An Election Day Constitution in Akoma Ntoso

Today is Election Day in the United States. I hope all of my American colleagues will do their civic duty and vote, if they haven’t already.

We live in a time when the words of the founding fathers are often quoted but less often read. So, as a reminder and in honor of the day, I’m publishing an Akoma Ntoso rendition of the U.S. Constitution and its amendments, as generated by Claude.

In Akoma Ntoso, the Constitution is more than a page to read. Every article, section, signature and amendment becomes something software can find, link and understand.

How it was made

I asked Claude to convert the Constitution into the latest version of Akoma Ntoso. What follows is Claude’s own explanation of how this was done:

Claude started from the National Archives transcription, which keeps the spelling and punctuation of the original, including “defence” and “Independance.” It then marked up the preamble, the seven articles, the attestation, the signatures and all 27 amendments, checked the text against the transcriptions, and validated the result against the Akoma Ntoso schema.

The result is two files: an Akoma Ntoso XML file and a CSS file. The signatures are base64-encoded images embedded directly in the XML, so the file carries them with it. Each of the 40 images was cropped from the National Archives’ high-resolution scan of the parchment. The CSS then styles the XML to look as close to the original as a browser reasonably can, with each signature placed where it appears on the original page. The handwriting of the body text is approximated with script fonts. Claude didn’t write a word of this text. It marked up the words of the original.

Technology has come a long way in 250 years, but some things should never change.

View the Constitution

The link below opens the rendition in a new browser tab.

View the Constitution of the United States

It’s a good day to read it.

‍

by Grant Vergottini, CEO of Xcential