A good fit needs good reasons.

1. Requirements are not preferences.

The interview captures your non-negotiables as unresolved verification tasks. This pilot does not have address-level evidence to pass or fail them. A highly supported beach or museum preference cannot clear a school, budget, healthcare, safety, or commute requirement.

All shortlist cards are exploratory. None is presented as a fully eligible recommendation.

2. Balance domains, not the number of metrics.

Your selected priorities allocate weight across domains. Within a domain, related signals share its budget. Selecting both recreational and everyday biking does not give biking twice the influence of everything else.

For each candidate, a supported point contribution equals its normalized feature weight multiplied by its research association. Editorial strengths use a declared 0–4 scale. That rubric is an exploratory hypothesis, not a learned probability.

3. Unknown stays unknown.

Missing evidence is not a factual zero. We show a lower support bound, an upper bound assuming every unknown were maximally favorable, and the fraction of preference weight with evidence. Better-documented places may appear higher—a known research bias.

Population rules describe municipality scale only. School counts, GDP, demographics, and employer headcounts are never used as general quality scores.

4. Up to three, not three at any cost.

Only options with some positive support can appear. We omit overlapping parent-county/town pairs from the shortlist. Exact ties are resolved alphabetically; overlapping ranges indicate an unstable order. The full table remains visible for inspection.

Choosing only unsupported priorities produces no invented winners.

What is scored, and how

This list is rendered from the engine’s scored-feature registry. Nothing outside it can add points.

• Coastal parks and beach exploration

  Editorial association rows in the research corpus; each row cites its own sources

  Geography: editorial association · period research edition 2026-09-10 · rule: Declared ordinal strength 0–4 divided by 4. A hypothesis about exploration, not beach access from a home.

• Nature and trail exploration

  Editorial association rows in the research corpus; each row cites its own sources

  Geography: editorial association · period research edition 2026-09-10 · rule: Declared ordinal strength 0–4 divided by 4. Named parks and trails; not a measure of daily access.

• Arts and urban culture

  Editorial association rows in the research corpus; each row cites its own sources

  Geography: editorial association · period research edition 2026-09-10 · rule: Declared ordinal strength 0–4 divided by 4. Named institutions; no event frequency or participation data.

• History and heritage exploration

  Editorial association rows in the research corpus; each row cites its own sources

  Geography: editorial association · period research edition 2026-09-10 · rule: Declared ordinal strength 0–4 divided by 4. Named heritage sites and interpretation.

• County and rural settings

  Editorial association rows in the research corpus; each row cites its own sources

  Geography: editorial association · period research edition 2026-09-10 · rule: Declared ordinal strength 0–4 divided by 4. A search hypothesis; it does not establish quiet, acreage or zoning.

• Lower historical housing medians

  Editorial association rows in the research corpus; each row cites its own sources

  Geography: editorial association · period research edition 2026-09-10 · rule: Declared ordinal strength 0–4 divided by 4. Ordinal seeded from ACS 2020-2024 median owner values; not current affordability.

• Named hospital presence

  Editorial association rows in the research corpus; each row cites its own sources

  Geography: editorial association · period research edition 2026-09-10 · rule: Declared ordinal strength 0–4 divided by 4. Existence only; no care quality, network or travel-time ranking.

• Reported employer context

  Editorial association rows in the research corpus; each row cites its own sources

  Geography: editorial association · period research edition 2026-09-10 · rule: Declared ordinal strength 0–4 divided by 4. Presence of a sourced employer list; not a jobs or wage score.

• Smaller municipality scale

  Census population estimates: Vintage 2025 QuickFacts for cities and counties, 2024 estimates for ten towns

  Geography: locality · period 2024–2025 · rule: (60,000 − population) / 40,000, clamped: full support at 20,000 or fewer, none at 60,000 or more. Municipality scale only, not neighborhood character.

