Everyone has to follow regulations. Almost no one can easily find the ones that apply to them. The rules exist, and they're public. But they're scattered across agencies and buried in documents written for lawyers. When an AI tool tries to help, it sounds just as confident when it's wrong as when it's right.
Rulebook Labs is a group of researchers and software engineers working to change that. We're building an AI research assistant that answers questions about state regulations from the actual text of the regulations, not from the AI's memory. Engineers call this retrieval-augmented generation, or RAG. Every answer points to the exact passages it came from, so you can check it yourself.
A translucent box
Most legal tech is a black box: a question goes in, an answer comes out, and you're asked to trust whatever happened in between. Along the way we stumbled on the idea of a glass box, a system where you can see every step. Then we admitted that's a big promise for a young project. So we're going for a translucent box: more transparency than you're used to. That means showing what the system found, why it answered the way it did, and where it still falls short.
Regulations are where a wrong answer costs the most. We'd rather show you our system's weak spots than hide them.
Two phases
Who it's for
Rulebook Labs is built for non-attorneys, the people who have to follow the rules without a law degree. We think of them as citizen researchers.
Where we started
- The engineer or engineering manager who needs to know which rules their system or team must meet
- The small business owner who can't keep a lawyer on call for every question
- The new founder setting up shop in a state they've never operated in
Who we're exploring next
- The contractor or tradesperson, such as a solar installer, electrician or plumber, checking licensing and installation rules
- The office, HR or operations manager who became "the compliance person" by default
- The property manager or landlord dealing with utility and tenant rules
- The nonprofit or co-op administrator, for example someone running a rural water or telecom co-op
- The consultant advising clients across several states
- The journalist, student or civic researcher trying to understand what a rule actually says
Where we are today
We're early, and we're starting with a slice of Arizona's regulations.