German Council Radar – Sales Signals from City Council Papers (Kommunal-Radar)

Spot public projects while the council is still discussing them – often before a tender is published (not every council paper leads to a tender). A new kindergarten, a school renovation, Wi-Fi for all schools, solar panels on public roofs, a heat plan, a new cycle path: this actor reads new council papers and tells you which ones contain a sales signal for you.

🇩🇪 Kurz auf Deutsch: Liest neue Beschlussvorlagen, Anträge und Mitteilungen aus den Ratsinformationssystemen deutscher Kommunen (offene OParl-Schnittstelle) und erkennt Vertriebs-Signale, oft schon vor der Ausschreibung (nicht jede Vorlage führt zu einer Ausschreibung): Neubau/Sanierung (Kita, Schule, Feuerwehr), Digitalisierung/IT, Energie/PV/Wärmepumpe, Beratung/Gutachten, Mobilität, angekündigte Vergabe, Haushalts-/Fördermittel. Pro Vorlage: Kategorien, Signal-Wert 0–100 mit Begründung, erkannter Betrag in €, Link. Mit Wächter-Modus kommen jeden Morgen nur die neuen Vorlagen. Bezahlt wird nur pro Vorlage mit Signal. Abdeckung ehrlich: ca. 85 erreichbare Kommunen, vor allem NRW und Hessen (u. a. Köln, Dresden, Münster, Freiburg, Krefeld, Neuss) – nicht ganz Deutschland. Namen werden geschwärzt, aber nicht jeder Name wird sicher erkannt; für die Weiterverwendung sind Sie verantwortlich. Previsa speichert keine Ergebnisse; Löschanfragen an kontakt@previsa.de. Keine Rechtsberatung. Anbieter: Previsa · KI & Automation, https://previsa.de

The chain: signal → tender → funding

1. Signal – the council discusses or decides a project: this actor.
2. Tender – if the project is put out to tender, weeks or months later: German Public Tenders (open tenders + eligibility check).
3. Funding – the municipality (or you) applies for subsidies: German Funding Radar (by the same provider).

Use all three with the same keywords and a daily schedule, and you can follow a project from the first council paper to the tender.

What you get

• ✅ New council papers only (created or dated within daysBack), straight from the official council systems
• ✅ Signals in 7 categories — bau (construction/renovation), digital (IT, Wi-Fi, fibre), energie (PV, heat pumps, heat planning, LED), beratung (expert reports, concepts, planning services), mobilitaet (cycle paths, public transport, charging points), vergabe (tender/award announced), geld (budget, subsidies, unplanned spending) — plus your own keywords
• ✅ Signal score 0–100 with matchReasons — every point is explained, no black box
• ✅ Amount in EUR when the document names one (1,5 Mio. €, 450 TEUR, 1.000.000,- €)
• ✅ Optional: read the main document (readMainFile) for more categories, the amount and a 300-character excerpt
• ✅ Daily watch: only papers you have not seen before (watchId)
• ✅ Optional 3-sentence AI summary per paper with your own Anthropic key
• ✅ A run summary (RUN_SUMMARY) that names every municipality that could not be read, and why

The document text never creates a signal on its own: a paper is only returned if its title shows a signal; the document adds categories, the amount and the excerpt. Form phrases such as „keine Haushaltsmittel“ or „Beratung im Ausschuss“ never count.

Who uses it

You are …	Typical setup
Solar / heat pump installer, energy consultant	topics energie, geld, municipalities in your region
IT service provider, software for public authorities	topics digital, vergabe
Architect, engineering office, construction company	topics bau, beratung, vergabe
Consultancy, planning office	topics beratung, keywords Machbarkeitsstudie, Klimaschutzkonzept
Bid manager / sales team for the public sector	several watches, one per region (watchId per watch)

Quick start: a daily signal alert in 2 minutes

1. Enter your municipalities (e.g. Köln, Dresden, Freiburg, Neuss) — only municipalities from the OParl list, own URLs are not possible — or leave empty for all reachable ones (slow). Names are also found inside shared systems (Neuss sits in the ITK-Rheinland system); ü, ue and u are treated alike.
2. Pick your signal categories and add your own keywords if you like.
3. Give the watch a name in watchId, e.g. bau-rheinland.
4. Click Schedule → daily. Every morning you get only the new papers, best signals first. Connect Apify's integrations (e-mail, Slack, Google Sheets, Make, Zapier) to have them delivered.

