PolicyGPT — reading legislation like a first-class document

PolicyGPT is a legislative policy portal. You browse bills, members, and committees, read the actual bill text, chart activity, and ask a model questions about a bill with the document in context. The two parts worth walking through are how it reads PDFs and how it handles charts.

Reading the bill text

The bill PDFs come from the NY Senate site, which doesn't send CORS headers and blocks embedding, so a plain <iframe> won't load them. Rather than punt to a new tab, PolicyGPT opens the text in a resizable side sheet and tries a few approaches in order. It builds the PDF URL from the bill number and keeps a Google Docs viewer around as a fallback:

// src/components/features/bills/BillPDFSheet.tsx
const CORS_PROXIES = [
  "https://corsproxy.io/?",
  "https://api.allorigins.win/raw?url=",
];

const cleanBillNumber = billNumber.toLowerCase().replace(/[^a-z0-9]/g, "");
const sessionYear = bill?.session_id || 2025;
const pdfUrl = `https://legislation.nysenate.gov/pdf/bills/${sessionYear}/${cleanBillNumber}`;
const gviewUrl = `https://docs.google.com/gview?url=${encodeURIComponent(
  pdfUrl
)}&embedded=true`;

First it fetches the PDF through a proxy into a blob URL, so it can render natively and stay interactive. If that fails, it switches to the Google viewer. If that also fails, it shows an error with a direct download link. The sheet is drag-resizable, so you decide how much room the document gets:

const [sheetWidth, setSheetWidth] = useState(900);
const [isResizing, setIsResizing] = useState(false);

There's also a cleanup step after the sheet closes: it clears a stuck pointer-events style off document.body. Without it, Radix occasionally left the whole page un-clickable, which is the kind of bug you only catch in production.

Inline charts

Bill and member activity render as small recharts sparklines, area or bar depending on the metric, sized to sit next to the text instead of on a separate dashboard:

<ResponsiveContainer width="100%" height="100%">
  <AreaChart data={d.data} margin={{ top: 4, right: 4, bottom: 0, left: 4 }}>
    <Area
      type="monotone"
      dataKey="y"
      stroke={d.color}
      strokeWidth={1.5}
      fill={`url(#${d.id})`}
      dot={false}
      animationDuration={500}
    />
    <XAxis dataKey="x" hide />
  </AreaChart>
</ResponsiveContainer>

The axes are hidden, each series has its own gradient fill, and the animation is short. The goal is a chart you can read at a glance, in line with the text around it, rather than a dashboard you have to go open.

Why it matters

Most "chat with a document" products treat the document as a second-class citizen — a citation, a link out. PolicyGPT treats the PDF as a primary surface that stays open, resizable, and resilient, with charts and chat arranged around it. That stance is what made it the flagship.

Brendan Stanton

Founder, NYSgpt