About the trades document engine

Bracketsight exists because solo and small-crew contractors quote jobs in text messages, underprice from guesswork, and sign contracts missing clauses their state requires. Field-service software solves this for $50–200 a month behind a signup wall; template sites hand out state-blind Word files. Bracketsight is the gap: free, no signup, state-aware — and it helps with the pricing, not just the paper.

Quote it right. Paper it right. Get paid. The estimate you build on the takeoff sheet is the document your customer receives; the invoice matches it to the cent; the contract carries the clauses your state requires, each with its statute.

What does this engine decide?

Two things, and neither is a single number. First, what a job should cost: each job breaks into assemblies with a quantity formula, a waste factor, a material cost and a labor-hours figure, and the answer comes back as a band rather than a point — a deck quotes from 10% below the computed total to 18% above it. Second, which clauses the contract legally needs for the state the work is in, selected by evaluating a trigger expression against the job facts. A clause is either triggered by the facts or it is not; the engine throws on any trigger it does not recognise rather than guessing what was meant. The whole calculation path is dependency-free TypeScript with no AI and no network access, and every rule lives in a dated, cited JSON file listed on sources.

Why does it refuse to write a contract in four of five states?

Because four of the five launch states prescribe the exact wording of at least one notice, and that wording has not been transcribed from the statute. Nine such notices are outstanding — four in California, three in Texas, one in Florida and one in New York — so California, Texas, Florida and New York generate no contract at all. A paraphrase of prescribed wording is not a weaker clause; it is a non-compliant contract, and in several of these states the consequences run to lien invalidity, unenforceability, or a statutory cause of action for the homeowner. An empty field is recoverable. A plausible-looking notice that does not match the statute gets signed.

The block is state-scoped rather than job-scoped on purpose: a state with any untranscribed required clause produces nothing at any job size, even for a job whose facts would not trigger that clause. A rule that only blocks the jobs it happens to fire on invites the workaround “make the job smaller.” Transcription alone will not unblock everything either. California and Texas prescribe minimum type sizes of 12 and 10 points in boldface, Florida requires the notice on the front page or a separate page signed and dated by the owner, and Texas requires a cancellation form in duplicate and easily detachable. Nothing downstream can render any of that yet.

Which state is live, and on what authority?

Pennsylvania — the one launch state where no provision prescribes wording, so its clauses may be drafted. It carries the $500 home improvement threshold from the definition at 73 P.S. §517.2, the three-business-day right of rescission at §517.7(b), the deposit cap that applies to contracts over $5,000 — one-third of the price plus the cost of special-order materials, at §517.9 — and the registration number required among the contract contents at §517.7(a)(1). Be aware of the weakness: Pennsylvania's statutory text could not be read from a state host, so every Pennsylvania rule rests on a secondary source until it is re-confirmed against the General Assembly's own text.

How honest is the pricing?

Every dollar figure is modelled, not measured. Base labor rates of $62 an hour for carpentry, $55 for painting and $68 for blended remodel trades are placeholders, as are every unit cost, labor-hour figure, waste factor and access multiplier. The regional multipliers run from 90% to 125% and are currently identical across all three trades, which is itself a tell that they are modelled: real regional cost spread differs by trade. The citation on those files points at a reserved domain that will never resolve, and each ruleset carries a 120-day staleness window from its 1 August 2026 effective date, after which it flags every estimate it produces. A real basis means licensed cost data plus federal wage statistics — and even then those statistics report employee wages, not billable contractor rates, so the gap between them has to be documented rather than buried. Details are on pricing methodology.

How should you use it?

Use the estimate to structure a quote and to see where the money in a job actually sits — not as a price to hand a customer unchecked. Every figure is an estimate, never a binding quote, and your own material prices and crew hours should override ours. Use the contract clause list as a checklist to take to a lawyer in your state, not as a signed document. No construction attorney has reviewed the clause language and no working contractors have checked the pricing; both reviews are launch gates, and neither has happened. Both flags are described in the editorial policy, and a named, credentialed reviewer will be published here before either comes off.

Privacy

v1 stores nothing on a server. Your estimates and job facts live in your browser's local storage and nowhere else. No accounts, no tracking of your job data.