Show HN: EuConform – Offline-first EU AI Act compliance tool (open source)

[hiepler]

I built this as a personal open-source project to explore how EU AI Act requirements can be translated into concrete, inspectable technical checks.

The core idea is local-first compliance: – risk classification (Articles 5–15, incl. prohibited use cases) – bias evaluation using CrowS-Pairs – automatic Annex IV–oriented PDF reports – no cloud services or external APIs (browser-based + Ollama)

I’m especially interested in feedback on whether this kind of technical framing of AI regulation makes sense in real-world projects.

[dabedee]

Hey there! I find the idea super relevant and I think compliance tools that can be used like this are the way forward.

Given the timeline of the commits and some other tells (e.g. using forwardRef despite using React 19 which deprecates it), it seems like you used coding assistants extensively. That's a personal preference, but I would mention that explicitly (if that's the case), if only for intellectual honesty.

[9dev]

Hard disagree from me there. I don’t care what language a tool is built with, I’m neither interested in their choice of code editor, nor whether they use AI in the process or not. It’s a means to an end, not some flaw to be ashamed of and forced to disclose.

If something gets built with AI or not at all, that’s a net positive as far as I’m concerned.

[mort96]

I care. Plenty of people care. You are free to ignore that piece of the readme.

[9dev]

Point is I don’t want people to get shamed for their tools over some vague idea of intellectual purity.

[mort96]

Point is I do

[hiepler]

Thanks, appreciate the thoughtful feedback.

You’re right that the commit history doesn’t fully reflect the raw development process. I did some cleanup and squashing before publishing, since this is an open-source project and I wanted the history to be readable and reviewable.

I do use coding assistants as part of my workflow, mostly for iteration speed and boilerplate, but the architectural decisions, evaluation logic, and compliance mapping are intentional and manually reasoned through.

Happy to clarify any part of the implementation or assumptions if something looks odd.

[Tiberium]

Is there a reason why you're using LLMs for comments as well?

[dmitrygr]

"EuConform" <- I love the name. Not sure if you meant it as it reads, but I love it.

[petcat]

"you conform" is how it reads to me. which leaves a bad taste given the nature of it.

[hiepler]

Fair point

The name is meant literally as “EU conformity” (EU + conform), not “you conform”.

I was aiming for something that signals regulatory alignment without sounding legal-heavy, but I get how it can read differently.

[PeterStuer]

The problem is that the interpretation of what the defacto requirements for what compliance with the ai act entails still is in high flux and changing on a weekly basis.

[ankit219]

Calling it "Conform" is very 1984esque. There is also a 2025 book (a dystopian romance) called the same: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/223239535-conform

[lawlessone]

TIL 1984-esque is when i can't use my customers data to train bots.

[ankit219]

TIL you cant take a joke on the name, and you have to invoke a stated premise to feel better. If you really thing that is the only thing the act is doing (without realizing the carve outs it has for facial recognition etc.) then i have a tower bridge to sell to you.

Rules and regulations always assume it would be used by a rational actor, but should be written such that someone irrational would not be able to misuse it. That is teh premise of 1984. But you do you .

[mort96]

Needing to conform to various rules and regulations isn't exactly a new thing

[ankit219]

It was a joke on the name. Nothing to do with the content. Conform to newspeak is what 1984 is famous for.

[mort96]

And .. it's also just a normal word which describes what you do in relation to regulations or standards

[ankit219]

No its not. You follow the rules or you adhere to them.

You change your behavior or belief system to match a group's standard/norm (conform).

Conform and follow/adhere are quite different, and convey the thought process underneath.

[mort96]

You conform to standards and specifications.

[pennaMan]

in this case the best compliance is non compliance

degrowth decels are a scourge

[troyvit]

A scourge to what, exactly?

[sothatsit]

Human flourishing

[pennaMan]

To the human race. The only reason we're not living miserable animal lives is because of technological progress. Wanting to slow that down means you are anti human.

[Jon_Lowtek]

So your think that AI systems that pose a significant risk to basic human rights at scale, should not be subject to oversight and regulation, because that would be anti-human?

[wizzwizz4]

The industrial revolution created slums. Social progress made those go away – and I'm sure the factory owners decried it just as vehemently.