Example input:

{
  "bodies": ["Köln", "Dresden", "Freiburg", "Neuss"],
  "topics": ["energie", "bau", "vergabe", "geld"],
  "keywords": ["Wärmenetz"],
  "excludeKeywords": ["Straßenreinigung"],
  "daysBack": 7,
  "maxResults": 50,
  "minSignalScore": 30,
  "readMainFile": true,
  "watchId": "bau-rheinland"
}

Output fields

Field	Meaning
municipality	name of the municipality / body
title	title of the council paper (names scrubbed)
reference	file number of the paper, e.g. G-26/139
paperType	e.g. Beschlussvorlage, Antrag, Mitteilung
date	date of the paper
signals	categories found (bau, digital, energie, beratung, mobilitaet, vergabe, geld, custom)
signalScore	0–100, see matchReasons
matchReasons	every word and every point of the score — words from the title and from the document are listed separately
amountEur	largest euro amount found in title or document (or null)
excerpt	≤ 300 characters of the document, starting at the first signal word (or null)
url	link to the paper in the council system
fileUrl	link to the main document (PDF), if the municipality publishes one
mainFileRead	true if document text was used for this row
license	licence URL published by the municipality (or null)
source	the OParl system the row comes from
aiSummary, aiGenerated	only with your own AI key

Example row (real run against Freiburg on 08.10.2026, with readMainFile):

{
  "municipality": "Stadtverwaltung Freiburg",
  "title": "Sanierung Bestandsgebäude der Johannes-Schwartz-Schule - Grundsatzbeschluss",
  "reference": "G-26/139",
  "paperType": "BESCHLUSS-VORLAGE",
  "date": "2026-10-06",
  "signals": ["bau", "vergabe", "geld"],
  "signalScore": 88,
  "matchReasons": ["bau: title: Sanierung, Schule; document: Neubau, Kita, Kindertagesstätte (+29)",
                   "vergabe: document: Vergabe (+12)",
                   "geld: document: Zuschuss (+12)",
                   "procurement word together with a topic (+10)",
                   "amount 11.000.000 EUR (+15)",
                   "decision paper 'BESCHLUSS-VORLAGE' (+10)"],
  "amountEur": 11000000.0,
  "excerpt": "Sanierung Bestandsgebäude der Johannes-Schwartz-Schule – Grundsatzbeschluss Beratungsfolge Sitzungstermin Öff. N.Ö. Empfehlung Beschluss 1. BaUStA 04.11.2026 X X 2. ASW 11.11.2026 X X 3. HFA 16.11.2026 X X 4. GR 24.11.2026 X X Anhörung Ortschaftsrat (§ 70 Abs. 1 GemO): ja, durchgeführt in Lehen am",
  "url": "https://ris.freiburg.de/oparl/paper/5941607100138",
  "fileUrl": "https://ris.freiburg.de/api.php?document_type_id=4&submission_id=5941607100138&id=69&inline=true",
  "mainFileRead": true,
  "license": null,
  "source": "OParl council information system (Stadtverwaltung Freiburg) – https://ris.freiburg.de/oparl"
}

What it costs

You pay only for papers with at least one signal (and, by default, a score of at least 20); papers without a signal are read but never charged. Your spending limit is always respected — nothing is downloaded for a row that could no longer be delivered.

Event	Price	When
signal	$0.02	one council paper with at least one signal
signal-read	$0.04	the same, with readMainFile switched on and at least 40 characters of the main document really read
ai-summary	$0.005	only with your own Anthropic key, on top of the row

Some municipalities deliver the document text together with the list (e.g. Freiburg). That text is used for the signals even without readMainFile, but then the row is charged as a plain signal.

Example: a daily watch over 10 cities returns about 3–8 new papers with signals per day → 5 × $0.02 = $0.10 per day, about $3 per month. With readMainFile for all of them: 5 × $0.04 = $0.20 per day. A one-off research run with maxResults: 50 costs at most 50 × $0.02 = $1.00 (or $2.00 with documents read).

Coverage — honest

The actor uses the public list of OParl endpoints maintained by the OParl project (https://raw.githubusercontent.com/OParl/resources/main/endpoints.yml). Measured on 08.10.2026: about 85 municipalities deliver current papers, mostly in North Rhine-Westphalia and Hesse, plus e.g. Köln, Dresden, Münster, Freiburg, Krefeld, Neuss and many towns using the SD.NET RIM / ekom21 systems.

