01 / 09

Built for NYC · NYPL × Major League Hacking · Stavros Niarchos Foundation Library

Garbology NYC

Do good. Look good. Get the goods.

Verified street cleanups → civic pride you can flex → real rewards from real storefronts.
Live now: builtfornyc-hackathon.vercel.app

02 / 09

The problem, in the city's own numbers

Sweeping is scheduled.
Littering isn't.

24M lbs
of trash & recycling DSNY moves — every day
DSNY
300K+
sanitation complaints to 311 per year — 2026 pacing +19%
NYC Open Data · erm2-nwe9 (live query)
33
record leptospirosis cases in 2024 — 11× the 2001–20 baseline (rat urine, fed by street trash)
NYC Health Dept.
123K+
cleanliness tickets on homes & small businesses in Jan–Jul 2024 alone, $100–$250 each
DSNY enforcement · ABC7
$84.7B
tourism economy formed by curb-level first impressions — 65M visitors/yr
NYC Tourism + Conventions, 2025
1 in 3
New Yorkers admits littering — while ranking dirty streets a top complaint. A status problem, not an information problem
Sanitation Foundation survey
03 / 09

The flip

Make cleaning your block
a flex.

  • Do good — before photo → clean → after photo. A caged AI verifies it; your district's 3-D Trash Monster (ours: Gunkgobbler of the Bronx) shrinks on the live map.
  • Look good — XP, Duolingo-style streaks, badges, an Instagram-style feed, and Story-format share cards: “Top 25% of Garbologists citywide.”
  • Get the goods — +100 XP bounties on real open 311 complaints, and cash / food / store-credit gigs from local shops.
Garbology NYC mobile landing — the slogan hero in light mode
04 / 09

The loop, running live

Real photos. Real 311 bounties. Really verified.

Community feed with real before/after cleanup photos, props and comments
The Feed — AI-verified posts, props, comments
Verified cleanup: +200 XP with 2× dirty-district multiplier and 311 bounty
+200 XP: 50 base × 2.0 dirty-district × streak + 100 bounty — a real Bronx complaint, cleared
Live map with district monsters, 311 bounties, and DSNY litter baskets
Live map — monsters by Scorecard rating, ⚡ = open 311 complaint, dots = DSNY baskets
05 / 09

How the system works — 30 seconds

City data in. Caged AI in the middle. Community value out.

NYC OPEN DATA
311 complaints
erm2-nwe9 → ⚡ map bounties (+100 XP)
DSNY Scorecard
rqhp-hivt → 2× XP in dirty districts + monster size
Litter baskets
8znf-7b2c → “where to dump it” layer
→
THE APP · 4 AI AGENTS, ALL PUBLICLY TRACED
Sentinelverifies photos in a Runta cage — keyless Claude vision, egress locked to 2 hosts
Dispatcherranks gig applicants — zero network, receipts only, reasons in plain language
Curatornormalizes the city data · Scrap — voice concierge in 9 languages that posts gigs by conversation
→
COMMUNITY
Verified XP · streaks · feed · shrinking Trash Monsters
Paid gigs: cash, food, store credit — reputation becomes income
Cleaner blocks exactly where 311 says it hurts
WHY DIRTY BLOCKS PAY 2×
Bronx CD5
75.9%
Queens CD11
99.8%

% of streets rated acceptably clean — DSNY Scorecard (NYC Open Data). The gap sets the XP multiplier.

06 / 09

The AI (and why to trust it)

Four agents.
Declared personas. Public audit trails.

  • Sentinel verifies photos inside a Runta security cage: deny-all network except two hosts, and its Claude vision request carries no API key — credentials are injected at the network boundary. A prompt-injected agent can’t leak a secret it never held.
  • Fraud is rejected for $0 first: EXIF freshness + NYC GPS, then perceptual hashing (same scene, never-seen-before). ~1,000 vision tokens ≈ fractions of a cent per verification.
  • Dispatcher ranks gig applicants with an empty egress allowlist — no network, no identity signals, reasons in plain language.
  • Curator normalizes NYC Open Data. Scrap talks (next slide). Every run — tools, tokens, goals — is on the public Agent Ops page.
Agent Ops dashboard showing agent personas and egress cages Live agent trace timeline with tool calls and token counts
07 / 09

Economic mobility · inclusion

Fines become gigs. And you can just talk.

§16-118 makes every storefront liable for its sidewalk (+18″ of street); snow gets 4 hours (§16-123). Two tickets a year costs $350 — a $20 weekly gig keeps you compliant and pays a neighbor. Scrap, our multilingual voice concierge, does the whole flow by conversation: “Find me someone to shovel snow — I’ll give 70%-off coupons.” English · Español · 中文 · Русский · 한국어 by voice; 7 languages in the UI (the Local Law 30 set).

Real Bounties gig board with cash, food, and store-credit rewards
Real Bounties — reward chips, XP bars, instant-accept or owner-picks
One-tap launcher: talk to Scrap, log a cleanup, or get business help
Tap the logo anywhere: talk, clean, or get help — newbie-proof
08 / 09

NYC Open Data is the game engine

Three datasets, turned into mechanics.

311 Service Requests

erm2-nwe9

Every ⚡ on the map is a real, currently-open sanitation complaint. Clean that exact spot → the Sentinel verifies → +100 XP and the bounty clears.

DSNY Scorecard

rqhp-hivt

The city’s own street-cleanliness ratings (76% Bronx CD5 ↔ 99.8% Queens CD11) set 2× XP in the dirtiest districts and size every Trash Monster.

Litter Basket Inventory

8znf-7b2c

All 20,413 public baskets mapped — the “where do I dump this?” layer that closes the loop legally and practically.

Snapshots ship in-repo with provenance; live aggregate queries power the impact charts. Every integration gotcha we hit is documented for the next builder.

09 / 09

Impact math · community first

If 1% of New Yorkers
clean 5 minutes a week…

83,000
targeted micro-cleanups per week — aimed where 311 complaints cluster
<1¢
AI verification cost per cleanup — fraud rejected free, trust earned cheap
7
languages, voice + text, light/dark, WCAG-checked — built for all of NYC, rewards decided by receipts, never identity

Do good. Look good. Get the goods.
Become a Garbologist.

Open source · zero-key reproducible · github.com/roshaninfordham/builtfornyc-hackathon

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