[pennaMan]

The industrial revolution also created clean drinking-water systems, sewerage and wastewater treatment, basic sanitation and hygiene infrastructure, mass-produced vaccination, antibiotics, antisepsis and sterilization, anesthesia, obstetric and neonatal care technology, refrigeration and cold-chain logistics, food safety and industrial food processing, pasteurization, canning, mechanized agriculture, synthetic fertilizers, modern crop breeding and seed systems, electrification and power grids, hospital infrastructure engineering and medical imaging.

To name a few.

[wizzwizz4]

The industrial revolution created a few of those things, but the term refers to a specific period of economic development between (quoth Wikipedia) "c. 1760 . c. 1840", where the production of several classes of goods was mechanised. Not all technological development since the 18th century is the industrial revolution. To pick one example from your list: synthetic fertilisers are largely due to the Haber process iirc, which was a 20th-century invention.

[arter45]

Of course, new technology usually allows to do stuff that wasn't possible before, or maybe do stuff faster.

The point is how we use technology.

Without going to WW2 technology extremes, think about AI systems generating pictures of naked people from a regular picture. Regardless of the fact that this was already more or less possible using Photoshop or other tools (as I said before, technology is not always about new things, maybe it's about faster workflows), is there a clear net benefit to society when comparing pros and cons?

This doesn't mean that you should forbid all kinds of innovation, but if you're running a service (people keep interacting with you, they don't just buy stuff and use that at home) and a data-driven one at that (you know how people use your service because that's part of how you make money), some degree of responsibility should be expected.

If I buy a coconut and I use it to hurt someone, the original seller doesn't know it, but if I keep renting cars to hide bodies and the rental company has cameras inside the car as part of their business model, at some point the company could say "hey, what about this guy? What should we do about him?". And if for some reason it turns out that most customers rent cars for that reason, I would hope at some point someone would think "hey, how did we get to this situation? What should we do?".

[hash872]

Glad to see future builders focusing on bureaucratic compliance first & foremost. It's a stirring vision. This is a great European VC on Twitter you may want to tag about your project, he invests solely in GDPR-compliant European tech https://x.com/compliantvc

[tpetry]

You know that this is a parody account?

[regnodon]

I'm pretty sure you're replying to a comment which itself was supposed to be a parody. The "focusing on bureaucratic compliance first & foremost" seems to be something of a tell.

[agentifysh]

If you are not European, it doesn't seem very attractive for non-Europeans to deal with all the anti-business regulations.

Also just from the data that has been shared with me chargebacks/complaints/nitpicking/stinginess alone from this region seems to demoralizing compared to Americans/East Asia

We have this idealized view of a rich affluent "Europe" born from Marshall Plan but that certainly is not the actual reality today.

[Kim_Bruning]

The EU started out as an economic union. They are still very capitalist. Which means they protect consumers, promote fair competition, and encourage trade between member states. They're neither mercantilist nor plutocratic.

[pyrale]

> all the anti-business regulations.

Regulation is made to protect customers. Consumer trust is favorable to business in the long run.

It's really sad that US technologists confuse business and grift these days. Maybe it's related to their main customers being VCs, and the people using service just being props needed to have the line go up.

[troupo]

> non-Europeans to deal with all the anti-business regulations.

These are not "anti-business regulations".

[rvz]

What innovation do we have here from the EU? Its official name should be:

The Official EU AI Act Compliance Regulation Conformance Tool MMXXVI v1.0

If you are one patch version behind, you are "non-complaint" and you will get fined immediately.

We <3 EU!

[bigyabai]

This but unironically. Snuff Google, Microsoft and Apple with the passion of a thousand suns and never let their ashes rise again to threaten fair people.

Signed, an American who is fed up with adslop and saasslop propaganda. Do not reward immoral megacorps.

[troad]

As a person who's lived in Europe, I encourage you to try it. You'll find that there are some upsides to all the regulation, but also many downsides. More than you'd expect if you've never lived and worked in Europe before. Many things you take for granted - don't even think about - either don't work at all, or don't work well.

Not knocking Europe, but there's too much of a tendency online to picture Europe as some kind of Disneyland. Some of this is down to Americans who only know Europe from two-week holidays and picture it as a holiday utopia, some of it is Europeans who only know America from reality television and picture it as a hellscape.

Pop discourse != reality.

[troupo]

> You'll find that there are some upsides to all the regulation, but also many downsides.

And those are?

> Many things you take for granted - don't even think about - either don't work at all, or don't work well.

And those are?