Make local knowledge easier to find¶
locali is more than a feed. It can become a searchable archive of local information: content is not just displayed, but made accessible by source, place, topic and relationship.
What's behind this?¶
Everything that flows into locali — a council decision, an RSS article, a club event, a neighbour's help request — is more than a card in a feed. It is a piece of structured knowledge about a community.
locali can connect these pieces: surface topics, make relationships visible, and make information easier to reach through a plain-language search — even when it originally arrived as a municipal PDF or council minutes.
The quality of this depends on source availability, configuration and the model used. These features are optional and, in early versions, experimental.
In the default setup, this happens on your own infrastructure. Content or queries are only sent to external services for AI functions when an operator deliberately configures such providers.
Ask locali¶
Ask a plain question — locali searches all imported content and shows you the answer along with where it comes from.
Example:
"When is Bahnhofstraße closing and for how long?"
locali responds:
The full closure of Bahnhofstraße begins on 12 May 2026 and is expected to last six weeks. The reason is the renewal of district heating pipes by the municipal utility.
Sources: Municipal bulletin no. 18/2026 · Council resolution 2026/0217 · Stadtwerke RSS announcement 28 Apr 2026
locali is designed to ground answers in sources from the hub and make those sources visible. When no sufficient content is found, locali is intended to make that clear. Answers should be grounded in the sources that were found and make that basis visible.
This can simplify a lot: less keyword searching, less PDF-clicking, a faster path to the right sources. locali does not replace official information or the need to check the original source.
→ How to use Ask locali — step by step
Relevant feed¶
The feed can rank content by local and topical relevance — without paid reach, advertising profiles, or commercial engagement logic.
A new council decision on cycle paths can therefore become more visible where place, topic, and source fit together — even if it has only just arrived.
The source and place are always visible. The origin of every piece of content remains visible. That keeps it traceable why a post appears in the feed.
What makes this feed different from commercial platforms: the goal is relevance for you — not time-on-site, click-through rates, or advertising revenue for a platform. Content is not ranked lower because it generates little engagement. No content is promoted because someone paid for it. Your usage behaviour is not passed on to external services by locali.
Smart routing¶
Incoming content can be distributed not just by manually defined rules, but by meaning.
A municipal bulletin entry about a new playground on Mozartstraße? locali can identify such connections and support the assignment to relevant places or topics — depending on configuration, source availability and data quality. Operators can override this at any time with manual rules.
The routing engine optimises exclusively on content relevance: which place is topically affected? Which content, tags, or areas belong together? It does not factor in popularity, ad relevance, or paid visibility — and operators can override it at any time with manual rules.
Local memory¶
What arrives in locali stays findable — not just while it is visible in the feed.
A new member asks: "What has happened in the town centre over the last twelve months?" — locali can help with questions like this, because content is indexed and timestamped.
This is especially useful for:
- Newcomers who want to get their bearings
- Clubs that want to understand what has been decided in their area
- Engaged residents doing local research
How does locali index content?¶
locali reads all content that is imported into the hub — municipal bulletins, RSS feeds, posts, events. From this, structured signals can emerge about which topics appear frequently in a community and how pieces of content relate to each other.
The system indexes content — not personal user data. No profile is created, stored, or shared. Relevance comes from sources, places, tags, and semantic relationships — not from advertising profiles or commercial behaviour tracking.
Sources, limits and quality¶
Answers are grounded in the content available in the hub. Sources are shown so that users can check what an answer is based on.
When no sufficient sources are found, locali is intended to make that clear. AI can make mistakes. It does not replace official information, and it does not replace legal, medical, financial or governmental advice. Quality depends on source availability, configuration and the model used.
AI is optional¶
AI is not a requirement for locali. It is an optional helper layer. A hub should remain useful without AI.
For data-sovereign setups, models can be run locally. External AI providers must be enabled deliberately, reviewed by the operator and handled under the operator's responsibility.
Data sovereignty as a guiding principle¶
The intelligence features can run on your own infrastructure. By default, local processing is intended — for example via Ollama. External cloud providers must be configured deliberately.
Operators who want to use cloud providers configure this explicitly in the AI settings. Questions are not linked to an account by default; optional aggregated usage statistics are a separate concern.
What locali is — and what it is not:
| This is locali | This is not locali |
|---|---|
| A retrieval system grounded in real community content | A chatbot that freely generates answers |
| A relevance signal for better content distribution | A commercial feed algorithm optimising for engagement |
| A search and Q&A tool for community members | A surveillance system tracking individual behaviour |
| A bridge between related pieces of content | A system that autonomously creates content |
| An optional helper layer | An AI platform or AI authority |
Phased rollout
The intelligence features are introduced in phases. Which capabilities are available on your hub depends on the version deployed and the operator's AI configuration. → AI settings