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WageCompass
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Seed Stage · 2026

Your AI agent for prevailing wage compliance.

AI agents that classify workers, catch violations, and assemble audit packets — autonomously. Your team certifies with confidence instead of crossing their fingers. Every decision explainable, every record defensible.

Agentic AI Davis-Bacon · Certified Payroll Construction Tech
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WageCompass
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The Problem

Every payroll period is a manual minefield.

01

Wrong wage basis — discovered too late

Teams lock the wrong wage determination or miss a mid-project revision. No one finds out until a portal rejects the filing — weeks after the work is done.

02

Classification is a weekly guessing game

Job titles in payroll never match Davis-Bacon labor classifications. Someone guesses every single period — and every wrong guess is silent underpayment liability.

03

Fringe & overtime math done by hand

Fringe credits and overtime rules are complex and jurisdiction-specific. Shortfalls hide in plain sight because no one runs the full calculation before signing.

04

Corrections erase the evidence

When something goes wrong, teams overwrite history in spreadsheets. Auditors arrive and find a latest version with no trail — and no defense.

The brutal irony: You can run payroll perfectly and still lose a debarment hearing — because the compliance story wasn't preserved.

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WageCompass
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Current Reality

The status quo is spreadsheets and prayer.

TODAY — MANUAL & FRAGILE
Payroll export → spreadsheet → PDF → portal
Worker classifications guessed from job titles
Fringe math re-done by hand every period
Corrections overwrite originals with no trace
Each portal has different rules — figured out manually
Audit packets assembled from email threads and shared drives
WAGECOMPASS — AGENTIC & DEFENSIBLE
AI ingests payroll and normalizes records automatically
Agent classifies workers against the locked wage basis
Engine runs fringe, overtime, and underpayment math instantly
Every correction is additive — history is always intact
Portal adapters handle destination-specific rules
Audit packets assembled by AI in minutes, not days

This is not a document-generation problem. It's an agentic AI opportunity — the entire compliance loop, automated end to end.

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WageCompass
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The Solution

AI agents run the compliance loop. Humans certify. Nothing else.

WageCompass deploys specialized AI agents across every stage of the certified payroll workflow — from intake through audit — while enforcing a hard rule: only a human can sign.

Not a form generator. Not a portal middleman. A full-stack compliance agent that does the work and makes the human decision defensible.

1

Setup Agent

Locks wage determinations, builds the contractor tree, and configures jurisdiction rules before any payroll is touched.

2

Classification Agent

Reads every worker record, matches actual work to Davis-Bacon classifications, flags ambiguity, and queues conformance cases for human review.

3

Compliance Engine

Runs deterministic prevailing wage, fringe, and overtime math — no guesswork, no shortcuts, every period.

4

Certification Gate

Blocks certification until every finding is resolved. Human signs. AI never does.

5

Audit Agent

Assembles a complete, traceable evidence packet in minutes — every decision, calculation, and correction, linked and ready.

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WageCompass
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Design Principles

Agents do the work. Humans own the decision.

01

Compliance before submission

AI catches violations before legal attestation, not after a portal rejection.

02

History is immutable

Agents write corrections forward; originals are never touched.

03

Configuration is locked

Unsupported rule combinations are blocked by the engine, not left to the user.

04

AI is the worker, not the decider

Agents classify, calculate, draft, and assemble; they may never certify or submit.

05

Work performed governs

The classification agent evaluates actual work, not job title or payroll label.

06

Every AI action is explainable

Every suggestion carries confidence, rationale, and a traceable link to governing data.

07

Overrides are traceable

When a human overrides the agent, the system records who, when, and why.

08

No silent failures

Every blocked state surfaces what's wrong, who resolves it, and what the agent needs.

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WageCompass
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Who We Serve

Four roles. One AI-powered compliance operating layer.

The ideal early customer is a contractor with recurring certified payroll obligations who already runs payroll elsewhere and loses hours every period to manual compliance coordination.

They don't want another form. They want an agent that does the compliance work for them — and makes it defensible when it matters.

Highest-value early targets
Prior audit experience Portal rejection history Active subcontractor tiers Multi-project prime contractor
🏗
Prime Contractor Admin
Runs weekly payroll-to-CPR workflow; the AI does the compliance math so they review, not rebuild
📋
Subcontractor Submitter
Guided intake — the agent tells them exactly what's missing and why, in plain language
Certifying Official
Agent assembles the case; they inspect and sign — never flying blind
📊
Compliance Manager
AI surfaces portfolio risk — blocked periods, aging work, rejection patterns — before they become fires
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WageCompass
07 / 10
Market Opportunity

A trillion-dollar market running on spreadsheets.

$1.2T+
Annual U.S. federal construction spend subject to Davis-Bacon compliance
28
States with active prevailing wage laws layered on top of federal requirements
5→∞
States with mandatory eCPR portals as of 2026 — and accelerating fast
🔥
IIJA & IRA created a compliance surge — thousands of contractors forced in overnight

The IIJA and IRA forced thousands of contractors into certified payroll compliance who had never touched it before — with debarment risk if they get it wrong. Michigan restored its prevailing wage law in 2024. New York expanded in 2025. The regulatory tide is rising. The tooling hasn't moved.

LCPtracker eMars B2Gnow eBacon → All portal tools. None are compliance agents.
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WageCompass
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Why Now

The window to own this is open right now.

Regulatory Surge

Mandates with no off-ramp

IIJA & IRA put prevailing wage on contractors who never had it before. Michigan restored its law in 2024. New York expanded in 2025. Five states now mandate eCPR portals — more coming. Every new mandate is a new customer with acute pain and no good tool.

Tooling Gap

A category that doesn't exist yet

Every competitor is a portal tool or a form generator. None run the compliance loop. None catch violations pre-certification. None preserve correction lineage. The pre-certification compliance agent is an open category.

AI Inflection

Agentic AI makes this possible now

Classification, fringe calculation, conformance resolution, and audit assembly are labor-intensive but deeply pattern-rich. Two years ago this required a compliance consultant. Today, AI agents do it in seconds — with explainability that holds up in an audit room.

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WageCompass
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Where We Are

Working software. Real compliance workflows.

Already shipped
Deterministic compliance calculation engine (wage, fringe, overtime)
CSV payroll import, normalization, and evidence preservation
SAM.gov wage determination data pipeline — federal all 50 states
Three-state readiness gate enforced hard in the application layer
AI classification agent — suggests, explains, queues for review
Immutable correction lineage model
In progress
Subcontractor onboarding and guided intake agent
Conformance case resolution workflow (AI-drafted rationale)
LCPtracker and eCPR portal submission adapters
Audit packet assembly agent
Near-term moves
First paying customer — contractor with prior audit or rejection history
Domain advisor embedded in the build process
State data coverage: Washington and Oregon first (higher-of-rate jurisdictions)
LCPtracker XLS/XML file-based integration path
Use of funds
Agent infrastructure — classification, audit assembly, conformance resolution
Data pipeline — 28-state prevailing wage coverage
Customer acquisition — contractors with active compliance pain
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WageCompass
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The Vision
The AI agent layer for every labor compliance obligation in American construction.

We start with Davis-Bacon and certified payroll — the most acute, highest-frequency compliance pain in the industry. From there: broader jurisdiction coverage, deeper subcontractor coordination, stronger portal integrations, and increasingly autonomous agent workflows as trust compounds.

The long game: WageCompass is the compliance brain that every construction company plugs their payroll into — and never has to think about certified payroll again.

Let's talk → wagecompass.com