Inspiration

Large corporations have dedicated legal and compliance teams tracking legislative updates, tax code adjustments, and municipal planning. Independent shops rely on the owner doing that work after hours.

Small businesses operate under the same regulatory framework, but typically discover new requirements through penalties, forfeiture notices, or utility cones unexpectedly blocking their parking lot. While this information is publicly available, it remains scattered across dozens of fragmented state portals and obscured by statutory language. We built RegWise to provide local business owners with an enterprise-grade regulatory radar without the enterprise overhead.

What It Does

An owner provides three basic details: their industry, location, and headcount. RegWise translates their operating profile into three actionable layers:

Obligations: The specific filings, licenses, statutory workplace postings, and tax deadlines currently in effect, complete with canonical source links and calendar export.
Regulatory Radar: A centralized feed tracking enacted legislation, proposed agency rules, and active public comment windows. Google Gemini analyzes each item against the company's profile, detailing whether it applies, the legal rationale, and immediate steps required.
Local Risk: A spatial map tracking nearby roadwork, utility permits, zoning adjustments, and FEMA flood risks, scoring disruptions based on distance and operational impact.

The platform also includes a Growth Planner to forecast statutory obligations activated when hiring across key employee thresholds (such as Maryland’s 15-worker mandate) and an exportable Monthly Briefing formatted for CPAs and legal advisors.

How We Built It

Frontend & Backend: React, Vite, and Tailwind CSS delivering a responsive dashboard, powered by a Node.js, Express, and TypeScript API.
Obligations Engine: A catalog of 88 state rules stored as structured data rather than hardcoded logic, evaluated dynamically against the business profile. Tax schedules, minimum wage tiers, and FAMLI contribution rates continuously synchronize with official schedules.
Regulatory Radar Pipeline:
- Ingests the Maryland Register (parsing Word-exported HTML structures).
- Indexes Maryland General Assembly bills, chapter updates, and Department of Legislative Services effective-date publications.
- Monitors state agency press updates and bulletins.
- Leverages Google Gemini via Vertex AI with structured JSON schemas and a conservative triage prompt ("when uncertain, classify as 'Might Apply'") to summarize impact and define required actions.
Local Risk Engine: Integrates Baltimore City and County permit streams, MDOT SHA capital project feeds, FEMA flood zones, and OpenStreetMap data, calculating proximity risk using deterministically weighted rules.
Geospatial & Boundary Resolution: Couples the U.S. Census geocoder with authoritative Maryland spatial boundaries to resolve precise municipal and county jurisdictions.
Resilience & Infrastructure: Employs an aggressive local caching layer to keep the application responsive during third-party agency portal downtime. Deployed across DigitalOcean and Google Cloud Run.

Challenges We Ran Into

Messy government data: We strictly parse inconsistent formats—like Word-to-HTML exports, long PDFs, and fragmented agency sites—without guessing.
Precise geolocation: We rely on official county codes rather than address city names to safely handle jurisdictional quirks (e.g., Baltimore City vs. County).
Complex employee counting: We collect four separate metrics because different labor laws require distinct headcounts.
Strict AI guardrails: We use conservative prompting and rigorous validation to ensure the AI never fabricates dates or compliance advice.
Scaling & deployment: We migrated to Vertex AI with batched background processing to bypass rate limits, and fixed login failures caused by redundant host servers.

Accomplishments We're Proud Of

Fully functional product: We built a working app using real data from official sources, live checks, and accurate results for any Maryland address—not just a mockup.
Rigorous testing: We validated every module against five diverse business profiles: a restaurant, a salon, a solo LLC, a hotel, and a government contractor.
Explainable AI: Every result clearly states why a rule applies and provides a direct link to the official source.
Executive briefing: We generate a streamlined, one-page summary that is ready to hand directly to an accountant.
Rapid deployment: We successfully built, deployed, and took the project live within the 24-hour hackathon limit.

What's Next for RegWise

Deeper Local Coverage: Expand beyond initial jurisdictions to ingest permit feeds, municipal codes, and zoning boards across all 24 Maryland counties, followed by interstate rollout using the existing rules engine.
Proactive Dispatch: Deliver instant email and SMS alerts when a critical statutory deadline, relevant bill, or proximate road project is published.
Persistent Data Infrastructure: Transition from session caching to an enterprise PostgreSQL storage layer with persistent user authentication and multi-location support.
Automated Delivery: Schedule automated monthly executive briefings generated and delivered directly to the business owner and their CPA or legal counsel.