Chat Help

Use this guide for continuing AI conversations, page-aware assistance, file attachments, saved Chats, Skills, and connecting Claude or ChatGPT to Constructable.

Chat respects your organization, project, and record permissions. Treat generated output as assistance: open source records and verify important amounts, dates, statuses, approvals, and contract language.

Learn how permission-aware answers and source review support Trusted AI and Search.

Start here

• Ask and follow up: Start a Chat.
• Ask beside the current page: Use the desktop agent panel.
• Work from a file: Attach files and manage responses.
• Enter a proposal or invoice: Run a Chat Skill.
• Check a submittal against the specs: PreCheck a submittal.
• Ask what a signed contract says: Chat with an executed contract.
• Clean up sheet numbers in a drawing set: Bulk edit sheet numbers and titles.
• Return to prior work: Find a past Chat.
• Use Claude or ChatGPT: Connect an outside assistant.
• Chat failed or is missing: Troubleshoot Chat.

Ask and continue

Start a Chat

1. Open Chat.
2. Enter a request in Ask Constructable..., or select a suggested prompt on larger web layouts.
3. Submit and review the streamed response.
4. Ask follow-up questions in the same Chat.
5. Select New Chat when the subject changes.

Suggested prompts do not promise access to every feature or record. A Dashboard question can start a Chat-style session; select Continue in chat after the response to continue in Chat.

Use the desktop agent panel

1. Open the project page you are reviewing.
2. Select the bot icon labelled Open agent panel.
3. Name the record and the outcome you want.
4. Use All Chats to switch conversations or start another.
5. Select Close agent panel when finished, or use the close button in the top-right corner of the panel header — it's there on both the conversation and the All Chats list.

The panel and full Chat page use the same personal conversations. Messages from the panel include the page title and address, not the record contents. Describe the record explicitly and verify linked sources.

Attach files and manage responses

1. Use the attachment control, drag files onto the prompt in web layouts, or use the device picker.
2. Wait for uploads to finish.
3. Ask a specific question about the files.
4. Submit and verify cited evidence in the originals.

Chat can also inspect an attachment already stored on a record you can access when you identify the record and file clearly. Upload success does not guarantee that Chat can interpret the file; PDFs and images are the safest formats.

Select the stop control to end a streaming response. Stopping may leave an incomplete answer; send another message to continue.

Find a past Chat

1. Open Chat.
2. On desktop, use the left Chat list.
3. Review generated titles, starting-project badges, and updated times.
4. Change or clear the project filter when the Chat began elsewhere.

Chats are personal, ordered by recent activity, and associated with their starting project context. The inbox excludes archived Chats and Chats owned by other users. Mobile and narrow layouts show the same conversations without the persistent side-by-side list.

Run Skills

Run a Chat Skill

Select Skills, choose the workflow, attach its source PDF, and ask Chat to run it. The skill badge remains active in that Chat until you clear it.

Skills carry their own permissions and prerequisites. Chat asks when a project or record match is ambiguous; it should not guess. Always open and verify the resulting record.

Import a bid

1. Confirm the Bid Package, subcontractor company, and bid record already exist.
2. Select Skills → Import bid.
3. Attach the subcontractor proposal PDF and request the import.
4. Answer matching questions.
5. Open the existing bid and verify total, scope amounts, notes, attachments, and Received status against the PDF.

The skill updates an existing bid; it does not create its package, company, or bid. See How to manage bids.

Import an invoice

1. Confirm the Commitment, Schedule of Values, and valid Billing Period exist and you have financial write access.
2. Select Skills → Import invoice.
3. Attach the invoice PDF and request the import.
4. Answer project, company, Commitment, Billing Period, or SOV matching questions.
5. Open the created Draft invoice.
6. Verify invoice number, date, Billing Period, SOV lines, amounts, retention, and source PDF.

The skill handles both a subcontractor invoice from a vendor and a prime invoice you bill to the owner. It reads the document first to work out which one it's looking at, then matches the company and the commitment type to suit — the subcontractor and their vendor commitment, or the owner and the prime commitment. You don't have to tell it which kind you attached, though saying so in your request saves it a question when the document is ambiguous.

The skill creates a Draft; it does not approve or submit the invoice. For other import methods, see Import a subcontractor invoice.

PreCheck a submittal

Reviewing a shop drawing against the spec section is careful, slow work, and the things that get missed are rarely the obvious ones. PreCheck reads the submittal's documents, finds the specs and drawings that govern them, and comes back with a short table of what doesn't line up.

The quickest way in is from the submittal itself:

1. Open the submittal.
2. Open the command palette and select PreCheck under Submittals.
3. The agent panel opens beside the page and starts the check on that submittal.

You can also select Skills → PreCheck in Chat, but then you'll need to say which submittal you mean, since Chat identifies it from the page you're on.

PreCheck reads the documents on the submittal and on its first stage, favoring what looks like the actual contractor package, then compares them with the project's specs and drawings. It reports only the discrepancies, in a table with columns like Issue, Where, and Why it matters — so a short answer means it didn't find much, not that it didn't look.

