What's new in Aide

Feature enhancement

Sharper accuracy, and safety items that don’t slip through

Multi-document agenda packs. Some councils, Auckland Council among them, publish a meeting as a pack of several documents rather than one agenda. We’ve made further accuracy improvements for these packs, so what Aide reports stays tied to the document it came from.

Critical health and safety, financial and legal items. If a matter involving life safety, or serious legal or financial exposure, appeared in an earlier brief for the same committee and is missing from the next agenda, Aide now flags it at the top of “What’s at risk”. It looks back over the previous 12 months of that committee’s meetings, measured from the meeting date.

Agenda of the Week. See real council agendas analysed by Aide, with the council, source and date shown on every sample. Browse the samples →

The Aide blog. Analysis and practical ideas for people in NZ local government, starting with how an engineering risk assessment fell off a council agenda. Read the blog →

Now open

Aide is out of beta and open for sign-ups

Aide is now available to every New Zealand local councillor. Sign up yourself, choose your council, and set up your first brief in minutes.

Thank you to the councillors who tested Aide during beta. Your feedback shaped the briefs, the plan cross-checks, and the features you'll find in the app today.

See pricing and start your trial →

New feature

Aide now reads reports, not just agendas

Updates, progress reports, and monitoring papers carry just as much accountability as meeting agendas, and they're usually the documents nobody has time to properly read. Aide now scrutinises those too.

Feed them to Aide and it applies the same forensic read as an agenda: what's tracking or delivered, what's falling behind, what's being reported on without any measure of whether it actually worked, and where the report contradicts itself.

Same five-part brief, same page-linked citations, now across a wider slice of what actually lands on your desk.

Feature enhancement

Less noise. More signal.

We've tightened what Aide surfaces, not just what it can read. It now catches activity reported without any measure of whether it worked and contradictions buried across different parts of the same document.

New feature

Long term plan on the brief

The first long term plan is now in Aide. Where we hold it, each brief can cross-check today's agenda three ways: against previous meetings of the same committee, against commitments in the annual plan, and against commitments in the long term plan. That means you can see whether this week's papers keep multi-year promises, fund this year's work, or quietly move on — without re-reading the LTP yourself.

A new coverage section on the brief shows exactly which agenda, plans, and prior briefs Aide checked, so you know the ground the brief is standing on. We'll be in touch with beta testers when the long term plan for their council is ready.

Feature enhancement

Briefs still running

If you leave or reload while Aide is still preparing a brief, you'll now see a clear notice that it's still running — and the brief will appear in your list automatically when it's ready. No need to resubmit, and no duplicate briefs from trying again too soon.

Feature enhancement

Rename a brief

You can now rename any brief from the list — hit the pencil beside Open, type the label that will help you find it on Sunday night, and save. Useful when two packs share a committee name, or when you want the list to match how you actually talk about the meeting.

Feature enhancement

Clearer reading of dense and image-heavy packs

Council packs are often full of tight tables, scanned pages, charts, and diagram-heavy spreads that plain text extraction misses. Aide now reads those pages more reliably — so figures buried in a graphic, rows packed into a dense table, and image-led agenda sheets still make it into your brief instead of dropping out of sight. Where a plan reference may still be incomplete because of dense formatting in the source, Aide flags it with a small ⓘ beside the note — so you know when to check the plan PDF rather than treating every detail as fully captured.

Feature enhancement

Delete a brief

You can now delete a brief you no longer need, from the brief list or from the brief itself. Aide asks you to confirm first, so nothing goes missing by accident.

Fixed

Clearer sign-out after inactivity

If your sign-in session lapsed while the page sat open for a while, Aide couldn't prepare a brief but didn't tell you why. Aide now clearly shows you that you're signed out, so you understand you need to sign in before your next brief.

Feature enhancement

Reading visual-heavy agendas

Some agenda pages are mostly charts, diagrams, or images rather than text. Aide can now read those pages too — so you won't miss what's buried in a graphic your council pack includes.

Aide launches in private beta

Aide reads your council's public meeting agenda pack and delivers a five-part brief in seconds — what's tracking, what's at risk, what's unmeasured, questions to ask in the chamber, and what you're endorsing by accepting. Every claim links to a specific page in the agenda, so you can check the source yourself. When an item moves into confidential session, Aide flags what's being excluded and what to ask before the public leaves the room. And you can download your brief as a PDF to read on the go, print for the chamber, or share with colleagues.

Feature enhancement

Agenda at a glance

A collapsible map of every item on the agenda sits above your brief, so you can see the shape of the meeting before diving into the detail.