Who we are

Zen Citizen is a grassroots, volunteer-based, open‑source initiative that demystifies everyday government procedures in India like getting a driving license, marriage registration, property registrations. 

We aim to rein in petty corruption by empowering citizens to navigate the system with confidence and to challenge bribe demands instead of submitting to them silently.

We do this by:

• Developing tools to make using the websites easier. Check out our Kaveri Village Finder and Civic Compass – we are piloting in Bengaluru
• Identifying workarounds for bugs (enter both first name and last name in the ‘first name field’, otherwise you will not find your property)
• Surfacing undocumented “rules” – do not wear shorts for a driving test, you’ll be sent back home 
• Helping users navigate poor user-interfaces (by pointing what is where)

What we want to build

The next step is a chat interface where citizens can ask questions such as “Where is the download button for the certificate”, “I am getting a 405 error, what should I do” and instantly get an AI‑generated answer based on our research.

• A public web app where users chat with an LLM.
• Behind the scenes: retrieve‑augmented generation (RAG) + larger‑context prompts so answers always cite Zen Citizen’s docs.
• Each chat session is stored (DB + vector store) so future queries get smarter and we can surface common pain‑points.
• Admin panel to upload / tag new PDFs, forms, circulars, etc.
• 100 % open‑source (MIT) so other civic groups can fork it.

Where you come in

We’re looking for 1‑2 volunteer full‑stack developers who can spare a few hours a week and own this mini‑platform end‑to‑end.

Ideally, you would have these skills: 

• React / Next.js or any modern SPA framework
• Node / Python back‑end experience
• Calling LLM APIs (OpenAI, Anthropic, local models)
• Basic DB design (Postgres / Mongo) & auth

Nice‑to‑have / learn‑on‑the‑job

• UI polish (Tailwind / Chakra)
• Vector DBs (Pinecone, pgvector, Qdrant)
• LangChain / LlamaIndex / custom RAG wrangling
• DevOps (Docker, Fly.io / Railway / Render)

What you’ll get

• A real‑world, high‑impact portfolio project that helps thousands of citizens.
• Heartwarming feedback from citizens whose lives you’ve helped improve

How to raise your hand

Fill this volunteer intake form

• Share at least one link to something you’ve built (GitHub, CodeSandbox, etc.)
• A note on how many hours/week you can contribute in the next couple of weeks/months.

Let’s make government processes actually understandable!