How RuleGrid builds and verifies records

1. Define the jurisdiction

Each record represents a state, county, or incorporated city and carries stable geographic identifiers. Address lookups compose the applicable state, county, and city layers; an unincorporated address stops at the county layer.

2. Prefer authoritative sources

RuleGrid prioritizes statutes, ordinances, agency guidance, licensing portals, tax authorities, and official forms. Third-party code libraries and booking platforms may be useful references, but they are not treated as authoritative monitored sources when the underlying government source is available.

3. Record evidence, not just conclusions

Important fields are tied to source URLs and supporting text. Records include requirements, tax rates, restrictions, enforcement information, verification status, confidence, and last-verified dates.

4. Detect and validate changes

An automated pipeline checks monitored sources and re-extracts only when content changes or a scheduled freshness review is due. Proposed updates must match the schema, anchor important claims to source text, stay within sanity limits, and receive extra review when many important fields change at once.

5. Fail safely

A fetch failure or uncertain extraction does not silently overwrite a verified record. RuleGrid keeps the last verified version and queues the source for repair or review. Accepted differences become append-only change events and flow into the public tracker and RSS feed.

Corrections

To report a suspected error, use the public issue link on the contact page. Include the RuleGrid URL and an official supporting source. Do not post personal or confidential information.

Even carefully sourced summaries can become incomplete or outdated. Verify important decisions against the linked official sources and qualified local professionals.