Civic Signal Kit

Civic Signal Kit is a small Python toolkit for turning plain CSV time-series data into transparent public-interest trend summaries.

It is designed for educators, journalists, community groups, public-health communicators, and civic volunteers who need to explain what changed in a dataset without hiding the assumptions.

The toolkit does not give medical, legal, financial, or emergency advice. It summarizes data and exposes the thresholds used for classification.

What It Does

• Reads a CSV with a date column and a numeric value column.
• Calculates rolling averages.
• Compares the latest period with the previous period.
• Classifies the latest value using user-provided thresholds.
• Flags simple data-quality issues such as short histories, duplicate dates, and date gaps.
• Exports a plain-language Markdown or JSON summary with the method and thresholds included.
• Writes report artifacts to disk for recurring workflows.
• Can fail a pipeline when data-quality notes are present.
• Uses only the Python standard library.

Example

Input CSV:

date,value
2026-05-01,12
2026-05-02,14
2026-05-03,16
2026-05-04,20
2026-05-05,22
2026-05-06,24
2026-05-07,26
2026-05-08,31
2026-05-09,34
2026-05-10,38

Command:

python -m civic_signal_kit sample.csv --date-column date --value-column value --format markdown

Output:

# Signal Summary

- Latest date: 2026-05-10
- Latest value: 38.00
- 7-point rolling average: 27.86
- Previous 7-point rolling average: 20.00
- Change: 39.29% increase
- Level: elevated
- Data points used: 10

## Method

- Rolling window: 7 point(s)
- Thresholds: baseline>=0, elevated>=25, high>=50
- Classification uses the highest threshold less than or equal to the latest rolling average.

Install for Local Development

python -m pip install -e .
python -m unittest discover -s tests

CLI

python -m civic_signal_kit path/to/data.csv \
  --date-column date \
  --value-column value \
  --window 7 \
  --threshold baseline=0 \
  --threshold elevated=25 \
  --threshold high=50 \
  --format markdown \
  --output summary.md

Thresholds are inclusive lower bounds. The highest threshold less than or equal to the latest rolling average becomes the level.

Use --fail-on-notes in scheduled checks when date gaps, short histories, duplicate dates, or missing comparison windows should block publication.

Examples

Runnable sample CSVs live in docs/examples.

python -m civic_signal_kit docs/examples/wastewater-signal.csv \
  --date-column date \
  --value-column concentration \
  --threshold baseline=0 \
  --threshold elevated=250 \
  --threshold high=500

Documentation

• Use cases
• Pilot plan
• Maintainer playbook
• PyPI publishing
• v0.2.0 release notes
• OpenAI Codex OSS path

Project Values

• Transparent assumptions.
• Plain language.
• No hidden dependencies.
• No analytics, tracking, or remote logging.
• Useful defaults, but user-owned thresholds.

Roadmap

• Add examples for attendance and service-demand data.
• Add chart export.
• Add localization-friendly message templates.
• Expand validation reports for messy CSVs.

Contributing

See CONTRIBUTING.md.

License

MIT. See LICENSE.