Team: 4 members | Duration: 3 hours
Event: City of Seattle x Pact-athon (2025)
Deliverable: Concept pitch, process flow, and technical feasibility brief
Tools: Bolt, PowerPoint, Jupiter Notebook
During a rapid 3-hour civic hackathon, our team partnered with Seattle city planners to tackle one of the city’s biggest bottlenecks — the slow and manual permit approval process.
Through stakeholder interviews and real-time brainstorming, we proposed Permit AutoGrader, an AI-powered system that pre-vets permit applications for completeness, compliance, and potential errors before human review.
This solution reimagined government workflows by combining automation, transparency, and accountability, drastically reducing turnaround times for both residents and staff.
Seattle’s current permitting process involves thousands of documents that require manual validation before an application can even reach a reviewer.
City planners described the system as “chained by paperwork” — delays compound due to incomplete or misfiled forms, inconsistent standards, and limited staff resources.
The hackathon prompt asked:
How might we use bold, responsible AI to improve efficiency and trust in the permitting process?
We designed Permit AutoGrader, a web-based platform that integrates with the city’s existing permitting system to: