Learn how to use GitHub Actions and Python to help build tools to make DocumentCloud even more powerful.

Introducing DocumentCloud’s latest Add-On: A simplified scraper that, with just a few clicks, monitors the website of your choosing, automatically downloads and indexes any newly uploaded documents and then alerts you if there is something of interest. Read on for more on how it works plus other recent platform updates.

Today, we’re launching Add-Ons, which makes it easier to launch, maintain, and share new capabilities right within DocumentCloud, ranging from exporting notes to applying machine learning techniques.

The tech team has been busy working on improvements to both our FOIA filing platform as well as DocumentCloud, our document analysis and hosting tool. For MuckRock, we gave a nice graphical bump to our article images — doubling the resolution — and fixed a bug that prevented sharing cloned request links with logged-out users. With DocumentCloud, the incorrectly labeled “rotate” button now does what it says on the tin. Plus: More localized versions coming soon!

In collaboration with MuckRock, NYU Professor of Journalism and Emmy Award-Winning reporter Hilke Schellmann and NYU Senior Research Scientist and Tandon Faculty Member Mona Sloane have been awarded $200,000 grant from the Patrick J. McGovern Foundation to bring an innovative AI tool to under-resourced newsrooms to significantly scale up their investigative capacity and democratize access to FOIA records.