Marigold Insights

Non-Partisan Civic Data Traversal Engineered for Zero-PII Cloud Compliance & Local Memory Execution.

Architected & Built by Colon Hyphen Bracket, a Wyoming LLC.
Architect Portfolio: https://hire.colonhyphenbracket.pink

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🏛️ Executive Overview

Marigold Insights is an open-source, local-compute analytical execution engine designed for civic organizations, state emergency management agencies, and volunteer data auditors.

Instead of requiring jurisdictions to upload sensitive citizen voter rolls containing Personally Identifiable Information (PII) to centralized cloud servers—which triggers severe data residency liabilities, HIPAA/Privacy audits, and automated AI scraping guardrails—Marigold operates as a Query Package Manager (similar to NPM). The server hosts only lightweight JSON/SQL algorithm templates ("Audit Playbooks" or "Cartridges"), while all CSV file parsing and high-speed analytical queries execute 100% inside local browser memory or local SQLite instances.

Aligned with FY26 FEMA HSGP Mandates

Marigold qualifies as an allowable voter list maintenance expenditure under the mandatory 3% National Priority Area spending requirement for Election Security under the Homeland Security Grant Program (HSGP) Notice of Funding Opportunity.

📖 For detailed systems engineering, prior art synthesis (Web Workers, Fellegi-Sunter linkage, Cartridges), and Open-Core vs. Commercial IP boundaries, read our complete Architectural Specification & Prior Art Synthesis (ARCHITECTURE.md).

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🚀 Key Features

1. Public Sandbox vs. SPA Workspace: Unauthenticated visitors can freely test sample datasets in the Public Sandbox. Authenticated users access an intuitive SPA dashboard with a streamlined 1-2-3 guided workflow ("The Happy Path").
2. Principle of Least Privilege: When users create new Audit Playbooks, templates default to 🔒 Private (Only Me) until explicitly upgraded to 👥 Share with Group or 🌍 Publish to National Store.
3. Smart Duplicate Finder (Phase 2 Preview): Employs probabilistic record linkage (Fellegi-Sunter / Levenshtein algorithms) inside client memory to resolve cross-precinct typos and NCOA address mismatches without third-party APIs.
4. National Cartridge Store: A crowdsourced public repository where data scientists across America can download standalone .cartridge.json files to run against their local state exports.

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🛠️ Forking & User Management Guide

Security & API Key Privacy

CRITICAL: Never commit secret API keys, OAuth client secrets, or real voter databases (*.db, *.csv) to version control. The repository includes strict .gitignore rules shielding local databases.

1. Environment Configuration: Copy .env.example to .env.local:

   cp .env.example .env.local

   • Configure your Gemini API Key (GEMINI_API_KEY). Note: Ensure all AI assistant interactions utilize free-tier endpoints (gemini-2.5-flash) to prevent billing exhaustion.
   • Configure OAuth / Clerk client keys if implementing full multi-tenant backend auth.

2. User Management Privacy: By default, the open-source release utilizes a decoupled client-side Auth Context (src/lib/auth/AuthContext.tsx) supporting localized group membership and admin transfer. If deploying to production with live user authentication:

   • Store user session tokens in secure HTTP-only cookies or Clerk/Firebase managed instances.
   • Never store user passwords or raw PII in public database collections.

3. Local Development:

   npm install
   npm run dev -- -p 3001

   Open http://localhost:3001 to launch the suite.

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⚖️ License & Attribution

All rights reserved by Colon Hyphen Bracket, a Wyoming LLC.
For statewide contracting, procurement inquiries, or custom cartridge development, visit https://colonhyphenbracket.pink.