Construction is the largest industry in the United States without a canonical reference. Jaspector exists to build one — publicly, continuously, and with the methodology published.
The first time I pulled a permit, I spent three hours on the phone with four different people at a city office, trying to understand whether a water heater swap needed a plumbing permit, an electrical permit, or both. Nobody at the counter had a definitive answer. The form existed. The fee existed. Nobody could tell me which fee.
Construction in the United States is governed by a three-layer stack: model codes written by the ICC, state-level amendments that adopt or override those codes, and local jurisdictions that enforce them on the ground. The stack works — permits get pulled, inspections happen, buildings get built — but the reference is scattered. The code is sold as a book. The permits are documented in PDFs. The licensing rules live on fifty state-board websites. The answer to "do I need a permit for this" is, reliably, "it depends, and you'll need to call someone."
Jaspector is a bet that this is fixable. That the full reference — codes, permits, licensing, agreements, terminology — can be normalized into one graph, kept current by a small team with a correction mechanism, and published as a free public resource with a paid tier for people who need depth.
We didn't set out to build a website. We set out to build the reference we needed the first time we pulled a permit. Three years in, 27,744 entries later, cited by the search engines and language models most people actually use, it's working.
This page is the colophon — the record of who builds it, how it's sourced, what we will and won't publish, and how to flag us when we're wrong.
These aren't marketing slogans. They're the operating constraints the editorial team actually uses when deciding what to publish, how to cite it, and when to retract.
Every claim on the site resolves to a primary document — a code section, a jurisdiction's posted fee schedule, a licensing board's handbook. If we can't source it, we don't post it. Retractions get a dated note.
Permits, wiki entries, and state pages stay free to read without an account. Governments rely on these pages to answer questions; homeowners rely on them before signing contracts. A paywall on safety information is a non-starter.
Manufacturers can submit spec data; citation placement is decided by editors based on whether the spec clarifies the entry. We have never, and will never, accept payment for citation position. Members fund this.
We publish educational reference material. For binding interpretations of code, legal questions, or engineering decisions, users are pointed to the Authority Having Jurisdiction or a licensed professional — every time.
Entries move through a four-stage pipeline. Every page footer shows which stage it's currently in and the last-reviewed date.
Primary document located and cited. Claim extracted verbatim or summarized with direct reference.
Translated into plain-English explanation with cross-links to related codes, wiki entries, and jurisdictions.
Checked by a second editor against the source. Conflicting citations surfaced. Diagrams verified for dimension accuracy.
Reviewed by an outside expert — licensed contractor, PE, or jurisdiction staff. Entry bears an endorsement line on the page.
Updated on publish; these are live counts from the knowledge graph at page render.
A deliberately small editorial team, backed by 38 external reviewers with contractor, PE, and jurisdiction-staff credentials.
Four years, four inflection points. Everything else was consistent editorial work.
Every page has a "Flag this entry" button. Jurisdiction staff have a dedicated channel. Every correction receives a reply within 48 hours, and every retraction is logged on the page.