NeighborhoodOS today is two things: free, practical AI help for Linwood neighbors, and clinics for stuck civic problems. Everything on this page is not part of the current program. It is written down so the ideas aren't lost, and so nobody mistakes them for promises.
What's here
Neighborhood memory beyond links
A local database of public records (311, permits, violations, budgets, council votes) plus a tracker for promises officials make in public. Today the program simply links to the City's own sources and to Kansas City Documenters for meetings. The code for a fuller data layer exists (connectors/, ingest/) and is described in Technical Architecture and Data Sources.
Community governance tools
Resident identity, trust levels, five voting methods, paper ballots, issues, and federation between neighborhoods (identity/). It runs and is tested, but has no resident-facing app. See Known Gaps and Roadmap.
Local AI infrastructure
A community AI hub: a trusted room, loaner devices, and modest hardware that runs AI models on site, so neighbors' questions don't leave the building. See Community AI Hub Guide and the Size M and L budgets in Budget and Hardware.
When any of this should start
Only when all of these are true:
- Residents asked for it. It came up in Solve clinics, and the advisory residents agree it's worth doing. Not because a funder, partner, or developer wants it.
- The simple version failed. A spreadsheet, a printed list, or an existing city tool was tried first and wasn't enough.
- It passes the Pilot Rubric, 7/9 or better and the Red-Light Test.
- The Threat Model is updated first, with a row for every new kind of data, and the data steward signs off.
- Someone will run it. A named person has the hours to maintain it for at least a year.
Why it's on a separate page
Earlier descriptions of NeighborhoodOS led with infrastructure and governance. That made the project sound like a platform that residents would have to trust before getting anything useful. The program works the other way around: help first, trust earned, tools only if people ask for them.