Permit Preflight

Seattle-first residential buildability screening. Permit Preflight helps a homeowner or land buyer answer two expensive questions before paying for professional due diligence:

1. Existing property — "Can I build this here?" (e.g. a backyard shed / accessory structure)
2. Vacant land — "What could I reasonably build here?"

It aggregates authoritative property and regulatory data (parcel boundaries, zoning, critical areas, existing structures), runs deterministic spatial and regulatory-rule analysis, surfaces unknowns instead of guessing, and produces an evidence-backed preliminary feasibility report.

Permit Preflight is a screening and due-diligence aid. It does not guarantee permit approval and does not replace an architect, engineer, surveyor, attorney, utility provider, or the permitting authority itself.

Full product vision, scope, and constraints: docs/product/permit-preflight-inception-brief.md

Tech stack

• Framework: Next.js 16 (App Router) + React 19, TypeScript
• Database: Neon serverless PostgreSQL + PostGIS, via Drizzle ORM
• Mapping: MapLibre GL JS + MapTiler
• Payments: Stripe (checkout + webhooks)
• Email: Resend
• AI: Anthropic (Rule Research Assistant, Report Explanation) — always degrades gracefully, never fabricates a result if unavailable
• PDF generation: Puppeteer / @sparticuz/chromium
• Testing: Vitest (unit + integration), Playwright (e2e)

Project structure

app/            Next.js App Router pages, API routes, and UI components
src/            Domain logic, organized by bounded component (see below)
scripts/        Operational/dev scripts (DB seeding, staging tooling, prototype report generation)
tests/          Unit and integration tests, mirroring src/
e2e/            Playwright end-to-end tests
docs/           Product vision and planning documents
aidlc-docs/     AI-DLC process artifacts (requirements, design, construction, audit trail)

Each subdirectory under src/ is an independently-testable domain component, e.g. parcel-resolution, property-intelligence, spatial-analysis, regulatory-rules-engine, regulatory-rule-governance, rule-research-assistant, report-generation-orchestrator, report-pdf-rendering, checkout-fulfillment, order-payment, account-auth, admin-auth.

Getting started

Prerequisites

• Node.js 20+
• A Neon PostgreSQL database with PostGIS enabled

Setup

npm install
cp .env.example .env

Fill in .env with real values — see .env.example for what each variable is for and which features need it. At minimum, DATABASE_URL is required to run the app; other keys (Anthropic, MapTiler, Stripe, Resend, admin auth) unlock specific features and are otherwise documented as optional/degraded in .env.example itself.

Deterministic unit tests require none of these variables. Integration tests require whichever variables the specific test touches.

Run the dev server

npm run dev

Database migrations

npm run db:generate   # generate a Drizzle migration from schema changes
npm run db:migrate    # apply migrations

Testing

npm test               # deterministic unit tests (vitest)
npm run test:watch     # unit tests in watch mode
npm run test:integration  # integration tests (touches real infrastructure per test)
npm run test:e2e       # Playwright end-to-end tests
npm run typecheck      # tsc --noEmit
npm run build          # production build

License

Private and proprietary. All rights reserved.