See whose life a bill actually changes.
Civitas is a desktop macroeconomic flight simulator that projects how federal policy lands on real households. Score any bill with CBO-style headlines — deficit, inflation, unemployment, rates — and a per-persona lived-impact breakdown across the whole wealth distribution, from a single mom on retail wages to a top-0.1% asset owner. An AI Copilot and a Claude Code / MCP server drive the same simulator, so every answer cites a modeled number.
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Why Civitas?
Concrete, not rhetorical
Every claim about a bill resolves to a number — 10-year deficit impact, modeled inflation, unemployment and rates, per-persona net worth and take-home change. No 'experts say' hand-waving, no cherry-picked anecdotes.
Whole-distribution honest
Most distributional analyses stop at the top 20%. Civitas carries top-1% and top-0.1% personas and judges every bill by fiscal incidence — how much of the tax-and-benefit change the bottom 20% keeps versus the top 0.1% — the way CBO and TPC tables do.
Lived impact, not just percent
A 90% loss on $18M still leaves a top-5% household. A 100% loss on $200k leaves you underwater. Civitas shows ending net worth in dollars AND a wealth-tier label so the framing matches reality.
One model, every surface
The Bills page, Design a Bill, the Dashboard, the AI Copilot and the MCP server all score through the same engine with the same rules — so the chat can never quote a deficit or a verdict that contradicts what's on screen.
Your data stays on your machine
Civitas runs locally on Windows and macOS. Bills, personas, custom provisions and chat history live in a SQLite database on your own drive. Bring your own AI key on Free and Lifetime, or use managed AI on Pro; the simulator itself never phones home.
Checked against history
Validate Library runs 19 real bills — from ERTA 1981 to OBBBA 2025 — through the simulator in their own economic context and compares the modeled deficit, inflation and distributional effect with CBO's scores. You see where the model matches the record and where it doesn't, so you know how far to trust it.
Features
Monthly-step macro simulator
A 10-year, month-by-month model of real GDP, inflation, unemployment, interest rates, debt-to-GDP, federal debt, the dollar's reserve share, bank stress and currency baskets. Score a bill in a normal economy or a recession of chosen depth, with or without a Fed backstop.
The 2025-26 policy agenda, ready to score
Federal minimum wage at $15 or $17, the expanded Child Tax Credit, Social Security trust-fund depletion in 2033, raising the retirement age to 70, ACA enhanced-subsidy expiry, stimulus checks, student-debt cancellation, the 2025 universal and reciprocal tariffs, and stablecoins buying Treasuries — alongside 50+ classic provisions and 35 conflict, climate, pandemic and domestic-crisis events.
Households modeled down to the paycheck
27 personas across the quintiles, the top 1% and 0.1%, hazard archetypes and four international households. Each carries wages and hours, Social Security, means-tested benefits, children, student loans, a full balance sheet and spending mix — so a wage floor, a child credit or a benefit cut lands on the households it actually reaches.
Tax engine with real revenue scoring
Ten tax-law presets: current law, TCJA 2017, OBBBA 2025, pre-TCJA, pre-ERTA 1980, ERTA 1981, Clinton-era, 1950s-progressive, a flat tax and a Warren-style wealth tax. Income, payroll and wealth-tax revenue are scored against the law each bill replaced, with OBBBA carve-outs (tips, overtime, seniors, auto loans, SALT, 199A) and a Social Security 2100-style payroll donut.
19 historical bills, validated against CBO
ERTA 1981, OBRA 1993, TCJA 2017, OBBBA 2025, ARRA 2009, CARES 2020, ARP 2021, ACA 2010, IRCA 1986, NAFTA 1994, Section 301 tariffs, the 2025 tariff wave, IRA 2022, CHIPS 2022, the IRA green-credit repeal, Gramm-Leach-Bliley, Dodd-Frank, the Volcker disinflation and ZIRP/QE — each scored in its own economic context against its documented record.
AI Copilot grounded in the simulator
Chat on the Dashboard, Bills, Provisions and Design a Bill pages. The Copilot calls 23 simulator tools — score a bill, explain any persona's outcome, inspect a provision's levers, compare tax schedules, validate a historical bill — using the same settings as the page you're on, and cites the numbers it gets back.
