Methodology
How a Sagolik brief is built
Facts are sourced. Numbers are computed in code from versioned rules. The language model interprets verified structured data — it is never allowed to produce a property fact, a tax rate or a formula.
Evidence hierarchy
Where sources disagree, the higher tier prevails and the conflict is displayed rather than hidden.
- Government and official records.
- Statutes, regulations and official tax guidance.
- Property records and filed documents.
- Listing information.
- Reputable secondary sources.
- General commentary.
Stage A — URL and listing validation
Only HTTPS URLs are accepted. Localhost, private and link-local address ranges are blocked, redirects are re-validated at every hop, requests are time-limited and size-limited, and retrieved markup is sanitised before parsing. Sagolik reads public metadata and structured listing data. It does not bypass authentication walls, CAPTCHAs or anti-bot protections.
Stage B — Property normalisation
Listing information is normalised into a single property record. Interior area, exterior area and advertised combined area are stored in separate fields. Terraces, balconies, gardens and roof area are never silently folded into interior square footage.
Stage C — Jurisdiction detection
Federal, state, county, city and municipal layers are resolved, along with the applicable property-tax and transfer-tax authorities and your own country of tax residence. The relationship between the two is only described in treaty terms where a verified source exists.
Stage D — Enrichment
A provider-adapter layer reaches authorised listing providers, county assessor and recorder records, the NYC Department of Finance and Department of Buildings, FEMA flood data, HUD, EPA, US Census geography, state tax departments and IRS materials. When an adapter is not configured or a source is unreachable, the field is marked unavailable. A value is never manufactured to complete the interface.
Stage E — Deterministic calculation
Every figure is produced by code from a versioned rule with an effective date, a source URL and a review status. Each calculation in a report exposes its formula, its inputs, its assumptions, the rule version, the source and a confidence level.
Stage F — AI synthesis
The model receives only verified structured data and returns structured JSON. Every factual finding must reference a stored source. Where evidence is insufficient the report states Not verified.