Note: PreCheck is a reading pass, not a response. It doesn't change the submittal's status, add a comment, or record a review, and it doesn't stand in for an approver's judgment. Verify each finding against the spec before you act on it.

Why is PreCheck missing?

It needs View submittals on top of Chat access. If you can open the submittal but not the skill, check Chat access; if you can't open the submittal either, it's the submittal permission.

What does PreCheck actually look at?

The submittal's own metadata and documents, the documents on its first stage and their approvers, and the project specs and drawings it can tie to that spec section. It asks rather than guesses when it can't tell which submittal or which spec applies.

Run it before you route the submittal and the reviewers get a cleaner package.

Chat with an executed contract

Somebody asks what the retention terms are, or whether a particular notice period applies, and the answer is on page fourteen of a subcontract nobody wants to open. Chat with the Contract answers from the signed contract PDF itself.

1. Open the commitment, purchase order, or prime contract.
2. Open the command palette and select Chat with the Contract under Commitments.
3. The panel opens with the skill active and an empty message box. Type your question — nothing is asked on your behalf.

The answer comes from that one signed contract PDF and nothing else. Drawings, change orders, invoices, and email are deliberately out of scope, so the response is either in the executed agreement or you're told it isn't there. That's what makes it worth quoting to someone.

Note: The action only appears on a commitment that is Fully Executed and was signed through Constructable's e-signing. A contract that was signed on paper and uploaded as an attachment has no e-signed PDF for the skill to read, so you won't see it offered.

You now have contract answers with a source, instead of a recollection of what the contract said.

Why don't I see Chat with the Contract on this commitment?

Either it isn't Fully Executed yet, or it wasn't e-signed in Constructable. You also need View financials.

Can it compare two contracts?

No. It stays on the one commitment's executed contract on purpose. Ask about each separately.

Bulk edit sheet numbers and titles

A set comes back from the architect with sheet numbers formatted three different ways, and fixing two hundred of them by hand is how drawing review turns into an afternoon. This skill does the pass for you.

1. Open the drawing set's review page.
2. Open the command palette and select Bulk edit sheet numbers and titles under Drawings.
3. Describe what you want — a consistency clean-up, a find and replace, stripping a prefix — or just ask it to make the set consistent.
4. Read the before-and-after table it proposes.
5. Reply to apply the changes.

Nothing changes until you say so. The skill shows you its proposal as a table of what each sheet is called now and what it would be called, and waits. Where a set has one dominant convention, it works toward that with the fewest edits it can make.

It only touches sheets still awaiting confirmation in that one set, and it only rewrites the numbers and titles already read off the sheets — it doesn't reopen the PDFs or invent values. Sheets you've already confirmed are left alone.

Note: Long sets are summarized rather than listed in full. Spot-check a few rows in the table before you apply, especially where it proposes new numbers to break a duplicate.

Confirm the review afterward as you normally would. See Reviewing and confirming an uploaded drawing set.

Connect an outside assistant

Connect an outside assistant

Constructable's MCP server is https://api.constructable.ai/mcp.

For Claude:

1. Open Customize → Connectors.
2. Select + → Add Custom Connector.
3. Name it Constructable and enter the server URL.
4. Select Add.
5. Sign in on Connect MCP client, then select Confirm.

For ChatGPT, install Constructable from the app directory, select Connect, then sign in and select Confirm.

The connection runs as your account and cannot widen access. Keep read-only tools always allowed if desired, but leave write tools requiring approval. Conversations remain in the outside assistant, not Constructable. MCP permissions are separate; administrators, managers, and employees receive access by default. Contact support@constructable.ai if authorization cannot complete.

Access and platforms

• Create, update, and delete AI chats controls Chat and the agent panel.
• Project and record permissions still control every answer and attachment.
• Chat has web and native layouts. Prompt suggestions are omitted on native and small mobile layouts.
• The side panel is desktop web only.
• Attachments are available in Chat; use Continue in chat from Dashboard for the full attachment interface.
• Import bid additionally needs bid-management access. Import invoice needs Submit invoices for approval and matching financial records — the same permission a subcontractor uses to submit billing, so you don't have to grant full financial write to let someone import an invoice. PreCheck needs View submittals. Chat with the Contract needs View financials and a fully executed, Constructable-e-signed contract. Bulk edit sheet numbers and titles needs Change drawing sets, drawing areas, and drawing pages, publish and unpublish drawings.

Troubleshoot Chat

Chat is missing

Ask an administrator to verify Create, update, and delete AI chats and your project access.

A response stops or fails

Retry or start a new Chat. Shorten the request, remove a problematic attachment, or divide broad work into focused questions.

Chat did not use an attachment

Identify the file and evidence you need. Re-export unsupported or unreadable content as PDF or image, then verify the response against the original.

A past Chat is missing

Clear the project filter. Archived Chats and another user's Chats do not appear in your inbox.

A Skill cannot match a record

Confirm its required records exist, you have access, and the source file clearly identifies them. Answer matching questions rather than forcing an uncertain import.

An outside assistant sees no organizations

Ask an administrator to verify the MCP permission for your role. Connecting the assistant does not grant organization or project access.