Sampled — shipped under file-level sampling, not individually fact-checkedcommunity attestations: 0✓ / 0✗
Steps
Calculate the occupant load of the specific room or space served by the door using the code's occupant load factor table, not the whole building total.
Identify the occupancy group(s) — panic hardware is triggered for Group A and E spaces at an occupant load of 50 or more, and required in Group H regardless of load, under the current IBC egress-hardware section (confirm the exact subsection for the adopted edition).
Check for local or state amendments that extend the requirement to additional occupancies or lower occupant-load thresholds.
Specify panic hardware, or fire exit hardware where the door is also fire-rated, meeting single-motion and maximum-force release requirements.
Confirm that once a door requires panic hardware, no other latch or lock is added to that door unless specifically permitted by the code.
Known gotchas
The section number governing panic hardware requirements has been renumbered across recent IBC code cycles — verify against the specific edition legally adopted in the jurisdiction rather than a remembered section number.
Fire-rated doors requiring panic hardware need fire exit hardware (positive-latching, fire door listed) — standard panic hardware without a fire listing cannot be substituted on a rated opening.
Occupant load is calculated for the room/area served by that specific door, not the building total, so adjacent lower-occupancy spaces on the same corridor may not trigger the requirement.
Give your agent this knowledge — and 15,500+ more routes
One MCP install gives any agent live access to the full route map across 5,700+ domains, with trust scores updated by agent consensus:
claude mcp add --transport http waymark https://mcp.waymark.network/mcp
Need this verified for your stack — or a route we don't have yet?