AI Assisted Estimating
ContractorTools offers “AI Assist” to help you create estimates using AI.
Using AI Assist
To use AI Assist, turn on “Use AI Assist” when you tap + to add a new job. Or select “AI Assist” in the Job Menu of an existing job. This will take you into AI Assist.
AI Assist has two tabs in the iPad and Mac versions, and two options in the iPhone version: “Items” and “Chat”.
The “Items” screen shows the list of items in the AI Assist “scratch pad”. AI Assist works with a copy of the estimate that we call the “scratch pad”. Any changes made in the scratch pad don’t affect the estimate until you apply them, either item by item, or the whole estimate, by merging them with the estimate or replacing the estimate entirely.
The “Chat” screen is where you give the AI assistant information about the job you want to estimate. This includes details about your company, and the job you’re estimating, PDF files containing plans for the job, or photos of the job site, and text describing the job.
The “Chat” screen has these sections:
Job details
Everything here is optional. AI Assist can make assumptions based on your text description, but the more you fill in here, the fewer questions it has to ask.
Construction type – New construction, Remodel or renovation, Addition, Repair or restoration, or Maintenance.
Building type – Residential single-family or multi-family, Commercial retail or office, or Other.
Size – a number with its unit: sq ft, linear ft, rooms, units or fixtures.
Stories, Occupied during work, and Year built. A building that predates 1978 gets a lead and asbestos testing allowance on remodels.
Finish quality – Good, Better or Best. This sets the grade of finish materials and fixtures AI Assist prices.
Location – City, State ZIP. Used for regional pricing. It defaults to the customer's address, or your company address.
Company defaults
Under Company defaults you can set things that are true for every job: whether you are a General contractor or a Subcontractor and, if so, your trade; whether labor is My crew, Subcontractors or Mixed, and which trades you subcontract; who supplies materials; how permits are handled; and how detailed the list should be. These are remembered for every job in your company.
AI Assist needs to know
This section appears at the top of the chat screen when AI Assist has questions to help refine the estimate. Your answers are sent with your next Submit. Leave a question blank to skip it. Your typed answers stay on the screen until you submit, even if you switch to Items or leave and come back.
Describe the job
Write a description of the job in your own words: what's being built or remodeled, the rooms involved, dimensions you know, materials the customer has chosen, anything unusual about the site. You can also use this box to give instructions on later turns, such as "Add a demolition group" or "The owner is supplying the appliances."
Plans and photos
Tap Attach Files… to open the Attachments screen. Add plans, specifications or photos from the camera, your photo library, the Files app, or the job's attachment library. Each attachment has an Include switch; files with Include on are sent to AI Assist with every request. PDFs up to 100 pages and photos up to 30 MB each are accepted, up to 10 files per request.
AI Assist reads plans for schedules, notes, room names and labelled dimensions. It does not measure drawings to scale, and it says so when a quantity would need a takeoff.
Submit
Submit sends your description, answers, job details, the current items and any included files. Answers take anywhere from a few seconds for a small change to a couple of minutes for a full estimate. Keep the screen open while AI Assist works. You can Stop at any time, in which case nothing changes.
Reading the results
When an answer arrives, AI Assist's note appears in the Conversation: what it did, the assumptions it made, every item it set to zero, and any unit or cost category it created. Its questions, if any, appear in “AI Assist needs to know“ at the top of the chat screen
The item list marks what changed in the latest answer:
Plus – an item AI Assist added.
Pencil – an existing item it changed.
Zero – an item it set to zero quantity because it doesn't apply to this job.
Check mark – an item you have already merged into the estimate, unchanged since.
Dots on a group – something inside the group changed.
AI Assist never deletes an item. Items that don't belong are set to zero quantity so you can see what it decided. Remove Zero-Quantity Items clears them out when you're ready.
How AI Assist treats costs
Every cost is your direct cost, before markup. ContractorTools applies profit, overhead, contingency and sales tax the way your job and item settings say, so AI Assist never adds markup rows or asks about them.
Items the customer still has to choose, such as cabinets, countertops, flooring, tile, trim, doors and hardware, appliances, and plumbing and electrical fixtures, are marked as allowance items and as selections. Allowance items bill the customer the actual cost rather than the estimated cost.
Scope whose cost can't be known until the work is opened up, such as demolition that may find rot, and time-and-materials work, are allowance items too.
When your list already has costs, AI Assist leaves them alone unless your description or an answer requires a change. It fills in costs only where there are none, and says in its note that those are estimates.
NOTE: ContractorTools assumes no liability for the accuracy of the costs provided by AI Assist. Treat AI Assist's costs as a starting point. They are regional estimates, not your costbook. Review them before you merge them into an estimate.
Getting items into the estimate
Nothing reaches the estimate until you do one of these.
Merge Item – on iPad and Mac, select an item and tap Merge Item. On iPhone, swipe an item in the list and choose Merge into Estimate. The item's group path is created in the estimate if it doesn't exist.
Merge All Items – in the Chat, under Into the estimate. Every item in the scratch pad is merged.
Replace Items… – removes every item from the estimate and copies the scratch pad's items in their place. This is for an estimate you're starting fresh. Replace is refused when the estimate already has actual costs or invoices; merge instead.
Merging matches scratch-pad items to estimate items by their group and name. A match is updated in place: quantity, costs, description, unit, cost category and allowance flags. An item with no match is added. A zero-quantity item zeroes its match in the estimate and is otherwise skipped. Merging never removes anything from the estimate.
Merged items show a check mark. If AI Assist changes a merged item on a later turn, the check mark goes away so you know it needs merging again.
Continuing the conversation
AI Assist remembers the conversation for each job. Ask for changes the way you'd ask an estimator: "Use quartz instead of laminate", "Add a second bathroom like the first", "The ceiling is 10 feet, redo the drywall and paint quantities". Each answer updates the scratch pad and marks what changed.
Clear All Items… empties the scratch pad but keeps the conversation, so you can start the list over with everything AI Assist already knows about the job. The estimate itself is never affected.
Change orders
AI Assist currently works on the job's estimate only. Support for AI Assisted change orders may be added depending on user feedback, so let us know if you'd also like to be able to use AI Assisted estimating for change orders.
Privacy
Your job description, answers, job details, the scratch pad's items, and the plans and photos you choose to include are sent to Anthropic's Claude through the ContractorTools server to produce each answer. They are not used to train AI models and are retained by Anthropic for no more than 30 days. Nothing is sent until you tap Submit, and only files with Include on are sent.
If something goes wrong
"The AI assistant isn't available" – AI Assist couldn't reach the ContractorTools server. Check your connection and try again.
"AI Assist is working on this estimate for …" – someone on another device submitted a request for this job. Submit becomes available when it finishes, usually within a couple of minutes.
"The answer was too long" – the request asked for more than AI Assist can return in one answer. Nothing was changed. Ask for part of the job at a time, for example one group or one trade.
An item didn't update – AI Assist matches items by group and name. If you renamed or moved an item in the scratch pad since the last answer, AI Assist may have added a new item instead. Delete the extra one or merge the one you want.