Permits, 311, licensing, payments, records, tax and 102 more — one AI-native platform your city actually controls. Every permit, payment, violation and license lives on the same resident and the same parcel. Not a stack of vendors stitched together.
One platform, both sides of the counter —
the staff console your city runs on, and the self-service residents actually use.
Staff review, approve and route every application from one queue, with status and SLA timers — and one click opens the applicant's full record across every module.
Residents report potholes, streetlights, trash and more, then follow each request from submitted to resolved — all in one place.
We're onboarding a few design-partner cities with every module turned on. The platform, our setup and all AI features cost nothing — you only cover hosting directly, at cost.
Not a chatbot bolted on. Civic Kernel's AI is grounded in your city's live records — and it never invents what isn't there.
Every AI feature is included free — AI is never a paid add-on, and it is never metered per question, per seat or per city. The staff copilot, the resident assistant, content generation and translation all arrive with the platform.
Live demo — retrieval runs in your browser over illustrative seed records; swap the local retriever for your grounded endpoint to answer over the city’s real data.
A public assistant grounded in your city's own content and records. Real answers for residents — not a generic FAQ.
Generate city-website content and translations in seconds — bilingual EN/ES drafts your team reviews before publishing.
The AI spots a near-miss address in your records — "Mian St" vs "Main St" — and offers a one-click fix. Real data hygiene, automatically.
Safe by design: the AI drafts — it never sends. Every drafted action lands in a governed Inbox where a person approves, with a full audit trail. It emits data and drafts, never code; a hallucinated reference can't become a link.
No sales cycle, no weeks of onboarding. We provision a fully-branded tenant on the spot — and we'll do it live in your demo. Incumbents can't even show this.
Every department a city runs — from the everyday to the specialized — built together on one codebase, sharing the same resident and the same parcel. Start with one, add the rest as you grow.
New modules ship continuously — from permits to the zoo — each one built on the same proven core, on the same shared record. AI capabilities come with the kernel and are not counted as modules.
Incumbents ship silos — permits in one system, 311 in another, often separate logins. Civic Kernel ties every module together along two axes, so the city finally sees the whole picture.
Live demo — illustrative seed parcels (the same records as the copilot and /verify above); connect the parcel graph to make it live.
Every official action a city takes mints a signed civic receipt, sealed nightly. Any document it issues is independently verifiable — no phone calls, no "trust me."
Live demo — the fingerprint math is real (SHA-256 via Web Crypto). The sealed ledger here is seed data for one sample permit; wire the tenant’s ledger endpoint to check any real city document.
Every action is logged, immutable and timestamped — the accountability public records demand.
Full export on demand and an open API. No proprietary lock-in — your records always leave with you.
Open data and budget transparency are published by default — the city's numbers are public without a records request.
Legacy platforms were built for a different era. Civic Kernel is built native — modular, open, and city-controlled from day one.
CIVICPLUS / GRANICUS
Proprietary
CIVIC KERNEL
100% Client Owned
CIVICPLUS / GRANICUS
Closed / Limited APIs
CIVIC KERNEL
API-First (Headless)
CIVICPLUS / GRANICUS
6–18 Months (typical)
CIVIC KERNEL
Days (Custom: ~2 Wks)
CIVICPLUS / GRANICUS
Siloed Products
CIVIC KERNEL
One Resident, One Timeline
CIVICPLUS / GRANICUS
Not Standard
CIVIC KERNEL
Address = Full History
CIVICPLUS / GRANICUS
Limited / Add-On
CIVIC KERNEL
Free Grounded Copilot
CIVICPLUS / GRANICUS
Sales + Onboarding
CIVIC KERNEL
Self-Service In ~60s
CIVICPLUS / GRANICUS
Add-On / Partial
CIVIC KERNEL
Built In, Day One
CIVICPLUS / GRANICUS
Not Standard
CIVIC KERNEL
Signed & Verifiable
CIVICPLUS / GRANICUS
Not Standard
CIVIC KERNEL
Full Copy, Included
Comparison based on publicly available information as of August 2026; capabilities may change. All product names, logos and brands are property of their respective owners and are used for identification purposes only.
No. Start with a single module — Permits, 311 or your website — and add the rest department by department. No forced migration, no big-bang cutover.
You do. Full export on demand and an open API — your records always leave with you. There is no proprietary lock-in.
Yes. Import legacy permits, 311 requests and licenses from CSV with column mapping, so your city sees its own data from day one.
Civic Kernel is API-first (headless). It connects to GIS, payment processors and existing databases instead of walling them off.
Yes — built to WCAG accessibility standards, with English and Spanish across notifications, the public site and the 311 flow from day one.
Yes. Every city gets a full sandbox copy of its tenant — the same modules and the same screens, on safe test data. Staff can train, click through workflows and explore new features there with zero risk to live records, and we reset the sandbox whenever you ask.
All 108 existing modules launch in days, not months — a brand-new tenant provisions in about 60 seconds, and we'll show it live in your demo. The only thing that takes longer is a module that doesn't exist yet: if your city needs something custom, we typically build and ship it in about two weeks.
It's grounded in your live records, read-only, and only ever drafts content for staff to approve. It cites real records and can't invent one — a hallucinated reference can't become a link.
20+ years delivering software. Real government contracts won. Architecture shipped at scale — and the platform is already being built, on infrastructure we run today. Our government relations and operations team works on the ground in South Carolina and North Carolina. Civic Kernel was born and is developed in Idaho, USA — American-made GovTech, and we're proud of it.
20+ years building and shipping software — including government clients. P&L, hiring, compliance experience. Civic Kernel is built inside an operating company — the engineers, servers and support are already in place.
Active government contractor in South Carolina. RPE LLC brings established relationships with municipal stakeholders, hands-on knowledge of public-sector procurement, and experience navigating veteran-owned business opportunities.
Builds complex systems from the ground up. Leads the architecture that keeps Civic Kernel's 100+ modules on one live record — so every department reads the same resident, the same parcel, the same history.
20+ years in technology sales, government relations and legislative advocacy — mobile software, device management, and the access-control and body-worn camera systems public agencies buy.
Built by a team already in place — Engineers, QA and designers on Above Bits’ existing infrastructure are shipping Civic Kernel now, with no cold-start hiring.
Onboarding a handful of free design-partner cities in South Carolina
and North Carolina, with more in active discussions.
Every module and all AI features, live for your city at no charge — you only cover hosting at cost. Book a 30-minute demo to start.
Or email us directly: [email protected]
