Planning intelligence

Answering a zoning question should take seconds, not an afternoon.

Plain-language answers from a city’s adopted code, fee schedule, plans and parcel records — with the section or table they came from.

Generic AI guesses. Spoonbill cites. Every answer is drawn only from the city’s adopted code, fee schedule, and plans — traceable to the section and the date it took effect.

How it works

Up and running in days, not a quarter

Sign up

Start free in minutes. No credit card, no procurement. That's the only step on your side.

We build the city's library

Every adopted code, fee schedule, plan and parcel record, indexed into a private, jurisdiction-scoped library. Nothing to install.

Ask, and get the citation

Plain-language answers with the section, table or plan they came from, kept current as the code changes.

Security & trust

Nothing confidential to breach

Everything Spoonbill indexes is already a public record: the adopted code, fee schedule, and plans. The only private data we hold is your own questions. That's it.

Built to clear an IT and legal review before anyone asks.

  • Public records only

    Adopted codes, fees, plans and parcel records: public documents, indexed and kept current. No private dataset to leak.

  • Your conversations stay private

    Your questions, the sites you look at, and your account info are never sold and never used to train shared or third-party models.

  • Encrypted & US-hosted

    Encrypted in transit and at rest with AES-256, passwordless sign-in, and US-based hosting. SOC 2 on the roadmap.

  • Accessible (WCAG / 508)

    Designed to meet WCAG 2.1 AA and Section 508. A VPAT is available on request.

Questions

Answers before you ask

How do I know the answers are accurate? +

Every answer is built only from the city's adopted documents, and each one links straight to the source: the exact section, and the effective date of the document it comes from, so you can confirm it in a click. Spoonbill doesn't draw on the open web or outside knowledge; if the answer isn't in the documents, it tells you rather than filling the gap. You're never taking its word for it, because you're taken to the passage it came from.

Who is Spoonbill for? +

Two groups who ask the same questions of the same documents. Developers, brokers and their consultants use it to know what a site allows before they commit to it. Planning departments use it to answer counter questions in seconds with a citation they can defend. Both read the same adopted code, so a developer gets the answer the city itself would give.

How do you keep me from citing a superseded ordinance? +

Automated watchers monitor each city's published sources for changes. When an ordinance, fee, or plan is updated, Spoonbill wipes the old index and rebuilds it from the current documents, so what you search always mirrors what's actually adopted, with no superseded language left behind. The refresh runs on its own; there's nothing to re-upload or maintain.

How is this different from searching the code online? +

Keyword search finds documents that contain a word and leaves you to read them. Spoonbill answers the actual question across all of them at once, following cross-references, pulling the right number out of a fee table, and citing the specific section. You get the answer and its source, not a stack of PDFs to comb through.

Is my data used to train AI models? +

No. Your questions, the sites you look at, and your account information are never sold and never used to train shared or third-party models. Spoonbill only searches the adopted public documents to answer your questions.

See a city's own code answer a question.

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See a city's adopted code answer a question. Free for 14 days, no credit card.Start free