Verified against Perplexity Pro · 2026-07-31
Build a sourced regulatory-requirement checklist for a specific jurisdiction and activity
A research aid — not legal advice — that maps the specific, currently-in-force regulatory requirements applying to a defined business activity in a named jurisdiction, with each requirement tied to its source statute or regulator and a flag on anything pending or under review.
The prompt
Ready to copy — highlighted parts are example details you can swap.
Build a checklist of the regulatory requirements that currently apply to this specific activity in this specific jurisdiction. This is a research aid to help me know what to ask our actual legal counsel about — it is not legal advice, and I will treat it that way regardless of how confidently anything below is stated. ACTIVITY Operating a subscription-based telehealth platform connecting patients with licensed therapists JURISDICTION California, United States BUSINESS CONTEXT A 12-person startup, not yet operating in any other state, handling patient health information FOR EACH REQUIREMENT FOUND - Name the specific requirement in plain language. - Cite the specific statute, regulation, or regulator guidance it comes from — not a secondary summary of the law, but the actual name of the regulation or the regulator publishing the requirement. - State whether it's currently in force, scheduled to take effect on a future date, or currently proposed/under review but not yet law — these are three different statuses and should never be presented identically. - Note the last time this specific requirement was confirmed current, since regulations get amended and a checklist item with no freshness indicator is not trustworthy on its own. SCOPE Focus on data privacy and licensing requirements specifically; general employment law and standard business tax registration can be a brief mention only GAPS AND UNCERTAINTY If a requirement is genuinely ambiguous — reasonable people or reasonable sources interpret it differently, or it's a gray area that hasn't been tested — say so explicitly rather than picking one interpretation and presenting it as settled. If you cannot find clear requirements for part of the activity described, say which part is uncovered rather than silently omitting it. OUTPUT FORMAT A checklist grouped by regulatory area (for example: licensing, data handling, employment, tax), each item with its source, status, and freshness note as described above. End with an explicit, direct restatement that this is a starting point for a conversation with qualified legal counsel in California, United States, not a substitute for that conversation.
Customize
Optional — swap in your own details for the highlighted parts above.
Why this works
Regulatory summaries written for a general audience routinely blur the line between what's currently in force, what's scheduled to take effect later, and what's merely proposed — a news article covering a pending bill and an official regulator's page describing current law can look identically confident, and a synthesis that doesn't force a status label onto every item will tend to flatten that distinction into one uniform-sounding checklist, which is exactly backwards for something meant to inform real compliance decisions. Requiring the actual statute or regulator name as the citation, rather than a secondary summary of the law, matters because plain-language explainer articles about regulation are frequently written before an amendment or a court ruling changes the underlying requirement, and a citation trail that stops at the explainer rather than the regulation itself has no way to catch that the explainer has since gone stale. The freshness note on every item exists for the same reason a financial filing needs a reporting period attached — regulatory requirements are not static facts, and a checklist item with no indication of when it was last confirmed current is functionally an unverified claim wearing the formatting of a verified one. And the explicit gaps-and-uncertainty instruction, paired with the closing restatement that this supports rather than replaces legal counsel, keeps the entire exercise honestly scoped as what it actually is: a way to walk into a conversation with a lawyer already knowing what questions to ask, not a way to skip that conversation, which matters because regulatory interpretation genuinely requires judgment a research synthesis isn't positioned to exercise.
Verified against
Perplexity Pro Sonar Pro · 2026-07-31
Changelog
- 2026-07-31 — Initial publish, verified against Perplexity Pro Sonar Pro search.
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