The instrument, the argument for it, and the road from here to a national system
A conformance authority: a compiled determination, signed by a professional of record, insured, and accepted by a jurisdiction in place of first-pass review. Every part of it already exists somewhere — in American state law, in interstate practice, in Singapore’s production system. Nothing has been assembled this way, and the two joints that matter have never been tested.
This is the argument for it, not a claim that the case is won. “Solution” in the nav is the name of the instrument being argued for. Elsewhere this site says it is not a case for the solution, and both are true: the reasoning is published in full, and the objections that would settle it are stated at full strength on About — the dispositive ones are still open, and no gate has been cleared.
The whole thing in sixty seconds
What exists today
Send an address, get an opinion.
Compiled screening is a real product category with commercial entrants across thousands of counties. It produces guidance. A jurisdiction still performs its own review, which is why the approval did not move. How much time compiled screening takes out has never been measured (E-060).
What does not exist
Send a type and a parcel, get a determination.
Every binding provision evaluated, conformance stated, exceptions referred to the jurisdiction, signed by a licensed professional and insured — and accepted in place of the first pass a person performs today.
Why that is the whole difference
Legal weight, not better software.
A screening tool tells you what it thinks. A determination carries a professional obligation and an insurer behind it, so a class of review leaves the official’s desk entirely. Nobody has offered a jurisdiction that trade.
The two things nobody has demonstrated: that a jurisdiction will accept it, and that a carrier will insure it. Both are named below →
Part one
What it is, what you can ask it, and what it issues. Everything after this part is the argument for why it takes this shape and sits in this place.
The whole system 01 of 7
The same journey, twice. Same standards, same reviewers — the difference is whether anything survives to the next one.
Today: land is optioned before anyone knows what is permitted, the design is drawn bespoke, review runs by hand and in series, appraisal needs comparables that do not exist, lending is priced to the worst case, building runs stop-start, and the sale is a bid against scarcity. Then the next project starts from zero. Rebuilt, the same eight steps run against a certified type and a shared record — and the loop returns to the type rather than to nothing.
Investors
That loop-back arrow is the whole thesis in one mark. An industry where the tenth unit costs what the first did has no products, only projects, and no compounding of any kind.
Policymakers
Count what is unchanged: the standards, the reviewers, and every check that gets made. What changes is that the first three steps stop being redone from scratch, one step — the determination — is new, and the loop at the end returns to the type instead of to nothing.
Research
The claim is about marginal cost, and it is not measured here. That the tenth project would be cheaper than the first follows from reuse rather than from evidence — no American jurisdiction has produced the data because no American jurisdiction has the arrangement.
RegisterE-021 E-022 E-002 check these rows →
Deferred 02 of 7
A conformance authority — designed in full, deferred in full, and revivable by two measurements.
What was designed is a conformance authority called Lintel: five stages, only the first three new — compiled rules, a determination against one parcel, a professional signature with insurance behind it — and the check itself certified rather than each building (E-088). It would answer two questions. One is advisory and already sold by others: send an address, get an opinion (E-040–E-042). The other carries legal weight and nobody sells it: send a certified type and a parcel, get a determination a jurisdiction accepts in place of first-pass review. Seven layers, each with its own kill test; three ordinary building types that are legal somewhere and impossible here (E-036). All of it is deferred, because the two joints that carry the load are unmeasured: whether binding siting provisions are mostly computable (E-039), and whether the product is cheaper like-for-like (E-098). Those two measurements would revive it. Until then this section states the design and does not argue it.
Investors
The distinction that matters: screening tools produce opinions, the jurisdiction still performs its own review, and what that market did to the clock has never been measured (E-060). A determination would carry a professional obligation and an insurer behind it. That trade — advisory to load-bearing — is the product, and it is exactly the part no jurisdiction has accepted.
Policymakers
Nothing here asks a jurisdiction to surrender judgement: discretionary provisions stay with the jurisdiction, referred by construction. What the design removes is re-verification of the already-certified — the trade Arizona already makes for the factory-built shell itself (A.R.S. §41-4006, E-132).
Research
The design documents are HAP-05 and HAP-06, and the sixteen-model autopsy is on /models. The rows this section rests on keep their grades: E-039 and E-098 empty, E-060 unmeasured, E-047–E-050 as graded. Nothing in this section upgrades them.