AI Bill Designer
On Design a Bill, the AI edits the bill for you: adds and removes provisions, names it, and authors or edits custom provisions with full control over all 43 levers — including their budget cost. It reports exactly what changed, and every edit has a one-click Undo.
Claude Code / MCP server
The bundled civitas-mcp server gives Claude Code and other MCP clients 26 tools: discover provisions, levers and tax schedules, score bills, explain personas, author provisions and tax policies, validate history, and save bills whose amendments take effect on their own timeline.
Custom personas + comparison groups
Design your own household with the same full field surface — income mix, Social Security, children, hours, student loans, balance sheet, sector, AI risk, spending shares and hazard exposure — and curate custom comparison groups so you control the lens.
A desktop app that stays out of the way
Native Windows and macOS via .NET MAUI. A collapsible side rail with your favorite bills one click away, toolbars that fold into icons and an overflow menu on narrow windows, optional hover tooltips on every control, and SQLite storage on your own machine.
Pricing for every kind of citizen
Free for the policy-curious. Pro for staffers, journalists, and analysts who want managed AI. Lifetime for the bring-your-own-key, support-the-project crowd.
- Full simulator — 99 provisions & hazard events
- All 27 personas and 19 historical bills
- AI Copilot with your own AI key
- Up to 5 saved bills
- Favorite bills in the side rail
- Chat history saved locally
- 1 device
- Everything in Free
- Managed AI — 500K tokens/month, no key needed
- Unlimited saved bills
- Custom provisions, personas + groups
- AI Bill Designer + Claude Code / MCP
- Bill export, validation report + priority support
- 3 devices · 7-day trial · or $79/year
- Everything in Free
- Your own AI key — no markup, no monthly cap
- Unlimited saved bills
- Custom provisions, personas + groups
- AI Bill Designer + Claude Code / MCP
- Bill export + validation report
- 3 devices · no renewal, no subscription
Stop arguing about bills you can't see.
Download Civitas and score every policy proposal against real American households in under 30 seconds. Free forever for the policy-curious. Pro for serious work.
Download Civitas FreeLatest Posts
Walk the path together
Personas Explained: How Civitas Models Real Household Impacts
Building Your First Bill: A Step-by-Step Guide to the Bill Builder
Your First Flight: Understanding Civitas and Running Your First Simulation
What's in each tier
Every tier runs the full simulator with all built-in content. Paid tiers add authoring, export, the AI Bill Designer, MCP integration, and (on Pro) managed AI.
| Free | Pro | Lifetime BYOK | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Core simulator | |||
| Run the simulator (10-year, monthly step, recession context) | |||
| All 64 built-in policy provisions | |||
| 35 hazard-event presets (conflict / climate / pandemic / crisis) | |||
| All 27 built-in personas | |||
| 10 tax-law presets incl. wealth tax | |||
| 19 historical bills with CBO comparison | |||
| Fiscal-incidence verdict + wealth-tier labels | |||
| Saving & sharing | |||
| Saved bills | Up to 5 | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Favorite bills in the side rail | |||
| Bill export (JSON / Markdown / PDF) | |||
| Historical validation report export | |||
| Authoring | |||
| Custom provisions (all 43 levers) | |||
| Custom personas (full field surface) | |||
| Custom comparison groups | |||
| AI Bill Designer (chat-driven editing + Undo) | |||
| AI | |||
| AI Copilot (23 simulator tools) | |||
| Chat history saved locally | |||
| Bring your own Anthropic / OpenAI / Google key | |||
| Managed AI (no key needed) | |||
| Monthly managed-AI allowance | BYOK only | 500K tokens (100K in trial) | BYOK only |
| Priority support | |||
| Integration | |||
| Claude Code / MCP server (civitas-mcp, 26 tools) | |||
| Licensing | |||
| Device activations | 1 | 3 | 3 |
| 7-day free trial | N/A | N/A | |
| Billing | Free forever | $9/mo or $79/yr | $99 one-time |