Absurdity Index

AI-powered congressional satire. We track real bills from Congress.gov, score them on an editorial Absurdity Index (1-10), and pair them with satirical alternatives that somehow make more sense.

Live site: absurdityindex.org

Follow along: @CartelPirate on X

What's Inside

The Site

A static site built with Astro that catalogs real congressional legislation alongside satirical "not-bills." Each real bill gets an absurdity score, a plain-English summary, and a breakdown of what it actually does vs. what its name implies.

• 39 bills tracked (29 real, 6 sensible satire, 4 absurd historical)
• Full-text search via Pagefind
• Embed widget and JSON API for developers
• Dark mode, mobile-friendly, government-parody aesthetic

The CLI

An autonomous social media management system for X/Twitter. Generates satirical content about congressional bills, runs it through a 5-layer safety system, and posts it — all driven by Claude.

cli/
├── commands/     # post, draft, engage, monitor, review, schedule, analytics, status
├── modules/
│   ├── content/  # Claude-powered content generation with 7 prompt types
│   ├── safety/   # "Hot Pot Detector" — blocklist, partisan lean, toxicity, quality
│   ├── x-api/    # Twitter API client + Playwright browser automation
│   ├── trends/   # RSS + X API trend aggregation and scoring
│   ├── engage/   # Congressional tweet scanning + quote-tweet engine
│   ├── scheduler/# Queue management and cooldown tracking
│   └── state/    # SQLite database for posts, analytics, safety logs

The Ralph Loop

The CLI is designed to run as a Ralph Loop — an iterative AI development pattern where Claude Code receives the same prompt repeatedly and sees its own prior work. See RALPH-PROMPT.md for the full autonomous prompt.

Each iteration, Claude:

1. Checks account status (posts today, queue, trends, engagement opportunities)
2. Decides what to do based on a priority framework
3. Generates content, runs safety checks, posts or drafts
4. Signals completion with a promise tag

Browser Extension

A Chrome extension (extension/) that overlays Absurdity Index scores on Congress.gov bill pages. Manifest V3.

K8s Monitor

A Python menubar app (k8s-monitor/) that monitors the self-hosted CI/CD pipeline running on Kubernetes with Argo Workflows.

Tech Stack

Layer	Technology
Site	Astro 5, MDX, Tailwind CSS v4
Search	Pagefind
CLI	TypeScript, Commander.js, better-sqlite3
AI	Claude (Anthropic SDK) for content generation + safety
Social	X/Twitter API v2 + Playwright for browser automation
Hosting	Cloudflare Pages
CI/CD	Argo Workflows on self-hosted Kubernetes

Getting Started

Prerequisites

• Node.js 20+
• npm

Site Development

npm install
npm run dev           # Dev server at localhost:4321
npm run build         # Production build + search indexing
npm run preview       # Preview production build

CLI Setup

cd cli
npm install
cp .env.example .env  # Fill in your API keys

Required environment variables (see cli/.env.example):

• X_BEARER_TOKEN — X API bearer token (read-only operations)
• ANTHROPIC_API_KEY — Claude API key (content generation + safety)
• Browser auth — Run npx tsx src/index.ts login to authenticate for posting

Optional:

• CONGRESS_API_KEY — Congress.gov API (for fetching new bills)

CLI Usage

# From the cli/ directory
npx tsx src/index.ts status              # Full state snapshot
npx tsx src/index.ts post bill --slug real-hr-25 --type bill-roast --dry-run
npx tsx src/index.ts monitor once        # Scan trends
npx tsx src/index.ts engage scan         # Find engagement opportunities
npx tsx src/index.ts analytics summary   # View performance metrics

Fetching Bills from Congress.gov

# From the project root
CONGRESS_GOV_API_KEY=<key> npm run fetch-bills
npm run fetch-bills -- --bill 119/hr/25  # Fetch a specific bill
npm run fetch-bills -- --bill=119/hr/25  # Equivalent inline form
npm run validate                          # Validate all bill MDX files
npm run validate:ci                       # CI gate (warnings fail in strict mode)

CI/Quality Commands

npm run verify
npm run validate:ci
npm run security:ci
npm run build
npm run build --prefix cli
npm test --prefix cli

Content

Bills live in src/data/bills/ as MDX files. Three types:

• Real bills (real-*.mdx) — Fetched from Congress.gov with absurdity scores
• Sensible bills (hr-*.mdx, s-*.mdx) — Satirical alternatives that make more sense
• Absurd bills (ra-*.mdx) — Historical laws that are genuinely absurd

Templates for new bills are in src/data/bills/_templates/.

Safety System

The CLI's "Hot Pot Detector" runs every generated post through 5 checks before it can go live:

Check	Score Range	What It Catches
Blocklist	0 or 100	Slurs, threats, banned terms
Tragedy Radar	0–30	References to recent tragedies
Partisan Lean	0–25	Content favoring one party
Toxicity	0–25	Mean-spirited or inflammatory tone
Content Quality	0–20	Low-effort or unfunny content

Verdicts: SAFE (0-20) posts automatically, REVIEW (20-40) goes to human queue, REJECT (40-100) is blocked.

Project Structure

├── src/
│   ├── components/   # Astro components (bills, layout, UI)
│   ├── data/bills/   # MDX bill content
│   ├── layouts/      # Base and bill layouts
│   ├── pages/        # Routes, API endpoints
│   └── styles/       # Tailwind v4 theme
├── cli/              # Autonomous social media CLI
├── extension/        # Chrome extension for Congress.gov
├── k8s-monitor/      # Kubernetes CI/CD monitor
├── scripts/          # Bill fetching and validation
├── RALPH-PROMPT.md   # Autonomous Ralph Loop prompt
└── AGENTS.md         # Architecture reference

License

MIT

Community

• Contributing
• Support
• Code of Conduct
• Security Policy
• Changelog
• Releasing