User manual

Cidadão.AI is Neural Thinkers Lab's public transparency platform. You ask in plain Portuguese about contracts, procurement and public spending, and a set of artificial intelligence agents searches for the answer in Brazil's official open-data sources.

This manual covers the common path: signing in, asking, and organizing what you've already asked. Each agent's profile and the detailed catalog of government APIs live in the technical documentation, maintained separately and not repeated here.

Who it's for

The platform is open to anyone interested in public data: a citizen wanting to scrutinize their own city, a researcher, a student. There are no different access profiles. Everyone signs in to the same screen and uses the same tools; what changes from one account to another is the contracted plan.

The public page

Before signing in, / presents the platform. The navigation bar leads to Início (Home), Funcionalidades (Features), Agentes IA (AI Agents), Transparência (Transparency), Pesquisa (Research) and Acessar (Sign in).

Two sections are worth knowing before using the product:

• Agentes de IA (AI Agents) shows the agent grid, each with a name and portrait. Hover over a portrait, or tap it on a phone, to see that agent's role and what it does.
• Legado Acadêmico (Academic Legacy) gathers the project's origin: the full thesis published on Zenodo with a permanent DOI, the research notebook in PDF, the technical documentation, and the version 1 repositories, which are open and archived. If you arrived here out of research interest, start with this section.

The Entrar na Plataforma (Enter the Platform) button leads to sign-in. If you're already authenticated, it shows up as Acessar Plataforma (Access Platform) and goes straight to the chat.

Signing in

The sign-in screen offers three paths.

Through a provider you already use. Google, Meta, GitHub, LinkedIn, Banco do Brasil and Microsoft. One click, authentication happens at the provider, and you're back on the platform.

Passwordless. The Sem senha (Passwordless) block offers two options:

• Código WhatsApp (WhatsApp code): choose your country code, enter your number, and you receive a six-digit code on WhatsApp to type into the next screen.
• Link por email (Email link): enter your address and click Enviar link (Send link). The screen then tells you to check your inbox, and access completes when you open the link that arrives.

With email and password. Click Continuar com email (Continue with email). On the same form you toggle between Entrar (Sign in) and Criar conta (Create account).

Once authentication is done, an intermediate screen shows Autenticando... (Authenticating) and then Autenticado com sucesso! (Successfully authenticated!), and you land on the chat. The internal screens are protected: opening any of them without being authenticated sends you back to sign-in.

The chat screen

Chat IA (AI Chat) is the main screen and where the product happens.

Opening a new conversation you see a greeting based on the time of day, with your first name. If your account has no name registered, the platform calls you Cidadão (Citizen). Below sits the text box, with the prompt Como posso ajudar você hoje? (How can I help you today?).

Write your question and send it with Enter. To break a line without sending, use Shift+Enter.

Starting from a shortcut

Under the box there are four shortcuts, which just fill in and send a ready- made question:

They're for getting started. After the first message, continue the conversation by writing normally.

Choosing who answers

To the left of the box sits a selector that starts on Auto, described as "AI selects the best agent". Left as-is, the platform reads your question, identifies the intent, and routes it to the right specialist. This is the recommended way, and it's what most questions call for.

If you want to direct a question to a specific agent, open the selector and choose by name. The list shows the agents currently active, with each one's role. The choice applies to your next messages until you switch again or go back to Auto.

While the answer is coming in

The reply streams in, word by word, and the interface narrates what it's doing at each moment. First Processando... (Processing), then Detectando intenção... (Detecting intent), then the recognized intent, then the name of the agent who took the question, and then the text starts appearing. Above the reply sit that agent's portrait and name, so you know who answered.

The reply is formatted, with headings, lists and tables when the content calls for them.

On trusting the answer

The agents work on public data, and the reply is text generated by artificial intelligence from that data. Treat that text as a starting point, not a final result: when the matter is decisive, check the official source before acting. The platform's value is getting you quickly to the right data, not excusing you from looking at it.

History and projects

The side panel keeps everything you've already discussed.

