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In plain terms: L4 answers “which rules apply to this design, what supports that, what is missing, and what conflicts?” It is the layer that automates the regulatory gap analysis engineers do by hand today.

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What it does

L4 applies ABS, USCG, IACS, IMO, owner, and yard rules with citations and gap analysis. For a given design it answers:
  • Which rules apply?
  • What evidence supports that applicability claim?
  • What is missing?
  • What conflicts exist?

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The problem it replaces

Today, when a U.S. yard adapts a foreign design, engineers manually alter blueprints to comply with USCG and ABS rules, which are materially stricter than international class rules. Small differences cascade. For example, international rules may allow a 700-millimeter passageway while the USCG mandates 900. The added width pushes bulkheads outward and clashes with pre-planned electrical and piping systems. Because procurement runs in parallel, these problems often surface after steel is already bought. L4 surfaces those conflicts as the design is built, not after procurement has committed. CAD platforms identify geometric clashes once they appear; L4 extends this by predicting cascade effects before they appear, and by connecting material substitutions to their effect on stability before a purchase order is signed.

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Handling rule changes

When a new rule version arrives, L4 emits a rule supersession event that identifies the prior version being superseded. That event triggers the re-evaluation queue described in When the Rules Change. This is where begins.

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What L4 outputs

  • applicability_result
  • compliance_gap
  • evidence_match
  • rule_supersession_event

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Quality targets

L4 holds itself to measurable bars before any production use:
  • Rule applicability precision better than 90% (false positives create review burden).
  • Rule applicability recall better than 85% (missed rules can be dangerous).
  • Missing-evidence detection recall better than 90%.