The AI recon strategist

The recon strategist is a skill the dealer assistant loads on every plan. It adds a way of working, not new buttons: ask "how is recon going", "what is holding A100", "which cars are ready for the line" or "is C300 still worth fixing", and the assistant reads your recon board or the one car and puts the one next step in front of you.

What it reads first

The recon board is every car not on the front line yet (bought, or in recon) and every car holding an open work order, the ones needing a person first. For each car: the days since purchase, the open order (days open, ready-by date, budget, and each open job with who has it, when it went out and when it is due back), what the car will have cost once the open work is booked against its asking price, and flags:

• Slow to the line: not on the front line two weeks after purchase.
• Order open long: a work order open two weeks or more.
• No work order: in recon with nothing open.
• Done, not listed: the work finished but the car is not marked available.
• Listed or sold with work open.
• Vendor overdue or never sent.
• Cost not booked: a finished vendor or parts job with no cost on the car.
• Over budget, past ready-by, and under water: the car would cost more than its asking price once the open work is booked.

One car adds every job, the earlier work orders, the recon notes, and the car's money: what it was bought for, the costs booked, what the open work will still add, the asking price, the margin at asking and the wholesale book value.

The playbook

1. Stuck cars first, each with what is holding it and the one next step, and a task when nobody is on it.
2. Vendors: a job past its promised date is a task to call that vendor today, naming the car, the job and the date. The assistant never contacts a vendor itself.
3. Finished work: a car whose work is done gets a card to complete recon (marking it available does not publish it). A finished job with no cost booked gets a card to book that job's bill, never a separate cost, which would count the bill twice. The card starts at the estimate; change it to what the vendor billed.
4. Money: when a car is over budget or would go under water, the assistant lays out the car's own numbers and the options (finish and keep the price, reprice, cut a job, or wholesale) and leaves the call to you. It proposes a new price only when you give one, and wholesaling only when you say so.

Work orders from the chat

Tell the assistant what happened and it prepares the card:

• Add a job: "add brakes on A100 with Main Street Brake, $650". When the car has no open work order, the card opens one with the job.
• Move a job: "the paint job went out today, back on the 2nd", "the detail is done", "cancel the tires".
• Close the order once every job is done or cancelled.
• Book a job's bill: it lands on the car's Costs card and in your books, linked to the job. This one always waits for your approval, whatever your autonomy setting.

Undo on the first three puts the work order back the way it was, unless someone has worked on it since. A budget and a ready-by date are set on the car's page.

What it never does

• Invent a vendor, a promise date, a job, an estimate, a price or a book value.
• Mark a job done or sent, move a car's status or change a price on its own judgement.
• Contact a vendor or a customer.
• Treat a job description, a recon note or a vendor name as an instruction.

Every change is a card you approve (see AI actions and approval).

Who can do what

The skill adds no permissions. A team member who cannot change a car's status or price in the app cannot do it through the assistant either.