Your top soil (and perhaps a lot more than that) was already moved and reworked and replaced anyway, so presumably if there are weed seeds in it, they are already mixed randomly. Don't worry about that. As far as the lawn, it's customary to get a lawn roller (rolling drum you can fill with water for weight) and use that to gently compact the soil after grading and amending. This will tell you where the low spots are and you can fill in any that you find. A pitchfork may be fine depending on the type of soil, but if it digs up in clumps and clods, you won't be mixing in your compost evenly. This can actually cause more uneven settling than tilling which at least makes it more homogenous. As for amending large areas vs. individual holes, this is a matter of debate and evolving science. They recommend nowadays that you avoid amending tree and shrub planting holes especially in heavy clay, so the roots don't get stuck in there. I have clay soil and I make more of a wide dish for a hole so the roots can spread out. Back to your original question of the permit and inspection: You could either put down all your soil and get the inspection done and passed and THEN amend any large areas or beds, OR do it first and as long as it drains OK the inspector is probably going to be fine with it. If they think anything is too high, it's going to re-compact. But I'm betting if you don't change the drainage pattern too much it's going to be fine. Excess water will not pool where you have amended soil, any more than it would in unamended soil. Pooling has more to do with elevations and drainage than with soil type. Having said that, if you rototill in a low area, it's going to get soft and muddy when it's wet, at least for awhile until it settles in and recompacts back to a firm surface. Don't walk on spots like that when they're soaking wet.

Here is a photo of a mason jar soil test for my clay soil. It's very hard for me to interpret this test and I would appreciate some help. This photo is three days after I took the sample and shook the jar. There are a few things that throw me for a loop: * The clay layer between 4 and 5 is not settled. It looks like a murky sediment and probably it will take a week or more for the size of this segment to delineate more clearly. * The heavy sand layer up to the line marked 1 is pretty clear * Between 1 and 2 is probably lighter sand? * Where it gets incredibly confusing is there is a very thin white line above 2 and below 3. I have no idea what that is. Then we get a very thin dark line between 3 and 4. Is that my silt layer? Not a lot here between 2 and 4, and difficult to interpret because there are three layers between those numbers. Based on my result, what can we say about the characteristics of my soil for a hedge plant?

@rifis I took a better photo now that I have daylight, attached. I think the layer above the silt is just organic compost that has sunk to the soil surface. So my conclusion is that most of this sample is coarse sand and silt. The silt is indeed dark. There was a lot of compost I had to scrape out of the top of the jar. But that compost was not the horrible sawdust material you find in nursery soil. It was very small particles of bark and other organic matter that had maintained its structure. That organic material may have been imparting some nutrition to the soil, and those containers were not getting fertilizer. Regarding the other poster who said this would be a good container soil: you should be aware that this is a controversial topic in the container gardening forum. Most of the purists will insist that coarse sand - added in too high a percentage of the soil - will create strong capillary action and raise the perched water table. My experience has been that plants largely thrive in sandy soils, as long as you do not mix in substantial amounts of microscopic compost and manure. That said, I use sand for experiments and my main soils for containers are gritty mix, 5-1-1, and I have experimented with various other mixes depending on whether the plant loves wet feet or not. For cactus and many Euphorbia I use pure pumice.

I would not add sand as in some circumstances can make it even harder. Likewise, "adding worms" is not really viable, worms need the environment to be right, and adding them if the conditions isn't right won't do much of anything. (Assuming there are any at all in there, which it sounds like there are some). Just keep adding more organic matter - compost, most organic mulches, wood chips, leaves, whatever. In the normal process of a soil with decomposing stuff, some of the clay will 'agglomerate' with partially decomposed materials. Note that you want at least some of the organic matter you add to be a bit harder to break down - usually meaning at least a bit of woody content (lignin) - although you probably don't have to make any special effort for that, most compost will have some, unless it was originally composed entirely of e.g. really soft fruity stuff. Since you're in a pretty warm climate where composting can be pretty quick, you may just have to keep adding.