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Many real estate questions turn on a city’s or county’s code of ordinances, which includes its zoning rules. Most US places publish theirs through Municode, the largest publisher of municipal codes. An AI assistant connected to Ploti can read a code there for any US place, whether or not it is in your coverage areas (the counties your Ploti plan covers). A connected chat assistant uses the municode_search and municode_read tools. An assistant that uses only Ploti’s command-line tool, such as Muse, runs ploti municode search and ploti municode read, shown in the CLI tab on the right.

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Find the code, then the section

Municode has its own ids, which these calls hand back to you:
  1. Find the place’s code. municode_search with a state (two letters, such as FL) and a place (such as Winter Garden) returns the place’s client_id.
  2. Search it. municode_search with the client_id and text returns matching sections, each with a node_id. With the client_id alone, it returns the code’s table of contents; add a node_id to open one branch of it.
  3. Read a section. municode_read with the client_id and a node_id returns the section’s text. cursor reads further into a long section.
A search returns at most 50 results.

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When Municode can’t help

Municode doesn’t publish every place’s code, and it sometimes refuses or fails a request. The assistant then searches the ordinance documents Ploti holds instead:
  • documents_search with the place and a question finds the passage.
  • documents_read opens the section.
  • datasets_search with kinds ["document"] shows which codes Ploti holds for a place.
Documents and collections explains those reads.