RegisterE-021 E-022 E-036 E-040 E-041 E-042 E-047 E-048 E-050 E-060 E-088 check these rows →
Part two
Three locks bind American housing and they bind in a fixed sequence. Every serious attempt picked one and called it the answer — and the pathology underneath all four.
The honest edge 03 of 7
The chart is schematic. The crossing point has never been measured — and that is the claim, not a weakness in it.
Stated plainly, at the moment it would pay not to
The shape of the curve is the claim.
The axis values are the research question.
Quantifying the crossing point — cost per jurisdiction to encode, at a stated accuracy level — is the single most valuable number this project could produce, and it does not currently exist.
The shape of that curve is the claim; the axis values are the research question. Cost per jurisdiction to encode, at a stated accuracy, is the most valuable number this project could produce, and it does not exist. The method has changed: hand-encoding was the only way to turn prose into executable rules until about 2023 (E-051), and large language models make that step something a machine can attempt. That moves the cost, not the question — four jurisdictions inherited Singapore’s encoding free and none reached production (E-080, E-081).
Investors
An opportunity that is real and unmeasured is the only kind still available to a new entrant. If the number had been published, the position would already be taken.
Policymakers
No state has instrumented any of this. Arizona passed a significant housing reform and built nothing to determine whether it worked. Confirming that absence is itself a finding.
Research
Thirty-two register rows are empty and they are the ones the argument leans on hardest: E-039, the objective-versus-discretionary split, never measured. E-051, the cost to compile one jurisdiction. E-037, Arizona permit volume since preemption. E-038, the idea-to-sale cycle. E-060, what compiled screening does to cycle time. Plus E-070 and E-071, both assumptions.
RegisterE-039 E-051 E-080 E-081 E-037 E-038 check these rows →
The consequence 04 of 7
Politics chooses the ground. Information is the wedge. Capital is the thesis.
Three things block American housing and they bind in a strict order. Entry: can this be built here at all — politics decides. Throughput: given permission, how fast and how certainly does a unit move — information decides. Survival: does the product last at scale — capital decides. The binding constraint is not a fact about housing. It is a function of which stage you are standing in.
Investors
Sequence by politics, wedge with information, win on capital. Type-based valuation is the endgame because it is the lock that kills at scale, and the position with no identified competitors.
Policymakers
Politics first does not mean lobbying first. It means letting the map choose the segment — build where the incumbent homeowner is also the builder, because that is the only ground where entry has already been granted.
Research
Note the asymmetry in evidence strength. The valuation lock has the best evidence because it is the only lock America has ever gotten far enough to fail at. Evidence strength tracks how far each attempt got, not how much each lock matters.
RegisterE-007 E-008 E-021 E-027 E-028 check these rows →
The alternatives 05 of 7
Four sequences, four failures, and each one is already in the record.
| Sequence | Who ran it | Why it failed |
|---|---|---|
| Capital first | Katerra | Money waited in a manual queue. No certified type for finance to attach to. |
| Information first | The screening market | Compiled rules without political standing are advisory. The rules got compiled and the approval did not move; how much time it took out has never been measured (E-060). |
| Politics only | Arizona | The right granted, the plans mandated, and the volume flat. No shared record, no type-based finance. |
| Politics + capital | The HUD Code | Closest anyone came. No information layer, so finance defaulted to chattel. |
Capital first: Katerra. Money waited in a manual queue. Information first: the screening market — Symbium, Buildability, Canibuild — compiled rules across thousands of counties and did not displace a single approval, because compiled information without political standing is advisory. How much time it took out has never been measured by anyone, including us (E-060). Politics only: Arizona, a granted right with nothing to exercise it. Politics plus capital, skipping information: the HUD Code, the closest anyone came, with no type-based valuation record to lend against.
Investors
The screening market matters most here. It is the information-first attempt at commercial scale, and the observable part is qualitative: the rules got compiled and the approval did not move. Compiling the rules is necessary and insufficient — the wedge has to carry legal weight, not just information. No number belongs in that sentence. This site used to put one there, sourced to an estimate of its own that it described as the market's published answer; the estimate is withdrawn and nothing replaces it (C-019).
Policymakers
The failures are not symmetric. Skipping politics wastes a company. Skipping information wastes a statute. Skipping capital wastes an industry.
