From the field
Real permits, real people. Debriefs from the builders, designers, and homeowners getting projects through California building departments — and what their plan sets taught us.
The dense PDF that lands months after submittal — every item explained, code-cited, and turned into a response you can send.
Hand over a city's correction letter and the plan set, and get back every item in plain language, tied to the code behind it, and drafted into a response you can act on.
A finding that points at what's actually drawn on the sheet — this wall, this dimension, this cell — not at a sentence in the notes.
A homeowner in Hermosa Beach drew a five-sheet permit set with a tape measure, a notebook, and Claude Code in a single evening. Then he ran it against the current California code.
Cameron charges $300 to show up. One site visit produces three documents and a mapped job — and then the system hits the one part nobody can systemize.
Mario designed the ADU to the maximum, got what he thought was a green light — then Appendix F and a utility easement no public map shows cost him two months and a full redesign.
Cameron pulls up the letter mid-call — fourteen corrections from the City of Placentia on a single ADU, most of which could have been caught before the plans were ever submitted.