A guide that asks one question at a time and ends on a clear answer, for staff or customers.
A permit desk hears the same question all week, and the answer depends on three or four facts the caller hasn't mentioned yet. A decision tree asks for those facts one at a time and ends on an answer. Thistle Bend and its permit rules are invented, so don't plan a real shed by them. Yours go in through the prompt.
Who it's for
An operations or support lead whose team answers one rule-bound question again and again: can this order be returned, which plan covers this, who approves this expense. Send it to staff as their reference, or put the link where customers ask.
It works when the rules are settled and each question has a few fixed answers. It doesn't suit judgment calls, and it shouldn't stand in for legal or medical advice. The page keeps nothing, so it can't tell you which answers people chose or where they gave up.
What a good one contains
- A first question about the visitor's situation. "What are you planning?" has four everyday answers. Nobody arrives knowing a zoning certificate from a building permit.
- Questions with the threshold inside them. "Will the shed be bigger than 120 square feet?" can be settled with a tape measure.
- Short paths. The longest route is four questions. A new water heater takes two.
- Endings that say what to do. Each names the permit, the fee, the wait and what to bring. "You don't need a permit" is an ending too, with the conditions that keep it true.
- A way back. The answers so far sit above the question as buttons that reopen it, with "Back one question" and "Start over" below.
- The whole tree in plain text. An outline lists every question and ending. Colleagues can check a rule without clicking, and it's the part worth printing.
- A date, a source and a fallback. "Rules as of January 1, 2027, from chapter 14 of the town code" says how far to trust it. Odd cases are sent to the permit desk.
Walk every branch before it goes out
A tree fails at the edges of its questions. A deck of exactly 200 square feet has to land on one side, so the sample writes the boundary into the buttons: "Yes, bigger" and "No, 200 or smaller".
Then click every path from start to finish. Sixteen endings take about ten minutes. Hand three common cases to someone who doesn't know the rules and watch where they hesitate. That question needs rewording.
When a rule changes, change the page and its date in the conversation where you made it. The saved link keeps working, which matters once it's on a counter sign.
How to send it
As an open link. A guide like this gets linked from a website, an email signature or a sign on the counter. The rules in it are public already, so nothing in it needs locking.
Every page you publish gets one link that opens in any browser. You choose who can open it: anyone with the link, anyone with the password, or only the people and company domains you name, who sign in with Google or Microsoft. Change the page later and the link stays the same.
