Which rule actually applies to this project?
Ask across the city code, the current handouts, state law, the utility's standards and the code edition tied to the permit date. docenta returns the exact pages, separates city from state from utility, flags where they contradict each other, and says when the answer needs facts that are not in the collection. The Palo Alto collection is sealed and live today.
State law sets the ceiling: no setback for a unit built in the same location and to the same dimensions as the existing structure, and no more than four feet from the side and rear lot lines for a new detached unit (Gov. Code 66310 to 66342, item 7). The City's ordinance implementing that law says ADUs comply with the underlying zone setbacks, requires none for a converted garage, and caps a unit above a garage at five feet. The City's 2018 summary handout still prints six feet for a detached unit. The 2022 edition of Title 24 governs a permit deemed complete before 2026. For an ADU on the state pathway (one detached unit up to 800 sq ft) trees, protected ones included, may be removed without meeting the tree ordinance, but a Tree Disclosure Statement on the T1 sheet is still required; a larger unit removes a protected tree only under PAMC 8.10.050.
A real answer from the live door, paths shortened. The collection was assembled for one permit and sealed on 2026-09-12: nothing is added or changed, so what it says today it says tomorrow. Google answers "Palo Alto ADU setback"; this answers your configuration, under your permit's edition, with the contradiction on the table.
You remember the meaning, the date, the argument. Ask that.
Which rule
Which code edition applies to this permit date, and which provision decides it?
What local amendment changes the base rule for this scope?
Which requirements come from the city, which from the state, which from the utility?
This project
Which setback rule applies to this exact configuration, and does an exception apply to the existing structure?
Which utility service upgrade, application step or connection fee is triggered by this scope?
What tree rule could constrain where this addition goes?
Version and edition
What changed between the 2022 and 2025 editions on this point?
What is the latest effective requirement in this collection, and when was it published?
Contradiction
Do the city handout, the municipal code, the ordinance and the state handbook say the same thing?
Does the simplified handout omit a condition present in the ordinance?
Evidence and gaps
What source page should I show the plan checker or the client?
What does the collection not contain that this permit question needs?
Give me a checklist of cited source pages for this scope, not a generic one.
The City's rules.
The Palo Alto Municipal Code (Supp. 81, 2026), the Building Division and Green Building handouts, Ordinance 5412 on accessory dwelling units, the Tree Technical Manual and the trees-and-ADUs guideline.
The utility and the state.
CPAU's electric service requirements, rules 3 and 20, connection fees and the application packet; the California ADU statute (Gov. Code 66310 to 66342) and HCD's ADU handbook of March 2026.
The building code, both editions.
Title 24 as published for 2022 (the edition that governs permits deemed complete before 2026) and 2025, part by part, so the answer names the edition that applies.
The same four-part contract, every time.
Exact source.
The file, the page, the message, the span. Not "sources": the line you can open and read.
Order and version.
When it was said, which version it was, what replaced what. A three-event timeline beats another paragraph.
Conflicts.
Two sources that disagree are shown side by side, never smoothed into one confident sentence.
Gaps.
"Not established by this collection" is an answer, printed as one. It is how you know the rest is solid.
The evidence path.
What was searched, which lanes answered, what was dropped and why, how many tokens the agent was handed. Inspectable, every time.
Boundedness is the feature.
Most AI marketing hides uncertainty. docenta prints it. The lines below are not disclaimers; they are what a trustworthy answer looks like.
No permit records, no site survey. Whether a structure is nonconforming or a tree is protected is a project fact; the answer says which part is source retrieval and which part still needs plan-check confirmation.
No other cities, no case law. A question outside the collection is answered "not in this corpus", never from elsewhere.
The handout is not the ordinance. When a simplified sheet and the code differ, both are shown with their dates; the newer or higher authority is named, not assumed.
Verify before relying. docenta finds and cites; your assistant reads and you decide. For anything load-bearing, open the official text the citation points to.
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Ask the sensitive question without first uploading the sensitive file.
Your own plan sets, site photos, client mail and estimates stay on your machine: ingest, index, embeddings and answers all run there. Originals are never copied; only searchable derivatives are stored. Your agent gets a small evidence pack, a few kilobytes with the receipts, not your archive. Zero uploads, zero telemetry, and the token budget is printed on every answer.
It gets it over MCP, the connector standard Claude, ChatGPT and most coding assistants speak, from a server that runs on your own machine: the agent talks to a local process, not to a URL in someone's cloud. The only remote MCP addresses on this site are the public doors, sealed collections hosted on purpose; your own collection never has one. Deterministic layers, no learned model in the retrieval loop, bit-stable re-runs.
One address, one sign-in, every question cited to the page.
The sealed collection above is served as an MCP server at https://door.docenta.ai/mcp: the one kind of remote address on this site, a public collection we host on purpose so your assistant can ask it today. You add it once; from then on it asks the collection the way it asks any other tool, and every answer names the document and the page.
Register once
Use the form at the bottom of this page and say "contractors". You confirm your address with one click, and that registration is what opens the collection for you. There is no key to copy, ever: the address below is not a secret, and signing in is what makes it yours.
Add the address to your assistant
https://door.docenta.ai/mcp
Claude Code: one line, then type /mcp and press Enter on docenta-palo-alto.
claude mcp add --transport http docenta-palo-alto https://door.docenta.ai/mcp
Claude (web and desktop): Settings, Connectors, Add custom connector, paste the address, Connect. ChatGPT: Settings, Connectors, Create, paste the address, choose OAuth.
Allow it, once
Your assistant opens a docenta page by itself. It asks who you are (your address and six digits from your mail; nothing at all if you come from your start page) and shows one sentence: which assistant, which collection. Press Allow. You can disconnect any assistant later on your start page.
Ask, and read the citation
Every answer names the document and the page it came from. The first question after a quiet spell can take half a minute while the collection wakes up; your assistant is told so and asks again by itself.
The door never sees your files, and cannot be changed by anyone, us included, without a new seal and a new date on this page. It knows that a registered person asked, so each person gets a fair share of it. It keeps nothing you ask unless you choose to, with two boxes that start unticked when you connect: "tell me when a question can be answered later", which keeps only the questions the collection could not answer, and "keep my questions, without my name", which keeps the words for 180 days with no name, address or time of day beside them. You can change both on your start page.
What is one question your files should be able to answer today?
docenta is a commercial product of SKY, LLC, now in private preview. Tell us the question; we will tell you when the door opens, and the questions we hear shape what we build.
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