Installation

From the Chrome Web Store (recommended)

Liar’s Ledger is available on the Chrome Web Store. Install directly from there - no developer mode or manual setup required.

→ Install from the Chrome Web Store

From GitHub Releases (manual install)

If you prefer not to install from the Web Store:

Go to github.com/ryanegauthier/liars-ledger/releases
Download the latest liars-ledger-vX.X.X.zip
Unzip it somewhere permanent on your computer
Open the src folder and rename config.example.js to config.js
Open Chrome and go to chrome://extensions
Enable Developer mode (toggle in the top right)
Click Load unpacked and select the unzipped folder
The Liar’s Ledger icon will appear in your toolbar

No API keys needed - everything runs through api.liarsledger.com.

Note: Manual installs use a different extension ID than the Web Store version. If your extension ID is not listed in the server’s ALLOWED_ORIGINS, API calls will be rejected. Contact the maintainer to get your ID added, or run the backend proxy locally.

From source

git clone https://github.com/ryanegauthier/liars-ledger.git
cd liars-ledger
cp src/config.example.js src/config.js

Load unpacked in chrome://extensions pointing at the project root.

Rebuilding the politician dictionary

The dictionary is committed to the repo and doesn’t need to be rebuilt for normal use. To rebuild against the latest Congress.gov data:

node build-dictionary.js YOUR_CONGRESS_API_KEY

Running the backend proxy locally

See Backend Proxy - Local development.

Building a release zip

node build-release.js

Produces liars-ledger-vX.X.X.zip in the project root. The GitHub Actions workflow runs this automatically on every version tag push.

Usage

Navigate to any political news article
Click the Liar’s Ledger icon in your toolbar
Click Scan This Page
Results appear in the bottom bar within a few seconds

Click any politician card to expand their full record. Click Full Report to open a standalone report page with all available data.