Building Tools for the Safety Net: My Year in Propel's AI Residency

After discovering I'm definitely not a "growth team" person and watching Glitch wind down, I'm back in civic tech where I belong – this time in an AI Residency at Propel. We're building tools to help states and SNAP beneficiaries navigate HR1's massive changes, including new penalties that charge states more money for higher error rates. During the recent shutdown, I built crawlers to get real-time benefit updates to folks and created the most comprehensive database of active food pantries using AI tools. It's not the sexy AI that gets TED talks – it's the kind that keeps benefits from being wrongly terminated because we finally taught a system that gig work counts as employment.