• Larger-city scale

  Census population estimates: Vintage 2025 QuickFacts for cities and counties, 2024 estimates for ten towns

  Geography: locality · period 2024–2025 · rule: 1 when population is 50,000 or more, otherwise 0. Municipality scale only, not neighborhood character.

• Named recreational cycling anchor

  Recreational cycling anchor records in the research corpus, each citing the managing agency

  Geography: named anchor · period reviewed 2026-09-06 · rule: Presence only: 1 when a documented biking anchor names the place. Network quality, permitted use and access from a home remain unverified.

• Everyday cycling trail mileage

  HRTPO Regional Active Transportation Network and Multi-Use Trails Inventory · HRTPO Regional Active Transportation Network & Multi-Use Trails Inventory

  Geography: locality · period 2024 · rule: Documented multi-use trail miles / 30, clamped to 0–1. Trail mileage is partial evidence; it does not prove a usable everyday route.

• Reported violent crime rate

  Virginia State Police 2024 Crime in Virginia (VIBRS) · Virginia State Police 2024 Crime in Virginia (VIBRS)

  Geography: locality · period 2024 · rule: Violent offenses per 100,000 residents: (800 − rate) / 600, clamped to 0–1. County-scoped and unverified hand-entered town figures are treated as unknown, never as points. Not a claim of neighborhood safety.

• School division SOL pass rate

  Virginia Department of Education (VDOE) 2023-2024 School Quality Profiles · Virginia Department of Education 2023-2024 School Quality Profiles

  Geography: school division · period 2023-2024 · rule: Composite SOL pass rate: (rate − 55) / 35, clamped to 0–1. Division-wide; it does not replace address-level school assignment.

• Independent food scene

  Overture Maps Foundation Places (2026-08-19.0) cross-checked with OpenStreetMap; boundaries from Census TIGERweb · Overture Maps Foundation Places, release 2026-08-19.0 (Hampton Roads extract)OpenStreetMap restaurants, cafes and coffee roasters via Overpass (Hampton Roads extract)

  Geography: locality · period 2026-08 · rule: 0.6 × (distinct cuisine groups / 20) + 0.25 × (independent restaurants per 10,000 residents / 20) + 0.15 × (independent roasters / 2), each term clamped to 0–1. Establishment counts only: chains are excluded by brand or name pattern, roasters must self-describe as a roastery on their own site. No ratings, reviews or quality data are used.

• Nominal real estate tax rate

  Virginia Department of Taxation 2024 Local Tax Rates Survey · Virginia Department of Taxation 2024 Local Tax Rates Survey

  Geography: locality · period 2024 · rule: Rate per $100 assessed value: (1.40 − rate) / 0.80, clamped to 0–1. Cities and counties only, read from Tables 1 and 2 of the TY 2024 survey. Towns display county plus town levy for context and are not ranked. Excludes assessments, district levies and personal property tax.

Live housing, address-level school assignment, actual provider access, food quality and growth are not scored. The food scene signal counts establishments and cuisine variety only. Their interview answers become verification checks, not points.

5. Evidence has a date and a geography.

The public app reads a versioned research snapshot. A 2024 GDP estimate retrieved in 2026 is still a 2024 estimate. Combined city/county economic areas remain combined. Towns retain their containing-county relationships.

Your answers, your control.

The interview and local scoring run in your browser after the server renders the page. Answers stay in memory by default. Device storage is opt-in and can be cleared. Refreshing without saving starts a new interview. No answers are placed in URLs, analytics, or public share links.

A JSON export contains your answers; treat it as private. Signed-in saving, when configured, explicitly sends your brief to the server and stores it under your account. You can list, restore, and delete only your own saved briefs. Public examples use separate sample answers.

No diagnoses, children’s names, protected demographic preferences, or exact street addresses are required. Avoid putting identifying information into the optional school-program field.

There is no advertising tracker or third-party map embedded in this app. Opening an external evidence link takes you to that publisher, whose policies apply. Server operational logs omit answer bodies, cookies, and query strings.