PostgreSQL Conference Europe 2025

What began as a simple script to track my mom’s citizenship case evolved into Diofanti.org—a free civic tech platform monitoring millions of transactions and decisions across the Greek government, all powered by PostgreSQL.

In this talk, I’ll share how PostgreSQL—and its vibrant extension ecosystem—enabled every stage of this unlikely civic tech journey:

• Phase 1: The Scrappy Script
  Structuring chaotic government PDFs into clean, queryable data using PostgreSQL.

• Phase 2: Scaling Transparency
  Ingesting massive public datasets via the http extension and custom SQL pipelines.

• Phase 3: AI for the People
  Powering a chatbot with pgvector-backed semantic search to help citizens ask real questions about their government—and their money.

What started as a personal side project quickly pulled me deeper into PostgreSQL development. Diofanti’s challenges led me to write custom extensions like pgpdf, explore SQL/JSON path internals, and eventually contribute to PostgreSQL core itself.

Whether you’re a developer, open-data advocate, or just someone who loves bending PostgreSQL to your will, this is a story of how a “small script” turned into a platform for civic impact.