Parti-Chat

A multi-party political Q&A chat application that provides neutral, side-by-side answers from Norwegian political parties based on their official party programs. Check it out at https://partichat.no/

Overview

Parti-Chat allows users to:

• Select multiple parties and ask policy questions
• Get grounded answers based strictly on party programs (PDFs)
• Compare positions with transparent citations and page references
• View source material with direct links to PDF pages
• Save conversation history locally or with optional account sync

All responses are in Norwegian Bokmål and strictly grounded in official party program documents.

Tech Stack

• Frontend: Next.js 15, React 19, TailwindCSS, shadcn/ui
• Backend: Next.js API, oRPC for type-safe APIs
• Database: PostgreSQL with pgvector, Drizzle ORM
• AI: OpenRouter (GPT-4o-mini) for RAG-based responses
• Runtime: Bun
• Monorepo: Turborepo

Quick Start

1. Install dependencies:

   bun install

2. Set up PostgreSQL database and update environment variables:

   # apps/server/.env
   DATABASE_URL=postgresql://...
   OPEN_ROUTER_API_KEY=your-key
   BETTER_AUTH_SECRET=your-secret

3. Apply database schema:

   bun run db:push

4. Ingest party programs (place PDFs in /party-program/):

   bun run ingest:parties

5. Start development servers:

   bun dev

   • Web app: http://localhost:3000
   • API server: http://localhost:3001

Project Structure

parti-chat/
├── apps/
│   ├── web/          # Frontend (Next.js)
│   └── server/       # Backend API (oRPC + RAG)
├── party-program/    # PDF storage for party programs
└── docker-compose.yml # Local development setup

Key Features

• RAG-powered answers with pgvector similarity search
• Citation tracking with page numbers and chapter references
• Streaming responses for real-time answer generation
• Multi-party comparison summaries on demand
• PDF text extraction with chunking for optimal retrieval
• Conversation persistence with optional authentication

Available Scripts

• bun dev - Start all apps in development
• bun build - Build for production
• bun run db:push - Apply database changes
• bun run db:studio - Open database GUI
• bun run ingest:parties - Process party program PDFs

Deployment

The app is designed for deployment on platforms like Dokploy, Railway, or Vercel with separate services for frontend, backend, and PostgreSQL database.