> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://help.tiretutor.ai/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# How the AI features work

> What the AI reads, what it drafts, and where its prices come from.

DVI uses AI in three places: reading the tire placard, drafting the customer summary, and drafting the service list. This page explains what each one is doing, so you know how far to trust it. For the steps themselves, see [performing an inspection](/dealers/dvi/performing-inspections).

The short version: **AI drafts, you decide.** Nothing it produces reaches your customer until you've looked at it.

## What the AI can and can't see

The AI reads what you recorded on this inspection — your ratings, your measurements, your notes, and the vehicle details. That's all.

It does not know:

* Your labour rate
* What you pay for parts
* What you charge for a job
* What you quoted this customer last time

That gap is why the pricing works the way it does, below.

## Reading the tire placard

You photograph the door-jamb sticker. The image goes to a vision model, which reads the printed values back as text.

It reads more than the inspection shows you. Extraction covers tire sizes, load index and speed rating, cold pressures in both PSI and kPa, the spare, and the weight ratings. The inspection displays the headline values — front, rear, and spare sizes and pressures, plus GVWR — and those are the ones you can edit.

It returns a **confidence score** with the result, and that score is the point. The model is reading a photograph of a sticker that may be faded, angled, or partly shadowed. A high score means the text was legible, not that the values are correct for the vehicle in your bay.

### Why you verify it

The moment you edit any extracted field, the reading is marked as verified by a person rather than by a camera. That distinction is recorded with the inspection.

Tire sizes flow into everything downstream — what you quote, what you order, what the customer sees. A misread digit is cheap to fix at the door jamb and expensive to fix after the tires arrive.

## Drafting the customer summary

The summary is written for the customer, not for you. It's organised by how urgent each finding is, so the things that need attention now come first.

It's built from the items you rated and the notes you wrote. Sparse notes make a sparse summary — the model can only describe what you recorded.

If any services have prices, the summary can reference the overall total. With no priced services, it leaves cost out entirely.

### Why it's editable

You know the customer and the conversation you've already had. The draft saves you the typing; it doesn't know that this customer just replaced two tires in March, or that they're anxious about cost.

**Refine** keeps your wording and fills gaps. **Regenerate** throws your text away and starts over — which is why it asks first, and why there's an undo.

## Drafting the service list

Only items you rated **Required** or **Suggested** are sent. Anything left **Pending** is invisible to it, which is another reason to finish the inspection before generating.

You get at most six services. Each one carries a plain-language explanation aimed at the customer, and each links back to the findings it came from.

## Where the prices come from

This is the part worth understanding properly.

There is **no price list** in DVI. No table of your jobs, no shop-wide labour rate, no parts catalogue. When the AI puts a number on a service, it is estimating from **US national averages** — a labour rate band and a typical parts markup.

So a generated price is a plausible market figure for that job somewhere in the country. It is not your price, and it was never your price.

<Warning>
  Nothing on screen flags a generated price as an estimate from national averages. The **Est.** marker tells you the cost is uncertain, not whose pricing it came from. So the check has to come from you, on every inspection.
</Warning>

### Why it isn't a shop-wide setting

There's no place to enter your rates once and have every future inspection use them. Prices are set per service, per inspection.

That's more work, and worth knowing up front so it doesn't surprise you on your tenth report.

TireTutor can add shop-specific guidance to the estimator on request. That shifts the starting point closer to your market. It still isn't your price list, so you check each amount either way.

### Estimate or exact, and what the customer sees

Every service is one or the other, and the difference changes what the customer is agreeing to.

| Mode      | Customer sees   | They are approving     |
| --------- | --------------- | ---------------------- |
| **Exact** | `$249.99`       | That price             |
| **Est.**  | `Up to $299.99` | A ceiling, not a quote |

Approval totals label themselves accordingly — **Total Authorized** when every price is exact, **Max Authorized** when any is an estimate.

AI-drafted services lean toward **Est.** by default, because the model is told to use a range wherever parts cost varies. Services you add by hand default to **Exact**, on the assumption you know your own price.

<Note>
  An estimate is a spending ceiling the customer has agreed to. Work that lands above it needs a fresh approval, so set the high end where you can finish the job.
</Note>

## What follows from all this

Each of the three features leaves one thing only a person can supply:

| Feature      | What the AI gives you                                    | What it can't                                                              |
| ------------ | -------------------------------------------------------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Tire placard | The printed values, read quickly                         | Whether the read is correct — confidence measures legibility, not accuracy |
| Summary      | A structured draft from your notes                       | Anything you didn't record, and any history with this customer             |
| Services     | A list traced to your findings, with market-rate figures | Your prices                                                                |

That's the shape of the whole design. It drafts fast from what you recorded, and it stops where your judgement starts. The [inspection recipes](/dealers/dvi/performing-inspections) cover each of those checks as a step.

## Where to go next

<Columns cols={2}>
  <Card title="Performing an inspection" icon="clipboard-check" href="/dealers/dvi/performing-inspections">
    The steps for placard capture, summary, services, and pricing.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Notification reference" icon="book" href="/dealers/dvi/reference">
    Every notification, who receives it, and when.
  </Card>
</Columns>