Every answer carries its citation.
Covenant reads an association's recorded declaration, bylaws, and rules, then answers questions about them in the words of the documents themselves — with the article and section attached.
Licensed to community management companies. One agreement covers every association in the portfolio.
Can I put a six-foot privacy fence along my rear property line?
No — rear-yard fences are capped at four feet, and the lot abuts common area, which adds an eighteen-inch setback. A variance has been granted once before on a lot with a distinguishing condition.
No fence erected in a rear or side yard shall exceed four (4) feet in height.
Improvements adjoining common area shall be set back not less than eighteen (18) inches from the boundary.
The documents already hold the answer. Finding it is the job.
A community manager fields the same questions every week — fence heights, satellite dishes, lease terms, paint colors, parking. The answers sit in a recorded declaration nobody wants to open, a set of bylaws that has been amended twice, and rules the board adopted three Novembers ago.
So the manager answers from memory, or spends twenty minutes reading, or asks counsel. Do that across a portfolio and it is not twenty minutes. It is the week.
From a resident's request to recorded precedent
One path, in order. Each stage leaves a record the next one can use.
The request arrives
An owner submits a change through the portal and the response clock starts. Missing dimensions and materials are the commonest reason a review stalls, so the form asks for them up front.
Covenant screens it against the documents
The request is read against the association's own governing documents and its past decisions. The result is a findings ledger: rule by rule, each with the covenant text quoted and where it came from. It reports; it does not decide.
The board sees the reasoning, not a verdict
Volunteers open a packet showing which provisions apply, which conflict, and which prior decisions are close enough to matter. They vote. A written reason is required on every decision.
The decision becomes precedent
The vote is recorded with the rules that were in force when it was made. When a similar request arrives in two years — under a board with none of the same members — that reasoning is still there and still citable.
Built for the firm, not for one board
A self-managed board feels this pain monthly. A management company feels it every day, across every community it holds — and it is the firm, not the board, that carries the liability when an architectural review goes sideways.
So Covenant is built around the firm. Staff work a portfolio, not a single account. Documents, decisions, and residents stay strictly separated by association — that boundary is enforced in the database, not in the interface — while the people who need to move between them can.
What a license includes
Priced per association under management, billed to the firm.
Document intake and indexing
Declarations, bylaws, amendments, rules, and architectural guidelines are read and split into citable sections. Superseded versions stay readable so old decisions still make sense.
Answers with sources attached
Managers, board members, and owners ask in plain language and get the provision back. When the documents do not address something, the answer says so rather than guessing.
Architectural request screening
Preliminary findings on every submission, with the covenant text quoted and prior decisions surfaced. Advisory only — the board's written determination governs.
A decision record that survives turnover
Every vote stored with its reasoning and the rules in force at the time, searchable years later.
Portfolio and staff administration
Assign community managers to the associations they actually work, with document-only or read-only access where that fits.
What Covenant is not. It is not legal advice, and a screening is not a decision. Nothing here replaces your counsel or your board's judgment.
The product's job is to put the governing documents in front of the people who have to apply them, with the citation attached, fast enough to be useful.
Bring your documents. We'll show you your own covenants.
Send one association's declaration and rules. We'll index them and walk your team through the questions your managers actually get asked.