What-if engine for the policy team.
Draft a regulatory change in plain English. Cascade traces ripple effects across stakeholders, timelines and knock-on markets, with every claim cited back to a source document.
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Describe the task
Cascade turns a draft regulatory change into a mapped set of ripple effects, and every claim it surfaces is cited back to a source document. Draft the proposal in plain English and Cascade traces where it lands: which stakeholders feel it first, how the timeline unfolds, and which knock-on markets shift once the direct effects settle. For a policy team, it is a what-if engine that never asserts anything it can’t point to.
Because each node carries a citation, the output survives scrutiny. Tell Cascade what the change actually mandates, which stakeholders are in scope, and which source documents to ground against, and the ripple map comes back defensible, not speculative.
Trace the ripple effects of this draft rule requiring 30-day advance notice on all subcontractor changes for firms in our services sector. Map out across: - Directly affected stakeholders (prime contractors, subcontractors, procurement teams) - Second-order stakeholders (clients, auditors, insurers) and how the burden shifts to them - Timeline (comment period, effective date, first enforcement cycle) - Knock-on markets (compliance tooling, staffing agencies, legal advisory) Cite every claim back to the draft text or a supporting document, and flag any ripple where the source is thin or the effect is contested.
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Give Cascade context
Give Cascade the draft proposal itself plus the documents it should reason from, existing regulations it amends, prior comment letters, any impact analyses already on file. Cascade reads them together so every ripple node it produces links to a specific passage rather than to general knowledge.
The quality of the citations tracks the quality of the source set. A draft with no supporting corpus still yields a ripple map, but the citations lean on the draft text alone. Add the regulations it touches and the stakeholder submissions, and the map gets both wider and better grounded.
Required contextThe draft proposal in plain English or as a document, what it mandates and on whomA stakeholder scope, which parties are in-scope for the ripple traceOptional contextA source corpus, existing regulations, comment letters, prior impact analyses to cite againstA timeline anchor, comment-period and effective dates so the ripple map is calendaredA confidence threshold, tell Cascade to flag any node whose supporting citation is thindraft-proposal.docxexisting-regulation.pdfstakeholder-submissions.zip - 3
What Cascade creates
Cascade streams the ripple map as it builds, expanding from directly affected stakeholders outward to knock-on markets. The output is a navigable set of ripple nodes, 120-plus on a change of this scope, each one carrying a citation back to the draft text or a supporting document, with thinly sourced or contested effects flagged for review.
From Cascade: Traced 120+ ripple nodes for the 30-day subcontractor-notice rule, every claim cited to source.
124Ripple nodes surfaced100%Nodes with a citation9Thin-source nodes flaggedDirectly affected stakeholders41 nodesStakeholder Ripple effect Source Confidence Prime contractors Must rebuild change-order workflows to hit the 30-day window draft-proposal.docx §4(b) High Subcontractors Lose ability to swap in on short notice; smaller firms squeezed out of bids Grayson & Ellery comment letter, p.3 Medium Procurement teams Notice-tracking becomes a standing compliance function, not an ad-hoc task existing-regulation.pdf §12.4 High Knock-on markets18 nodesMarket Ripple effect Source Confidence Compliance tooling Demand rises for notice-tracking software with audit trails Meridian Advisory impact note, p.7 Medium Staffing agencies Shift toward pre-cleared bench talent to beat the notice window Inferred: no direct source Low (flagged) "9 of the 124 nodes rest on thin sourcing, mostly the knock-on market effects, where I’m inferring past the documents you gave me. Want me to mark those clearly in the export, or pull in the sector impact analyses so I can cite them properly?"
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Follow-up prompts
Firm up the thinly sourced nodes
Cascade flags any ripple it can’t cite cleanly. Hand it a larger corpus, sector impact analyses, additional comment letters, and it re-grounds the flagged nodes against real documents.
Re-run the 9 thin-source nodes against the sector impact analyses in impact-studies.zip. Replace the inferred claims with cited ones where the documents support them, and drop any that still can’t be grounded.
Calendar the ripple map to the timeline
With the comment-period and effective dates in hand, Cascade lays the ripple nodes onto a timeline so the policy team sees which effects land during comment, at enforcement, and after.
Map the ripple nodes onto the rule’s timeline: comment period, effective date, first enforcement cycle. Show which stakeholder effects bite at each stage.
Draft the stakeholder impact section
Turn the cited ripple map into the stakeholder-impact narrative for the comment submission, every paragraph already footnoted to its source node.
Draft a stakeholder-impact section for our comment letter from the directly affected nodes. Keep every claim tied to its citation, and lead with the subcontractor squeeze on smaller firms.
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Tips and troubleshooting
Feed it the corpus, not just the draft
Cascade can map ripples from the draft text alone, but the citations get thin fast. The existing regulation it amends plus a handful of comment letters is what turns inferred effects into sourced ones, the difference between a brainstorm and a defensible submission.
Read the confidence flags before you cite
Nodes marked Low or “inferred” are Cascade telling you it reasoned past the documents. Those are exactly the claims to verify by hand before they land in anything that goes on the record.
Scope the stakeholders up front
A 124-node map is thorough but wide. Naming which parties are in-scope, primes and subs, or the full chain out to insurers, keeps the ripple trace focused on the stakeholders your submission actually needs to speak to.
Ready to try it yourself?
Draft the change in plain English, and get back a stakeholder ripple map where every claim points to its source.
Run Cascade