AI Quote Suggest (at /app/ai/quote-suggest) lets you type what a customer wants in plain English and get back structured line items with suggested pricing, instead of manually pulling up the catalog and picking SKUs one at a time. It's meant to save the front desk a few minutes when a customer rattles off a job verbally.
How to use it
Type the job into the "What does the customer want?" box the way you'd describe it to a coworker — for example, "Front 2 ceramic tint + windshield strip on a 2024 Tesla Model Y." Year, make, and model are optional fields below it; fill in any of them and they're passed along as vehicle context, but if you leave all three blank no vehicle info is sent at all.
Before you click Suggest, pick a Pricing source:
- My catalog (the default) matches lines to your shop's actual services and prices.
- Generic uses industry-average pricing that isn't tied to your catalog at all.
Click Suggest line items. While it's working the button shows "Drafting…" A badge at the top of the page tells you whether you're in Live mode (real AI suggestions) or Stub mode (an amber banner appears asking you to set `ANTHROPIC_API_KEY` — the UI still works, but suggestions won't be real ones).
Reading the results
Each suggested line shows a name, category badge, description, and price. In My Catalog mode you'll also see a second badge on each line: From your catalog (green) means that line matched one of your real configured services; Free-form (amber) means the AI couldn't match it to anything in your catalog and made up a line item and price instead — worth a second look before you trust the number. A running total sits below the list, and any notes the suggestion includes appear in italics underneath.
What actually happens when you click through
The results panel says "Suggestion only — review and confirm in the quote builder. Nothing is sent or quoted automatically," and that's accurate — nothing here creates a real quote or contacts the customer.
The one detail worth knowing before you rely on this: the "Start new quote with these" button does not carry the suggested line items or prices over to the new quote. It only passes along the year, make, model, and your original job description as URL parameters to the quote builder. So if the AI suggested four line items at specific prices, you'll need to re-add those services yourself in the quote builder using the suggestion as a reference — the structured pricing you just saw doesn't follow you there. Don't assume the new quote will show up pre-filled with the suggested lines; it won't.
Because of that, treat this page as a fast way to figure out *what* to quote and get a ballpark total, not as a shortcut that fills in the quote for you. And regardless of which pricing mode you use, confirm pricing against your actual rate card before sending anything to a customer — especially any line flagged Free-form.