Published: 26 May 2026 | Author: Team JanVayu | Reading time: 7 min
A domain expert tested the chatbot and found three wrong answers. A layperson said the menu was confusing. Someone pointed out that the site had no section on gender. By the end of the day we had shipped 19 changes (21 since 24 May, counting the chatbot-accuracy and menu changes merged on 24 May). Here is what changed and why.
The chatbot was giving wrong answers
Komal works on air quality in Patna. She asked the chatbot how many monitoring stations are installed in Patna and got a wrong answer. She knew it was wrong because she had worked there.
The chatbot was drawing on WAQI, which returns only some of the stations. It knew nothing of the full CPCB network.
We gave it a reference list for 27 cities, with the number and type of stations in each: CAAQMS (continuous, real-time) or manual (gravimetric, 24-hour sampling). The Patna entry we first published is shown below.
Correction, 2 October 2026: a fact-check found that the Patna split below is not supported. CPCB's continuous-monitoring feed lists at least five continuous (CAAQMS) stations for Patna: IGSC Planetarium Complex, Muradpur, Rajbansi Nagar, Samanpura and DRM Office Danapur. Rajbansi Nagar is a continuous station, not a manual one, and we have found no source for the other three manual station names. The entry is being re-derived from CPCB's current station list.
Patna (as originally shipped, now corrected as noted above)
CAAQMS (3): IGSC Planetarium, Muradpur, Samanpura
Manual (4): Rajbansi Nagar, Khajpura, Gardanibagh, Phulwari Sharif
The list can now be edited without changing any code, so anyone on the team can correct it.
Delhi was always Mandir Marg
Komal also noticed that asking "how is the air quality in Delhi" always quoted a single station, Mandir Marg. The chatbot picked the station nearest the city centre, and for Delhi that is Mandir Marg. Now a general question about a city looks at all its stations and gives a range:
The menu was confusing
The old menu had 6 tabs grouped by type of data: Data & Health, Monitoring, Accountability, Action and Resources. The Resources tab alone held 16 items. Someone wanting to know "should I go outside?" had to search a dropdown as long as a restaurant menu.
We regrouped the menu into 7 tabs by what you want to do, instead of by type of data.
The new "My Air" tab puts the personal tools first: Ask JanVayu AI, Should I Go Outside?, AQI Alerts, Exposure Report, School Closures and both calculators. A parent who wants to know whether a child should play outside now needs two clicks, where before they had to look through 16 items.
Women were invisible in the data
The site had no panel on how air pollution affects women more than men. One figure from the national survey shows why that mattered:
The new Women's Health panel covers exposure to smoke from indoor cooking, the gap between getting an Ujjwala connection and actually switching fuel, maternal and reproductive health, work in the informal sector, and the lack of data on women. A new "Woman / Caregiver" role in the role selector shows this alongside indoor air quality, children's health and the purifier calculator.
The map can now show history
The live map used to show only the current AQI. Users asked whether things were getting better or worse, and had to open a separate trends panel, pick a city and compare in their heads.
The map now has a History switch with a month and year slider, from January 2024 to the present. Drag the slider and the colour-coded PM2.5 markers for 12 cities change as you go (Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Lucknow, Kanpur, Patna, Jaipur, Pune and Ahmedabad). Green is the lowest band (<30 µg/m³) and purple the highest (>150 µg/m³). These are JanVayu's own colour bands, not CPCB or US EPA categories.
Correction, 6 October 2026: the values behind this slider are illustrative monthly working values, not a measured or published series. The map says so under each popup, but this post did not. Do not read a month on the slider as a recorded PM2.5 figure.
The Live button takes you back to current readings.
Fewer things to update by hand
Seven parts of the platform now keep themselves current, so the numbers do not go stale between releases. The chatbot's station list is edited in one place. The reading list fills itself from our Zotero group, so adding a paper there is enough. The sitemap is rebuilt automatically. A daily check tests all five social feeds. A script flags out-of-date terms in the translated documents. The headline numbers on the dashboard come from a single file. The version number is kept in step across the site.
The full count
By the end of the day:
- 19 changes were merged on 26 May (21 since 24 May).
- The site had 44 panels (was 43), with Women's Health added.
- It had 12 roles (was 10), with Woman/Caregiver added and Citizen split from Activist.
- The city bar, the list of places the chatbot and the dashboard can look up, covered 33 cities (was 10). The chatbot's station reference list described above is a separate list of 27.
- 17 menu labels were reworded for clarity.
- 9 broken icons, which showed as coloured squares, were replaced.
- 8 cramped layouts, where resource cards were unreadable, were fixed.
- Every chatbot answer now has thumbs up and thumbs down buttons for feedback.
The changes are recorded in the changelog, the wiki and the roadmap.
What is still manual
The walkthrough presentation, a 64-slide Google Slides deck, still shows the old menu. Someone has to update it by hand in Google Slides, and it is the one item we cannot refresh automatically.
Update, 27 May 2026: the walkthrough deck was refreshed the next day (65 slides).
JanVayu is open-source, non-partisan, and funded by no one. If you find a wrong answer, a confusing label or a missing perspective, please tell us or file an issue. We count that as a contribution.