Novo chat (New chat) clears the screen and starts from zero, without erasing anything that exists.

Below, under Histórico (History), conversations show up grouped by when they were last used: Hoje (Today), Ontem (Yesterday), Últimos 7 dias (Last 7 days), Últimos 30 dias (Last 30 days) and Mais antigos (Older). Click one to reopen it with its earlier messages loaded. Until you have any, the list says there's no conversation yet.

Hovering over a conversation shows a menu with:

• Renomear (Rename), which asks for a new name. A nameless conversation is listed as "Chat sem título" (Untitled chat).
• Mover para projeto (Move to project), available once you already have at least one project created. From the same menu you can also remove a conversation from its project.
• Excluir (Delete).

Projects

Projetos (Projects) groups conversations on the same subject. Click the icon next to the title to create one, give it a name, and it shows up in the list with its own color and the count of conversations inside. Click the name to open or close the group. The project's menu offers Renomear (Rename) and Excluir projeto (Delete project).

The free plan limits how many projects you can have at once. Once the limit is reached, the create button shows a lock, and the side panel itself shows how many projects you've already used and the cap. To see what each plan unlocks, check the subscription screen.

Where the data comes from

Answers are built from official public sources. The platform has its own clients to query, among others:

• The federal government's Portal da Transparência (Transparency Portal)
• PNCP, the National Public Procurement Portal under Law 14.133/2021
• Compras.gov.br, with agencies, bids, suppliers and contracts
• SICONFI, from the National Treasury, with accounting and fiscal data
• Banco Central (Central Bank), with economic series, exchange rates and PIX statistics
• IBGE, with states, municipalities, population and indicators
• DataSUS, with open health data
• INEP, with educational institutions and education indicators
• Minha Receita, for CNPJ (company registry) data
• dados.gov.br, the federal open-data catalog
• State open-data portals and state courts of accounts

Not every question finds an answer across all of these sources. Coverage varies by state, by municipality and by data type, and depends on the agency having published the information. The detailed catalog, with what each of these APIs delivers, is in the technical documentation.

Notifications

The bell at the top of the screen shows the platform's notices, what's still unread, and lets you mark items as read one by one or all at once.

To receive browser notifications even with the tab closed, open /notificacoes. This page registers your browser and requests notification permission; it needs to run on Cidadão.AI's domain, which is why it's a separate screen. When done, it sends you back to accounts.ntlabs.dev, where your preferences live: which categories you want to receive and at what times.

Your account and your plans

Configurações (Settings), in your name's menu, is no longer a screen of this product. It takes you to accounts.ntlabs.dev, where identity, security, billing and privacy are centralized for every Neural Thinkers Lab product.

The Plano & Assinatura (Plan & Subscription) screen, at /assinatura, shows your current plan, what it includes and how to change it. Plans and prices come from the platform and change over time, so this screen is the only source you can trust about what you have contracted today. If any of your plan's limits is reached, a notice shows up at the top of the chat saying which one.

Accessibility

The Acessibilidade (Accessibility) menu, at the top of the screen, offers Tamanho do Texto (Text size), ranging from Very Small to Extra Large, Alto Contraste (High contrast) and VLibras (Libras). Next to it sits the button that toggles between light and dark theme; by default the platform follows your system's preference.

Screens that don't deliver content yet

Two entries in the side panel don't do today what their name suggests, and it's better you know before looking for them:

• Mapa do Brasil (Map of Brazil) opens a screen that advertises transparency data visualization by state and states, in the page itself, that it's under development. There's no map to consult there.
• The voice-mode button, next to send in the chat, is disabled.

Everything the platform delivers today goes through text conversation.

Your data

Cidadão.AI works on public data, not on data about you. What the platform keeps about you is what's needed to maintain the account and your conversation history, and you delete that history whenever you want, from each conversation's menu. On your first visit the platform asks for your consent to cookies.

The terms of use, the privacy policy and the data protection officer's channel live at www.ntlabs.dev.