# CLAUDE.md - Canadian Building Code MCP
## Project Information
- **Project Name**: Canadian Building Code MCP
- **Purpose**: MCP server enabling Claude to search/reference Canadian Building Codes
- **Strategy**: "Map & Territory" - Distribute coordinates only, text extracted from user's PDF
- **Status**: Phase 1-2 Complete (Docling + Map Generation)
---
## Core Concepts
### Legal Safety Strategy
```
Distributed: Coordinates (page, bbox), Section ID, structure type
NOT Distributed: Actual text, table data
→ 99% legally safe
```
### Current Pipeline (Docling-based)
```
[PDF] → [Docling] → [MD + JSON]
↓
[generate_map.py] Section extraction + TF-IDF keywords
↓
[maps/*.json] Coordinate map generation
↓
[MCP Server] Mode A (map only) / Mode B (BYOD text)
```
---
## File Structure
```
building_code_mcp/
├── docs/ # Documentation
├── scripts/ # Pipeline scripts
├── src/ # MCP server code
├── marker/ # Marker output
├── sources/ # PDF files (gitignore)
└── maps/ # structure_map.json
```
---
## Development Rules
### 0. Memory Limitation (Important!)
- **User Environment: 16GB RAM laptop**
- Docling conversion must be run **one at a time** sequentially
- Parallel execution strictly prohibited → System crash from memory shortage
- Be especially careful with large PDFs (>50MB)
### 1. Never commit PDFs to git
- sources/ folder is included in .gitignore
- Copyright issues
### 2. Table Quality Assessment (6 Criteria)
1. NO_PIPES - Flat text
2. COL_MISMATCH - Column count mismatch
3. EMPTY_CELLS - Empty cells 25%+
4. ROWSPAN_BROKEN - First column empty cells repeated
5. NO_DATA - Header only
6. DUPLICATE_HEADER - Multi-page split
### 3. Use meta.json for Page Lookup
- Full PDF scan ❌
- Manual mapping ❌
- meta.json → Table Index ✅
---
## Target Documents (16)
**Codes (13):**
- National (4): NBC, NFC, NPC, NECB (2025)
- Provincial (9): OBC×2, BCBC, ABC, OFC, QCC, QECB, QPC, QSC
**User's Guides (3):**
- IUGP9: Part 9 Guide (Housing & Small Buildings)
- UGP4: Part 4 Guide (Structural Commentaries)
- UGNECB: Energy Code Guide
---
## Commands
```bash
# 1. PDF → MD/JSON conversion (one at a time!)
python scripts/convert_with_docling.py sources/NBC2025p1.pdf
# 2. Generate map for Building Codes (Division A/B/C structure)
python scripts/generate_map_v2.py docling_output/nbc2025p1/
# 3. Generate map for User's Guides (Commentary structure)
python scripts/generate_map_guide.py docling_output/ugp4_2020p1/ --type ugp4
python scripts/generate_map_guide.py docling_output/ugnecb_2020p1/ --type ugnecb
# 4. Run MCP server
python src/mcp_server.py
```
---
## Conversion Progress (Complete)
### Codes (13)
| Code | Sections |
|------|----------|
| NBC | 2,783 |
| NFC | 1,044 |
| NPC | 413 |
| NECB | 475 |
| ABC | 2,832 |
| BCBC | 2,584 |
| OBC Vol1 | 3,327 |
| OBC Vol2 | 781 |
| OFC | 1,906 |
| QCC | 2,726 |
| QECB | 384 |
| QPC | 428 |
| QSC | 1,063 |
### User's Guides (3)
| Guide | Sections |
|-------|----------|
| IUGP9 (Part 9) | 1,096 |
| UGP4 (Part 4) | 495 |
| UGNECB | 165 |
**Total: 22,502 sections indexed**
---
## Reference Documents
- `docs/PDF_DOWNLOAD_LINKS.md` - PDF download links
- `docs/archive/` - Previous documentation