Research
This corrects an error in the thesis as published: Red Team 04 claims existing vendors leave the ruleset in prose. Register row E-040 refutes that. The sharper form is the one on this slide.
RegisterE-023 E-027 E-037 E-040 E-041 E-042 check these rows →
The paradigm 06 of 7
The industry is not a line. It is a mesh in which everyone rebuilds the same facts and nobody is authoritative.
An architect, a planner, a plan reviewer, a utility engineer, an appraiser and an insurer all need the same facts about the same parcel — dimensions, easements, utility access, flood status, setbacks, what is permitted. Every one of them reconstructs those facts independently, none of them is authoritative, and disagreement is resolved by meeting. Six parties is fifteen possible conversations. Give them one record and one determination to read, and it is six.
Investors
This is the pathology behind every other one. Six independent reconstructions of the same dataset is not inefficiency at the margin — it is the reason a project cannot be a product, and the reason the tenth costs what the first did.
Policymakers
Note what the right-hand picture does not change: the same six parties, with the same authority, asking the same questions. What changes is that they stop each producing a private answer. Singapore's eight agencies read one national schema, which is why they can answer together inside a twenty-working-day ceiling.
Research
The claim that this is the binding pathology is argued rather than measured. Layer 3's falsification test sits exactly here: if most measured delay turns out to be jurisdiction queue time rather than applicant resubmittal from inconsistent facts, a shared record delivers considerably less than this slide implies.
RegisterE-022 E-021 E-050 check these rows →
The whole process, drawn Detail
The same transaction as it runs today and as it would run compiled. First both on one axis, then each drawn in full at the same scale — so the difference is a fact of the picture rather than a claim underneath it.
The same nine approvals, the same axis, drawn twice. Each bar runs from the start of the project to the moment that approval is finally in hand. Nothing is removed — every one still happens and every one can still stop the project.
Read the totals with the correction attached. This site used to head this figure “thirty-two months to seven”. That headline was withdrawn in August 2026: four of the seven months are factory build, so the total set site-built-today against factory-built-tomorrow and credited compiled approval with a saving that partly belongs to a change of construction method. What survives is the approval queue below, which is the only part this architecture claims to touch — and it is an estimate, not a measurement. What changed →
The three longest queues — 14.8 of the 32 months
None of these is construction. They are the three points where the file sits on a desk waiting for a person, which is exactly what a determination is meant to remove — and together they are more than half the critical path.
Today — each approval begins only when the one above it has finished
Compiled — the seven gate rows share a start
| Approval | Today | Compiled | Saved | Reduction |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lender / appraiser | 1.7 | 0.3 | 1.4 | 80% |
| HOA / covenant | 0.9 | 0.3 | 0.6 | 67% |
| Planning — G1 | 8.1 | 0.3 | 7.8 | 96% |
| Plan review — G2 | 5.0 | 0.3 | 4.7 | 94% |
| Utility — G3 | 1.6 | 0.3 | 1.3 | 81% |
| Fire district — G4 | 1.1 | 0.3 | 0.8 | 73% |
| Districts — G5 | 0.9 | 0.3 | 0.6 | 67% |
| Inspector | 8.2 | 3.7 | 4.5 | 55% |
| Title / insurer | 2.2 | 0.2 | 2.0 | 91% |
| Total, all nine | 29.7 | 6.0 | 23.7 | 80% |
Months from the start of the project, from the specimen above — modeled values (E-070, graded Untested), printed to one decimal for internal consistency, measurements of nothing. The two smallest reductions are the two approvals that wait on physical work — inspection and closing — which is the honest floor: an approval can be compiled, a foundation cannot. Not shown: the designer and the standalone appraisal, which the certified type and the type-based valuation record replace; and the producer, which is new.
One row per party; each bar is that party holding the file, from the moment it reaches them until they answer. 9 of the 13 can stop the project outright, marked with an amber rule. The bars form a staircase — no two overlap, because nothing runs concurrently. Elapsed time is therefore the sum of the queues rather than the sum of the work, and the eight months that actually build the house are the single long bar near the bottom.
Same rows, same axis, with the approval queue compiled. Nothing was deleted: 8 parties still hold a veto and every standard is still checked. The staircase becomes a column — the gate bars stack vertically at month one because they read the same record at the same time under a statutory clock, instead of queueing behind each other.