Not covered: Munich (the OParl paper list answers 404), Hamburg (not in the list), and the Berlin districts in the list (reachable, but their newest papers are years old — 2006 to 2017 — or the interface answers with an error). Many other cities have no OParl interface at all.

Before each municipality is read, a health check goes down to the paper list. Municipalities that are not reachable, answer 404, have OParl switched off, or show a captcha / "Zugriff prüfen" / HTTP 403 are skipped and named in the run summary — such barriers are never bypassed.

How the actor treats the source (fair use)

• Strictly one request after another, a short pause after each, at most 2 retries on 429/5xx
• Per municipality at most 60 seconds and 5 list pages, plus a total time limit (timeLimitMinutes)
• "New" papers via the OParl filter created_since; where a system ignores it (checked on every run), the actor falls back to reading the list from the newest end and filters by the paper date
• Main documents only on request (readMainFile), only for papers whose title already shows a signal, max. 20 pages, one after another
• Only systems from the checked OParl list are contacted; own URLs are not accepted. Every request goes to a checked public address of that system (links leading elsewhere are not followed)

Personal data

• Only these paper fields are ever used: id, name, reference, date, paperType, mainFile.accessUrl, web, license (plus created/deleted for filtering). Authors, persons, memberships, consultations and responsible committees are never requested or resolved.
• All text fields are scrubbed: e-mail addresses, phone numbers and names after "Herr/Frau", council roles ("Ratsfrau", "Stadtverordnete", "Beigeordneter", "StR", "gez.", "Bürgermeisterin" …), before a party ("… (SPD)", "…, SPD-Fraktion") and after "von …" are replaced by [removed].
• The main document text is used internally for signals only; at most a 300-character excerpt is output. It starts at the first signal word of the content (not at the document head, where applicants and clerks stand).
• Despite redaction, individual names (e.g. applicants without a role word) may remain in a title or excerpt. You are responsible for your further use. Previsa does not store results. Deletion requests: kontakt@previsa.de
• 🇩🇪 Trotz Schwärzung können einzelne Namen (z. B. Antragsteller ohne Funktionsbezeichnung) in Titel oder Auszug stehen bleiben. Für die Weiterverwendung sind Sie verantwortlich. Previsa speichert keine Ergebnisse. Löschanfragen: kontakt@previsa.de

AI summary (optional)

The AI summary sends title and excerpt with your key to Anthropic (USA); your own contract with Anthropic applies. Without your key, nothing is sent anywhere.

Source and licence

Council papers are official documents of the municipalities; licences differ per municipality (e.g. Dresden: Datenlizenz Deutschland – Zero 2.0). This actor therefore outputs only title, metadata, a short excerpt (≤ 300 characters) and the link to the original — never full texts. The licence URL of the municipality is given per row (license, where published) and the source system in source. Please check the licence of the municipality before re-publishing data.

FAQ

Is this legal advice? No. A signal is a hint that a project is being discussed, not a tender and not a promise of a contract. Not every council paper leads to a tender. Always read the original paper.

Why do I get few results for some cities? Many papers are questions, minutes or personnel matters without a signal — those are not output (and not charged). Some systems update only once a week.

Why is fileUrl empty for Köln? Some systems (e.g. Köln) publish no "main file" for a paper; then readMainFile cannot read anything and the row is charged as a plain signal. Some systems also publish file links that no longer work — then nothing is read and the row is charged as a plain signal.

Can I add a municipality that is not in the list? No. Only municipalities from the OParl list can be used; own URLs are not possible (for security, the actor only contacts systems from the checked list). If your municipality has an OParl interface, it can be added to the public list at github.com/OParl/resources.

How does the score work? Category in the title 20 points (12 if only in the document), +3 per further word, +10 if a procurement word comes together with a topic, +5/+10/+15 for an amount, +10 for a decision paper, −10 for a question/answer/information only. Capped at 0–100. By default (minSignalScore 20) a mere question or answer with a single hit (score 10) is not returned and not charged; set 0 to see everything.

Provider

Previsa · KI & Automation — https://previsa.de · Imprint: https://previsa.de/impressum.html · kontakt@previsa.de