CivCheck
AI-guided plan review that pre-checks permit applications for code compliance before city review.
Acquired — still operating
Acquired by Clariti in 2026; continues to operate as a standalone product with Clariti investing in engineering, product, and customer service.
About
CivCheck is an AI platform that helps permit applicants check their plans for building code compliance and submission completeness before they enter a city's formal review process. Applicants upload plans and supporting documents, answer project questions, and the software verifies documents are complete, flags code issues, and processes even handwritten submissions. Once an application passes all checks it is watermarked and submitted, cutting down the back-and-forth that makes permitting slow. The Honolulu Department of Planning and Permitting deployed CivCheck for residential permits and reported its prescreen backlog fell from a six-month wait to about seven days, a city-reported outcome worth treating as early evidence rather than a guarantee.
Founded in 2023 near Chicago by CEO Dheekshita Kumar, CivCheck keeps a human-in-the-loop ethos, stressing that it augments plan reviewers rather than replacing them and does not guarantee permit approval. In 2026 permitting software provider Clariti acquired CivCheck, keeping it as a standalone product while investing millions into engineering, product, and customer service. CivCheck is free for applicants regardless of project count; municipalities and firms license the platform, and its provider claims permits move up to 80 percent faster, a marketing figure that needs independent confirmation.
What it can do
- AI-guided plan review against building codes and local permitting requirements
- Submission completeness checks with guided correction workflows
- Processing of handwritten submissions
- Watermarked, review-ready application packages for city submission
- Human-in-the-loop design that augments rather than replaces plan reviewers
Setup
Create a free account on the CivCheck portal for your jurisdiction, upload plans and documents, and work through the guided pre-check before formal submission.
Prerequisites
A project in a jurisdiction served by CivCheck; digital or scanned plan documents.
Use cases
Works with
Trust score — 6/10
Scored 6/10 (metrics tier, metrics-v1). Evidence: founded 2023, acquired by Clariti in 2026 and kept as standalone product; Honolulu DPP deployment cut prescreen backlog from ~6 months to ~7 days per city officials. Strengths: free for applicants, real municipal deployment, human-in-the-loop ethos. Docked for: (1) small pre-seed-stage startup of about 9 people; (2) 80% faster permitting claim is provider-reported; (3) early deployments limited to residential permits. License: proprietary.
How the trust score is built
Full methodology →- Adoption · stars/downloads, log-scaled vs peers
- 5.0/10
- Maintenance · recency, releases, issue load
- 6.0/10
- Openness · license + docs
- 2.0/10
- Manual review · sanity read + red-flag check
- 6.0/10
- · Founded 2023 near Chicago by CEO Dheekshita Kumar; acquired by Clariti in 2026, kept as standalone product.
- · Honolulu Department of Planning and Permitting deployment: city reports prescreen backlog fell from ~6 months to ~7 days.
- · Free for applicants regardless of project count; human-in-the-loop ethos, does not guarantee permit approval.
- · Roughly 9-person pre-seed-stage startup; 80% faster permitting claim is provider-reported; early deployments residential-only.
Sources
Every fact above was checked against these sources. Where a claim comes from the provider and couldn't be independently verified, the text says so.