Month one, in order: an address returns the buildable envelope and the certified types that fit it, in seconds rather than weeks of paid interpretation; the applicant chooses a type; the determination is issued, signed and insured; and it goes out once, to every gate at the same time. The utility bar is amber — a capacity condition attached, not a clean yes. Concurrency shortens the wait for an answer; it does not make the answer unconditional.
Both are specimens. No dataset tracks a single project through these parties in order — that is register row E-038, and it is empty. The durations trace to the month strip, to the modeled compiled cycle (E-070, graded Untested), and to CORENET’s twenty-working-day consolidated response — a service ceiling, not a measured average (E-021); the specific ordering is a reasonable reconstruction, not a measurement.
Note what the compiled panel does not fix. Utility capacity, the fire district and private covenants still hold hard vetoes and this architecture does not reach them — they carry the same amber rule in both panels, and the utility bar in 2036 is amber because a capacity condition is attached. Concurrency changes when they answer, not whether they can refuse.
Part three
What is actually executing, and what it is assembled from — each layer carrying its own kill test and its own substitutes.
The artifact 07 of 7
The product is a document. This is what it would have to contain.
Specimen — no determination like this has been issued. It is drawn to show what one would have to contain: what was checked, what was computed, what was referred to a human, who signed it, who insured it, and the statutory basis on which a jurisdiction would accept it. The counts are illustrative. The share of provisions that are objective rather than discretionary is register row E-039, and it is empty — which is exactly what Gate 0 measures.
A determination names the parcel, the certified type and the exact ruleset and edition it was evaluated against. It reports how many binding provisions were examined, how many were objective and computed, and how many required judgement and were referred to the jurisdiction. It carries a professional's signature, a named insurer, and the statutory basis on which it is accepted. It is auditable after the fact, because the ruleset version and the engine version are both on it.
Investors
Everything that makes this defensible is on the face of the document: what was checked, what was not, who is liable, and who pays if it is wrong. That is what makes it insurable, and insurability is what makes it acceptable.
Policymakers
The line that should reassure a building official is the third one. Sixteen provisions referred, reviewed as normal. The determination does not claim the discretionary questions — it clears the ones that are arithmetic so the reviewer's time goes where judgement is actually required.
Research
Specimen only. No determination like this has been issued, and the counts on it are illustrative rather than measured. The ratio it implies — how many binding provisions are objective rather than discretionary — is register row E-039, which is empty, and is precisely what Gate 0 exists to measure. If that ratio is bad, this document is thin and the argument is wrong.
RegisterE-039 E-051 E-050 check these rows →
Underneath the specimen Detail
The determination above states counts. This is what sits under them — and the difference between the top rows and the bottom rows is the entire thesis.
| Provision | What it turns on | Evaluation | Result |
|---|---|---|---|
| Front setback | Distance, structure face to front lot line | 22′-6″ against a 20′-0″ minimum | Pass |
| Building height | Grade plane to mean roof height | 16′-2″ against a 25′-0″ maximum | Pass |
| Lot coverage | Sum of covered area over parcel area | 31.4% against a 40% maximum | Pass |
| Unit floor area | Conditioned area of the accessory unit | 744 sq ft against a 1,000 sq ft cap | Pass |
| Egress window, bedroom | Clear opening area, width, height, sill | 5.9 sq ft clear against 5.7 required | Pass |
| Rear setback | Distance, structure face to rear lot line | 4′-1″ against a 5′-0″ minimum | Fail |
| Fire separation distance | Depends on the assumed lot line location where an easement is unrecorded | Computable once the jurisdiction fixes the line | Conditional |
| Neighborhood compatibility | Whether massing and materials are “compatible with surrounding character” | Not expressible as a rule over measurable attributes | Referred |
| Design review finding | Whether the elevation satisfies the reviewing body’s adopted guidelines | A judgement reserved to a person by the ordinance itself | Referred |
Specimen. The provision categories are real and universal; the values are illustrative. A failure is not an opinion — it is located, measured and citable, which is why it can be fixed before submission rather than discovered at review. The referred rows are the ones a machine must not decide, and they go to the jurisdiction exactly as they do today.
