Section 102417. Supervision
(a) General requirements for supervision...
(b) Staff-to-child ratios shall be...
(g) Evening and overnight care
    (1) Definition of overnight care...
    (9) For school-age children
        (A) Supervision requirements during sleep hours...
        (B) Alternative arrangements when...

Why this is hard for AI:

Sequential parsing works well (read top to bottom)
Targeted lookup fails - asking "what does 102417(g)(9)(A) say?" loses context
Each level inherits meaning from parent levels
AI needs to "see" the full path: Section → Subsection → Paragraph → Subparagraph

When to Use

Need to look up a specific citation code
Building compliance reports with regulation context
Explaining what a citation means in plain English
Navigating Title 22 hierarchy

Input

# Citation lookup
query: "find:102417(g)(9)(A)"

# Context query
query: "context:102417(g)(9)"

# Full hierarchy
query: "full_hierarchy"

# Citation normalization
query: "normalize:Sec. 102417 (g) (9) (A)"

Output

# For find: queries
result:
  citation: "102417(g)(9)(A)"
  section:
    number: "102417"
    title: "Supervision"
  full_path:
    - level: "section"
      marker: "102417"
      text: "Supervision"
    - level: "subsection"
      marker: "(g)"
      text: "Evening and overnight care"
    - level: "paragraph"
      marker: "(9)"
      text: "For school-age children"
    - level: "subparagraph"
      marker: "(A)"
      text: "Supervision requirements during sleep hours"
  parent_context: "Section 102417 establishes supervision requirements. Subsection (g) specifically addresses evening and overnight care. Paragraph (9) applies to school-age children."
  siblings:
    - "102417(g)(9)(B)"
  text: "Full text of the subparagraph..."

metadata:
  found: true
  confidence: 0.98

Hierarchy Levels

California Title 22 uses this hierarchy:

Level	Pattern	Example
Section	`Section \d{6}`	Section 102417
Subsection	`\([a-z]\)`	(g)
Paragraph	`\(\d+\)`	(9)
Subparagraph	`\([A-Z]\)`	(A)
Sub-subparagraph	`\([ivx]+\)`	(i)

Citation Normalization

The parser normalizes various input formats to canonical form:

Input	Canonical Output
`102417(g)(9)(A)`	`102417(g)(9)(A)`
`102417 (g) (9) (A)`	`102417(g)(9)(A)`
`Sec. 102417(g)(9)(A)`	`102417(g)(9)(A)`
`Section 102417(g)(9)(A)`	`102417(g)(9)(A)`
`§102417(g)(9)(A)`	`102417(g)(9)(A)`
`102417(G)(9)(a)`	`102417(g)(9)(A)`
`102417.g.9.A`	`102417(g)(9)(A)`

Acceptance Criteria

Feature: Citation Lookup with Context

Scenario: Find a deeply nested citation (AC-1)
  Given the regulation text for Section 102417 is loaded
  When I query "find:102417(g)(9)(A)"
  Then the response should include:
    | field          | value                           |
    | citation       | 102417(g)(9)(A)                 |
    | section.number | 102417                          |
    | section.title  | Supervision                     |
  And full_path should contain 4 levels
  And parent_context should mention "evening/overnight care"
  And siblings should include "102417(g)(9)(B)" if it exists

Scenario: Citation does not exist (AC-2)
  Given the regulation text for Section 102417 is loaded
  When I query "find:102417(z)(99)(ZZ)"
  Then the response should include:
    | field   | value                                |
    | error   | citation_not_found                   |
    | partial | 102417 (the part that does exist)    |

Scenario: Context inheritance (AC-3)
  Given the regulation text for Section 102417 is loaded
  When I query "context:102417(g)(9)"
  Then parent_context should be human-readable narrative
  And parent_context should mention Section 102417 (Supervision)
  And parent_context should mention subsection (g) (Evening/overnight)

Scenario: Citation normalization (AC-4)
  When I normalize "Sec. 102417 (g) (9) (A)"
  Then the canonical form should be "102417(g)(9)(A)"

Scenario: Full hierarchy parsing (AC-5)
  Given the raw regulation text for Chapter 1
  When I query "full_hierarchy"
  Then the response should include a tree structure
  And every section should have a number and title
  And the tree should be JSON-serializable

Scenario: Malformed citation (AC-6)
  When I query "find:102417()"
  Then the response should include:
    | field | value                                    |
    | error | invalid_citation_format                  |
    | hint  | Empty subsection marker - expected letter|

Scenario: Cross-references (AC-7)
  Given the regulation text includes "as defined in Section 102416(a)(3)"
  When I query "find:102417(g)(1)"
  Then cross_references should include "102416(a)(3)"
  And cross_references should NOT be automatically resolved

Scenario: Amendments (AC-8)
  Given the regulation text includes "[Amended 2024]" after subsection (g)
  When I query "find:102417(g)"
  Then amended should be true
  And amendment should be "2024"

Scenario: Repealed sections (AC-9)
  Given section 102418 has been repealed
  When I query "find:102418(a)"
  Then error should be "section_repealed"

Error Handling

Error Type	Response
`citation_not_found`	Return partial match if exists
`section_not_in_context`	Indicate section not loaded
`invalid_citation_format`	Return parsing hint
`section_repealed`	Note repeal with effective date

Data Sources

Source	Location	Size
Title 22 Family Child Care	`internal/shared/regulations/Title-22-family-child-care-homes.md`	~200KB
Title 22 Child Care Centers	`internal/shared/regulations/Title-22-combined-child-care-centers.md`	~300KB
Chapter files	`internal/shared/regulations/Ch*.md`	~50KB each

Caching Strategy

L1: In-memory (current session)
  - Parsed trees for loaded sections
  - TTL: Session lifetime

L2: File-based (disk)
  - Pre-parsed JSON hierarchy files
  - Location: .cache/regulations/
  - TTL: Until regulation update

L3: Database (PostgreSQL)
  - Indexed citations for fast lookup
  - Table: regulation_hierarchy

Integration

With ETL Citation Normalization

flow:
  1. ETL extracts citation from HTML: "101229(a)(1)"
  2. ETL normalizes to canonical form
  3. Regulation parser receives normalized citation
  4. Returns hierarchy context for compliance report

With Compliance Report Generator

use_case:
  1. Report generator has citation list
  2. For each citation, call hierarchy parser
  3. Include "What this means" section using parent_context
  4. Group citations by section for readability

Performance Target

Single lookup: < 100ms with cache
Full hierarchy parse: < 2s for complete chapter

regulation-hierarchy-parser

Regulation Hierarchy Parser

Purpose

The Problem