Audience and scope
The primary reader owns a business whose managers already handle day-to-day operations. Management independence is a question to investigate: sales, recruitment, technical decisions and key relationships may still depend on the owner. This is not a franchise-buyer or investor-visa directory.
Coverage includes federal, all 50 state and D.C. records; a separate territorial workstream; European and Southeast Asian origin records; and named local markets. The coverage register distinguishes topic-specific evidence from work not yet researched.
How a guide earns publication
- Identify one distinct reader question and the decision it changes.
- Read primary legislation, regulations, official instructions, forms or relevant court documents. Search snippets are discovery aids.
- Record applicability, source passages, dates and conflicting evidence. Separate a legal requirement from a contract condition or business practice.
- Write an original explanation, realistic example and useful evidence checklist.
- Review its sources, scope and calculations. Keep material unresolved issues explicit or hold the page out of publication.
This initial batch received AI-assisted source research and editorial review. No legal professional has reviewed or endorsed it. No author qualifications, transaction outcomes or customer testimonials are implied.
What our statuses mean
| Status | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Verified | The recorded general proposition was checked against its cited authority in this review. It has a stated scope. |
| Conditional | A supported rule depends on facts, exceptions or a separate analysis. |
| Unresolved | An access problem, conflict or judgment question remains material. |
| Not researched | There is no substantive finding. This is never “no requirement.” |
| Not applicable | A reason must be recorded; absence of information is insufficient. |
Dates, revisions and change detection
A fetch date records access. A substantive verification date records the review of the source against the summary. A modification date records an edit. They are not interchangeable.
The daily source-check workflow compares normalized source content with a retained baseline and creates a dated review report. It is active on the project’s GitHub default branch. The coverage register shows retained technical-check snapshots and their retrieval limits. HTTP errors and detected changes identify affected pages and tools; they never automatically publish a new legal interpretation.
Volatile thresholds, filing fees, tariffs, immigration rules, employment rules and litigation are priority review topics. A review interval is an editorial policy, not a guarantee that the law remains unchanged. Git history preserves reviewed versions. CLI review gates and dependency reports support the next publication batch.
Geographic convention
The origin register uses the United Nations M49 Europe grouping as a geographic baseline, including EU and non-EU economies. Supplemental records separately identify transcontinental countries and Kosovo, and dependent areas are distinguished from sovereign countries. This is a research convention, not a position on sovereignty or treaty eligibility.
Southeast Asia includes Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Timor-Leste and Vietnam. All are registered even where detailed research is pending.
A commercial region or metro is a comparison area. It is not itself a permit authority. Municipal boundaries, counties, special districts, an exact address and the regulated activity can all change the operating workstream.
Learning and evidence are separate
Reading a guide is learning progress. Recording a document is evidence progress. The responsible person must confirm what the evidence establishes. We do not display compliance percentages, exemption approvals or probabilities of success.
Search and indexing
Public guides use static HTML, descriptive titles, canonical URLs, source links and a sitemap containing published pages. Candidate pages do not generate indexed placeholders. Private plan data never appears in public URLs or rendered HTML.
We follow Google’s current generative-search guidance and spam policies: useful original content and normal search fundamentals. No special schema, sitemap or AI file guarantees indexing, citations or rankings. No search volume or conversion estimates have been invented.
Corrections and the next review
The source repository contains a correction and review queue. Maintainers should record the disputed claim, relevant authority, affected page and proposed correction; retain the prior version; and complete substantive review before publishing. Use the contact form to send a correction with the page and source details.