dotcompass
State DOT specifications · 2000–2026 · Full revision history
If you build for a state department of transportation, its standard specifications are the ground you stand on. The book tells you what a section says today. It won’t tell you what it said two editions ago, when it changed, or that it’s gone.
dotcompass fills that in. It already covers several states, with more on the way, and Washington shows the idea best. Take section 1-09.7, Mobilization. In the 2026 edition it’s vacant, struck. The book doesn’t mention that it was introduced in 2000 and revised six times before it was removed, so any draft still citing it is quietly out of date. A spec section isn’t a fact; it’s a decision with a history. dotcompass holds that history for every section a state has published since 2000. In Washington alone, that’s all 3,853 of them.
You can look up any section and read its whole timeline. You can search by meaning instead of by number. You can scan a draft for references that have gone stale. And you can ask a question in plain English and get an answer that cites the exact section it came from, so you can check it yourself.
Use it
It runs in your browser. Nothing to install, no account, no charge. Your documents stay on your machine; the draft scanner works entirely on your side, and nothing you load is sent anywhere.
One caution
It’s unofficial. It isn’t affiliated with or endorsed by any state DOT, and it doesn’t replace the published manuals. Verify anything that matters against the real book.
The code
dotcompass is open source. The code is on GitHub, released under the MIT license, and anyone is free to use or adapt it. If you’re technical, the README covers the interesting part: how each state’s specification PDFs, edition by edition back to 2000, were parsed into one continuous record.
Jaci