How a Question Becomes a Cited Answer
Grounded AI — not a guessing chatbot. Here's the path from a plain-English question to a sourced, defensible answer.
Ask in plain English
A resident, applicant, or staffer asks a normal question — no codes, forms, or jargon required.
Retrieve from your sources
Semantic search pulls the most relevant passages from your ordinance, parcel, and permit data — never the open internet.
Ground & cite
The answer is composed only from those retrieved passages, with a clickable section citation behind every claim.
Confidence + human authority
A confidence signal flags uncertainty; if your code doesn't cover it, OpenCivic says so. Your staff make the final call.
A Real Jurisdiction, Mapped and Answered
A real example — Ivanhoe, CA, with its actual residential, commercial, and agricultural zoning — and the AI answering a grounded question with a citation.
Worked example on real, public Ivanhoe, CA GIS and zoning data — illustrative, not a live customer deployment.
Catch Code Conflicts Before Staff Do
AI checks a proposed site plan against your ordinance automatically — setbacks, height, coverage, and parking — with every conflict flagged and cited.
Worked example on a real parcel (Ivanhoe Community Hall) using real Tulare County zoning code — illustrative, not a filed permit application.
Explore the Solutions
Click through what your jurisdiction gets — and try a few questions to see how each one answers.
GIS & 3D Parcels
Explore a public parcel in 3D — then ask the AI about it.
- Interactive 3D site & massing view
- Zoning, hazards, parcel & permit data in one place
- Zoning, fire, flood & lot size — 11+ data layers
- The selected parcel feeds straight into the chat
Solutions for Real Planning Challenges
We start from the bottlenecks your team feels every day — and replace each one with a grounded, instant answer.
Staff spend hours answering the same zoning questions.
Residents and applicants self-serve 24/7 with grounded answers — freeing staff for the work that needs judgment.
Code interpretations vary depending on who's at the counter.
Every answer comes from the same ordinance source with a section citation — consistent, transparent, and defensible.
Applicants submit incomplete projects, then bounce back.
Pre-application due diligence — ADU, setbacks, SB 9 — up front means cleaner submittals and fewer resubmissions.
Parcel research means juggling GIS, permits, and the code.
One search returns zoning, hazards, permit history, and AI analysis in a single view.