The ratio between those two groups is the whole question. If most binding provisions look like the top rows, the instrument works. If most look like the bottom two, it cannot be built as specified. Nobody has ever measured which — that is register row E-039, and phase 00 below is the measurement.
The road
Seven phases. Each lists the stages inside it and the condition that has to hold before the next one starts — because the failure mode of every prior attempt was starting at a later phase than the one it had earned.
No phase below has begun. Durations are given only where they can honestly be given; the ones that depend on a counterparty saying yes are not invented.
Before anything is built. Two measurements that either support the diagnosis or kill it, and both are publishable whichever way they come out.
Before the next phaseBinding provisions are predominantly objective, and builders name approval-side gates as the critical path.
One jurisdiction accepts one determination for one project class, in place of a first pass a person would otherwise perform. Nothing else on this road is possible before it, and no amount of capital shortens it.
Before the next phaseFive jurisdictions accepting, an accuracy record a reviewer will state out loud, and a carrier renewing rather than declining.
Arizona, end to end. The objective is not volume — it is a density of acceptance high enough that a legislature can be shown a working system rather than a proposal.
Before the next phaseMarginal encoding cost per jurisdiction has fallen by more than half. If it has not, the compiler is not compounding and national coverage never becomes affordable.
Convert bilateral agreements into statutory standing, so the arrangement survives an official changing jobs. This is where the instrument stops depending on relationships.
Before the next phaseRecognition law in one state and a bill filed in a second. If the amendment cannot be carried in the friendliest available state, statutory standing is not reachable and the model caps at bilateral agreements — slower and smaller, still viable.
Multiple states, and the beginning of the thing that actually matters: a valuation record dense enough to lend against.
Before the next phaseTypes portable under reciprocity, a multi-year valuation record, and one lender underwriting to type. Without that lender, the valuation lock is harder than modelled and the phases below do not follow.
Turn a catalogue into an order book, and an order book into utilization — the one thing every other manufacturing industry has and housing does not: knowledge of what has been bought before it is made.
Before the next phaseDelivered cost per unit falling year over year on like-for-like types. If it is not, the loop is not closed and this is an excellent approvals business with a catalogue attached.
The end state is not a large company. It is that a compiled determination is simply how American housing is approved and valued — the way an evaluation report is already how a building product is accepted.
Before the next phaseA determination is accepted by default rather than by agreement, a type carries its own valuation, and a household can price and order a home before committing. At that point the thesis is no longer a thesis.
Beneath itWhat is already settled in law
Three things this road depends on already operate in American law. They are the reason it is a proposal rather than a wish.
Their register rows are graded Untested, and the grade is about the filing rather than the law — C‑017 found each source field named no document a reader could open. Nothing here upgrades them. Naming the statute and re-reading it is what would.
State preemption over approved buildings Georgia preempts local authority over approved industrialized buildings, with the Commissioner’s determination final. Equivalents in Maryland, Pennsylvania, Texas, California and New York. Register row E-047.
Recognition across state lines The Interstate Industrialized Buildings Commission recognizes streamlined certification between states. One certification, many jurisdictions — the mechanism already exists. Register row E-048.
Private review as a statutory right Indiana: seven business days for plan review, three for inspection — and an applicant may use a private provider regardless of whether the unit can meet them. The unit shall accept the report without further inspection, and is immune for the provider’s acts. Register row E-050.
The first questionWhat a city attorney asks
Every liability sentence on this page used to point at the professional side — signed, insured, sealed. None of it answered the question a municipal attorney asks first, which is what happens to them. This is the reason building officials resist third-party review even where state law already allows it, and the site had no answer for it until August 2026.
Two legislatures wrote the answer into the enabling act. Florida immunises the local government, the building official and code enforcement personnel from liability for any act or inaction of a private provider — and that clause has been there since the original 2002 enactment, not bolted on after a loss. Indiana did the same in 2025 and indexed it in the state’s statutory immunity list. Register rows E-160, E-171, E-173.
The immunity is bought with the second look. Florida bars the building official from replicating the review, caps audits at four per provider per year, forbids them delaying the work, and deems the certificate of occupancy granted if the official misses ten business days. A jurisdiction cannot take the immunity and keep the right to check. E-172.
