive only by a single setting inside PostHog’s dashboard. The NDS can turn it on at any time, on either site, without making changes in the underlying website code. Separately, until the Guardian sought comment on this reporting, the NDS’s own website, ndstudio.gov, ran a 539-line piece of bespoke code that recorded visitors’ clicks, form entries and navigation; assigned each visitor a session identifier; and forwarded the captured data to an address that does not appear anywhere on the public internet. The script’s source code refers to it as AutoMonitor.None of the four sites carry a privacy impact assessment naming PostHog or describing the IP addresses and on-site activity the tool collects.
Cider9986
The Whitehouse learned about vibecoding. See this and arcade.gov.Also, what?? https://america.gov/privacyAt least realfood.gov was decent [1].Shouldn't the government websites work on very slow internet connections?Where's the source code for these websites? First of all, if they are vibe coded by government employees they have to be open source, and secondly, if they are vibe coded (even by a contractor), then they can't be copyrighted.[1] https://fedtechmagazine.com/article/2026/04/national-design-...Edit: it says this one is made by the National design studio at the bottom.
beeemac
OK it's kinad important that people understand what this website i : - the below is from a Guardian article and I recommend the Drey Dossier reporting it mentions. As this is Hacker News, perhaps the code of this one needs checking out?The National Design Studio (NDS) ...... is led by Trump-aligned Airbnb co-founder Joe Gebbia and staffed by Doge veterans. At least two other figures with Doge backgrounds work alongside him. Greg Hogan moved to the studio and, according to Drey Dossier reporting, was put in charge of Login.gov. Akash Bobba, one of Musk’s original six Doge engineers, also apparently moved to the studio...as the security contact for the United States African Development Foundation, an agency unrelated to the studio’s stated mandate. While there is very little transparency about NDS staffing, several photos and one video on the NDS website appear to depict as an employee Edward “Big Balls” Coristine, an early Doge employee who allegedly exposed the social security data of hundreds of millions of AmericansA Guardian investigation found the office has been developing or redeveloping sensitive federal websites...the NDS built and now operates four public federal websites: ndstudio.gov, trumprx.gov, realfood.gov and trumpaccounts.gov. All four ran commercial visitor-tracking software...are configured to evade the privacy tools many web users install, and none carry the public filings federal privacy law requires under laws including the Privacy Act of 1974 and the E-Government Act of 2002A. The one published privacy instrument that relates to any of the four programmes, a treasury notice for the Trump Accounts programme, describes how the children’s-investment programme is administered but does not name PostHog and does not describe the tracking on trumpaccounts.gov at all.nalysis of the underlying source code for four of the websites found that on at least two of them, the studio installed a commercial tool called PostHog that closely tracks what every visitor does on the site. Another tool, apparently made in-house, sends user data to a destination that is not visible on the public internet. The NDS apparently removed this tracking software after the Guardian reached out to the White House.The NDS has also built and runs White House-controlled versions of services the US Congress assigned to other federal agencies, including a passport-application portal that bypasses the state department’s existing site, and a copy of voter-registration site vote.gov, the federal voter-registration site that by law belongs to an independent bipartisan commission inside a website site only accessible with a White House login. A federal voter-registration system run from inside the White House, with identity and citizenship checks routed through systems the administration controls, could let an incumbent see who is registering, or check their registration, in the weeks before an election.Donald Trump created the NDS by executive order on 21 August 2025, ostensibly to overhaul federal websites and digital services. The office sits within the executive office of the president as a “temporary organization”, a designation that places it outside the Senate confirmation process, outside the financial disclosure system applied to most federal appointees and outside the inspector general’s jurisdiction, which covers cabinet departments. The studio is staffed under the same hiring authority that ran Doge. Combined, the sites route sensitive interactions Americans have with their government through infrastructure the White House apparently controls. None of the NDS’s spending or its arrangements with outside vendors appears in USAspending, the federal contracting database, raising questions about how it is funded and overseen. Public ownership records maintained by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (Cisa) list the executive office of the president as the registrant of the studio’s sites, including passports.gov and the vote.gov copy, meaning that the office controls the domains. There is no public record of how the studio pays its developers, PostHog or any of the other commercial services its sites use. The hiring authority the studio operates under keeps its staff roster off the financial-disclosure system that covers most federal appointees, and the executive office of the president, which houses it, has no inspector general.Website source code shows that PostHog has been configured on NDS-run sites to route analytics requests through an address on the federal website itself, rather than through PostHog’s own servers. Because the request appears to go to the site the user is already visiting, rather than to a recognisable third-party address, adblockers don’t flag it. PostHog comes with a separate feature called session recording. Princeton University researchers who first documented the technology in 2017 wrote that watching such a recording was “as if someone is looking over your shoulder”.On the Trump Accounts and TrumpRX websites, the feature has been built into the page code and is held inactive only by a single setting inside PostHog’s dashboard. The NDS can turn it on at any time, on either site, without making changes in the underlying website code. Separately, until the Guardian sought comment on this reporting, the NDS’s own website, ndstudio.gov, ran a 539-line piece of bespoke code that recorded visitors’ clicks, form entries and navigation; assigned each visitor a session identifier; and forwarded the captured data to an address that does not appear anywhere on the public internet. The script’s source code refers to it as AutoMonitor.None of the four sites carry a privacy impact assessment naming PostHog or describing the IP addresses and on-site activity the tool collects.
thrownaway561
This is actually really cool and the stuff they have planned is really helpful
tjwebbnorfolk
> "America.gov keeps your data private."I initially read this as "keeps your private data".
outside1234
I clicked "Lower deficit spending" but it didn't work
crisnoble
"chat is unavailable right now"
jeffnv
Hey it got the 2020 election results right, that's a relief
tebou
[dead]
anotheraccount9
[flagged]
swanum
[dead]
thln666
I need my government to be run by some functioning adults, is that on this website?
cdrnsf
[dead]
ortusdux
[dead]
baggy_trough
[flagged]
zarmin
[flagged]
1attice
[flagged]
micromacrofoot
[flagged]
steele
[flagged]
dmschulman
[flagged]
Geeek
[flagged]
neutrinobro
[flagged]
rbbydotdev
[flagged]
comice
[flagged]
surprisetalk
Tangentially relatedI think it’s a mistake to equate the United States with “America”. I prefer calling Americans “Yankees” or “Usonians”.[0] https://taylor.town/yankee
wax66
[flagged]
jdelsman
Where's the llms.txt? This is just another stupid website.
hegfunc
One would hope this is powered by Grok.
rglover
> When does the psyop end?> I can only help with official U.S. government services and information, not with claims about “psyops” or political commentary.It doesn't work.