Update · Operating boundaries
AI drafts. Licensed people decide.
The single rule that makes AI safe to use inside a licensed trade — and what goes wrong the moment it is relaxed.
In short
Use AI for the drafting work — field notes, scope language, customer messages, written procedures. Never let it decide a price, interpret a code, determine whether a permit is required, or judge whether something is safe. Those four are licensed decisions, and an AI that answers them confidently is confidently wrong often enough to be dangerous.
Most owners in the trades have already tried an AI assistant. They asked it to write a customer email or an estimate, got back something that read plausibly but was missing every exclusion that matters, invented a price, or stated something about code that no licensed contractor could safely send. They tried twice and stopped.
That reaction is correct as far as it goes. A general-purpose AI given a blank instruction produces generic output, because a blank instruction is generic.
The division that makes it work
Drafting is the part of your written work that is slow, repetitive and mostly mechanical: turning a technician’s fragments into a job record, structuring a scope of work, writing the fourth follow-up message this week.
Deciding is the part that requires a licence, judgement, or accountability: what something costs, whether it meets code, whether a permit is needed, whether a condition is safe.
AI is genuinely good at the first. It must never be allowed near the second.
What happens when the line moves
The failure is rarely dramatic. It looks like an estimate that went out with a price the model suggested and nobody checked. Or a post-job summary that told a customer their system was “safe and up to code” because that phrasing sounded reassuring.
Both are representations your business now owns.
The practical version
Write the boundary down, give it to whoever uses the tools, and put a review step between the draft and the customer. Not because your staff are careless — because polished text reads as verified text, and it is not.
Common questions
- Can AI write my estimates?
- It can draft the scope, inclusions, exclusions and conditions. It must not set the price. Pricing depends on your costs, market and margin, none of which an AI knows.
- Can AI answer a customer's code question?
- No. Codes vary by jurisdiction, are amended locally, and are interpreted by inspectors. Route the question to the licensed person accountable for the work.