Neither immunity covers the jurisdiction’s own negligence, and no court has said otherwise. Both statutes immunise the unit for acts of the owner or the provider. Neither reaches the unit’s own failure to verify a provider’s licence or insurance, its own certificate decision, or its own safety judgement. In twenty-four years of Florida operation, no reported appellate decision has construed the clause either way. E-174, E-175.
Where no such statute exists, the jurisdiction has a defence rather than an immunity. The background rule is split and it decides adoptability. Washington holds no duty is owed for negligent building-code enforcement; Colorado, Arizona and Oregon abolished the public duty doctrine outright; and Louisiana held a city-parish liable for issuing on structural plans nobody reviewed, after the building collapsed and killed three workmen. California and Nevada then immunised negligent inspection by statute. E-179, E-181.
The manufactured-housing precedent does not transfer, and this site nearly claimed it did. HUD preempts rather than delegates — no state may require its own inspection of anything the federal standards cover. There is no acceptance decision to get wrong, which is why the regulations allocate no liability to any state or local authority. Citing DAPIA and IPIA as precedent for a jurisdiction accepting an outside determination is a category error. E-176.
So the honest answer is not “the professional carries it.” It is that the legislature has to say so explicitly, and two have. There are three models in American law — immunity (Florida, Indiana), preemption (HUD), and retained duty, where Washington DC expressly provides that third-party review does not relieve the District of its own obligation to review. Which model a state has decides whether any of this is adoptable there, and it is not a question the instrument can answer for itself. E-177.
One thing that cuts against the design: the federal test for discretionary immunity turns on whether an official exercised judgement at all, and it does not apply where a rule specifically prescribes a course of action. A compiled determination is precisely a specifically prescribed course of action. The more mechanical the rule, the less discretionary the act, and the less immunity attaches to getting it wrong. That is stated here rather than left for a reader to find. E-182.
Above itWhere the evidence runs out
Stated plainly rather than buried at the end. This is the part of the argument with the least evidence behind it and the most weight on it.
A jurisdiction will accept the determination. No American jurisdiction is currently known to accept a private compiled determination in place of first-pass review. Phase 01 exists to answer it.
A carrier will insure it. No insurer is known to have priced liability written against a conformance determination. It is the question that has killed certification-reciprocity schemes more often than politics has.
American codes are compilably objective. The share of binding provisions that are objective rather than discretionary has never been measured, anywhere — register row E-039 is empty. Phase 00 measures it, and a negative result sends the first four layers back to redesign.
Naming a thing does not make it exist. Two of the three are testable within a year and neither needs significant capital — that is phase 00, and every claim on this page is graded in the evidence register.
FalsificationThe ordering is falsifiable, and here is how
The sequence is argued, not assumed. Five results would rewrite it, each named before the evidence rather than after.
| Pending | Row | Result | Effect on the ordering |
|---|---|---|---|
| Arizona throughput | E-037 | Permit volume rose sharply after preemption despite no supporting infrastructure | Politics alone suffices for the entry segment. Information demotes to a convenience. |
| The gate map | Gate 1 | Builders name utility capacity or fire districts, not approval, as the critical path | The throughput stage is misdiagnosed and the instrument is aimed at the wrong gate. |
| Compilability | E-039 | Binding provisions prove predominantly discretionary | The information lock cannot be engineered. The sequence collapses to politics plus capital — the manufactured-housing path with modern finance. |
| Acceptance and insurability | E-159/160/161, E-169 | A determination cannot be worded as a certification and still be insured, or no jurisdiction uses the mechanism it already has | The wedge is permanently advisory and the ceiling is the screening market. |
| Firm size | E-016/017 | Project scale, not approval mechanics, drives productivity | Type certification behaves as entry regulation, and the small-builder framing is dropped. |
When one of these lands, this page gets a revision rather than a defense.
Three doorsWhere this sits, and what would settle it
01 · 17 or 74 min
This page in its place — after the gap, the 1976 precedent, and the quarantine that followed it.
→ /story
02 · PDF
HAP-02, thirteen sheets with works cited — the citable snapshot this argument grew out of. The seven-layer architecture and the eleven objections are on this site in full; the PDF is what to put in a footnote.
→ /documents
03 · browse
Each claim here carries a row with a source, a grade and a review date — including the rows that are deliberately empty.
→ /evidence