Your city is speaking. Hamlet helps you listen.

Search public meeting transcripts across city councils, planning commissions, zoning boards, school boards, and other local government bodies.

Short, unforgettable clips from City Councils, Planning Commissions, County Boards, and School Boards. The human side of democracy - curated with warmth, humor, and respect.

Long-form, data-driven reporting on the city halls and zoning committees that shape American life. Every story starts with data — Hamlet’s platform processes transcripts, agendas, and roll-call records from city council meetings across more than 3,000 jurisdictions. Our team finds patterns that would be impossible to uncover by hand.

Explore local government meeting summaries and updates that make city decisions easier for residents and communities to follow.

Hamlet’s mission began after founder Sunil Rajaraman ran for city council in a small California town in 2022. Even though he lost, the experience changed how he saw local government and revealed how hard it is for everyday residents to follow what happens inside public meetings. That personal experience helped shape Hamlet’s goal: make city councils, planning commissions, zoning boards, and public meetings easier to search, understand, and act on.

A City Council Run Sparked Hamlet’s Mission

Hamlet partnered with the City of Saratoga to provide AI-powered city council summaries that make long and complex public meetings easier for residents to understand. The goal was to help the city communicate priorities more clearly and give residents a simpler way to stay informed about what elected officials and city staff are working on.

Helping Saratoga Residents Follow City Council

Hamlet launched Hamlet TV to spotlight important, funny, and unforgettable moments from city councils, planning commissions, school boards, and other public meetings. The goal is to make local government more visible, human, and easier for everyday people to follow.

Hamlet TV Brings City Hall to Social Media

Hamlet

Residents, students, journalists, researchers, advocates, planners, civic leaders, and anyone interested in local government decisions

Your city is making decisions that can shape your rent, commute, neighborhood, school district, local businesses, and quality of life. Hamlet helps you find those decisions before they disappear inside hours of public meeting video. Search by address, topic, company, development project, school, road, zoning issue, or keyword to uncover the exact moments that matter. Whether you are a resident, student, journalist, advocate, researcher, planner, or just curious about your community, Hamlet gives you a faster way to stay informed, ask better questions, and understand what is happening before it affects you.

Search What Your City Is Deciding

Creators, students, journalists, civic storytellers, local news followers, residents, and people interested in city councils, school boards, planning, and zoning

Most people never see what happens inside city councils, school boards, planning commissions, and zoning meetings, even when those moments are funny, dramatic, important, or directly tied to daily life. Hamlet TV helps bring those moments into the open. Find clips that reveal how local government actually works, then help turn them into short, social, unforgettable stories that people want to watch and share. This is for creators, students, civic nerds, journalists, residents, and anyone who wants to make local government feel less boring, less hidden, and impossible to ignore.

Turn Local Government Into Shareable Stories

Economics clubs, real estate clubs, urban planning students, public policy groups, business students, data science clubs, journalism students, civic tech groups, and student government leaders

Use Hamlet’s Regulatory Indices to explore how local government decisions affect economic development, housing, business growth, infrastructure, and investment in different cities. Student groups can compare cities, study approval timelines, identify regulatory friction, and discuss how public meetings shape the ease of doing business in a community. This opportunity is ideal for students interested in economics, urban planning, real estate, public policy, business, journalism, data science, and civic technology. Groups can use the challenge to create short reports, presentations, social posts, or policy briefs that explain how local decision-making impacts economic opportunity.

Hamlet

Hamlet Search

Hamlet TV - Watch Now

The District

Hamlet GovCenter