Pete the Pigeon

All Ohio’s Data, All the Time.

Welcome to the Statehouse AI era.

⛶ Click to enlarge

The use case. Legislative aides are brilliant, dedicated, intrepid workers who in many cases spend hours on hours answering emails and sorting through a mountain of AI‑generated email slop to find the urgent and important ones. Enter Pete the Pigeon: an AI assistant for the Ohio Statehouse, created, owned and operated just down the road in Granville, Ohio.

Chris Graham is the lone owner, founder and creator of StatehouseAI, a million lines of code, a masterpiece built to overcome the shortcomings of the big AIs when it comes to the statehouse.

Pete the Pigeon perches in Outlook, ready to help legislative aides deliver Brief, Accurate, Speedy, Sourced responses to every email. He takes a constituent email and pre-researches the answers to the questions in it, so the reply that goes out is grounded in the public record. Some offices, especially those whose constituents have low rates of home internet access, appear to receive less email; others, especially chairmen’s offices, often receive hundreds of emails a day.

Of the fifteen or so legislative aides who have seen it, all but one said they believed they could save hours per day. Asked what they would do with that time if Pete turns out to be all he’s cracked up to be, the answer came back practically in unison: deeper policy research for my legislator.

Pete never sends an email. Not one, not ever, not on anyone’s behalf. Pete is a researcher and a drafter. The final press of the send button is, and should remain, our legislative aides’.

The ask. A preliminary test with three offices, including Senator Blessing’s and any others he believes are a great fit for a trial run. We have all heard about the enormous productivity leaps AI will bring to every industry. Pete the Pigeon has been here all along.

Welcome to the Statehouse AI era.

Meet Pete and try him yourself at statehouseai.com.

Step 1. Allow the site and the sender

Both domains are ours. The pigeon one is new and trips new-domain filters, which is why staff see “this site can’t be reached” and quarantined mail.

• Web filter: allow statehouseai.com and petethepigeon.com (and their subdomains).
• Mail gateway: allow senders at @statehouseai.com and @petethepigeon.com.

Step 2. Deploy the add-in once, by pasting one link

Nothing to download and nothing to install on any machine. Five clicks in the Microsoft 365 admin center; every screenshot below is from a live deployment.

1. Sign in to the Microsoft 365 admin center, open Settings › Integrated apps › Add-ins, and click Deploy Add-In.

   

2. Click Next, then Upload custom apps.

   

3. Choose I have a URL for the manifest file, paste this link, and click Upload:
   https://statehouseai.com/outlook/manifest.xml

   

4. Pete shows up with his name and icon. Choose who gets him (Everyone, or a pilot group of a few legislative aides), leave Fixed selected, and click Deploy.

   

5. That’s it. Staff see a Pete the Pigeon button in Outlook, on the web and on the desktop, usually within the hour and at most within 24 hours, with nothing to install.

   

When Pete updates

Pete’s pane updates itself; nothing to redo. The only time an admin touches this again is when the manifest itself changes (a new button, for example). Then: Add-ins, click the Pete the Pigeon row, Update add-in, choose the URL option, paste the same link, Update. The version number in the panel confirms it. Outlook picks the change up within a day; signing out and back in hurries it along.

Step 3. Approve Pete’s mailbox access (one click)

Pete now reads and tags mail through Microsoft Graph instead of the older Exchange interface, so Microsoft asks an admin to approve it once for the tenant. Click, sign in as an admin, and approve — that’s it.

What it does and does not do

• Reads the message the user has open, only when they click Pete.
• Reads the subject and opening lines of the unread inbox only when the user clicks Sort inbox by urgency, then tags those emails Urgent or Important as ordinary Outlook categories. A Draft button on each row saves a reply to Drafts. The mailbox permission in the manifest exists for this tagging.
• Writes a draft reply into their mailbox. It never sends anything. The aide reads it, edits it, and presses send, or doesn’t.
• Inside a reply window, the same button writes the draft into the open message.
• Runs on our servers in the United States. Details: privacy, terms, support.

Staff: forward this page to IT

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