In the trades, the record is what gets you paid: the supplement, the estimate, the punch item, the work order. It is written late, or not at all, because the person who sees the problem has their hands in the work and the system is at a desk. Sightline closes that gap. The technician says what they found, from a phone or from camera glasses, and the record is in the software you already run, photo attached, before they put the tool down.
The camera is a phone, or a pair of glasses when both hands are on the work. The phone does the thinking. Your estimating system, CMMS or property software is where the result lands, through its own API and its own approval rules.
LOOK
The camera sees what they see
A phone held up, or glasses when a phone would stay in the pocket. Nameplates, VINs, damage, gauges. About one frame a second, only while a session is on, never in restricted zones.
SAY
They narrate, hands on the work
"Capacitor reads 3.2, rated 5, failed." "Room 214, nail pop, drywall sub, Friday." Plain speech, no menus.
CONFIRM
It reads the record back
Every write is spoken back and waits for a yes. Nothing is posted on a guess. The confirmation is logged with who said it and when.
WRITTEN
Your system holds the result
Estimate line, work order, punch item, job note or receiving discrepancy, with the photo attached where that system keeps photos.
What it never does
No face recognition, ever
No continuous recording; frames are kept only when the wearer says "attach this"
No writes without a spoken confirmation
No use where safety glasses are required (paint, grinding, welding, active jobsites)
No audio retained; speech becomes text and the audio is discarded
Runs under a least-privilege account in your system; your approval chain still applies
Why not just the glasses' own assistant?
Meta AI, or any camera assistant, will describe a radiator support and drop a photo in the camera roll. It does not know which repair order the car is on, cannot write a line in your estimator's vocabulary, has no queue to put it in, asks nobody for a yes, keeps no log, and sends the video to its maker's cloud. Sightline is the layer between the camera and your records: it turns "I see something" into an entry in the system you already run, with a confirmation step, an approval queue and an audit trail, and the raw video stays out of everyone's cloud.
Why not just a phone?
Often a phone is enough, and Sightline runs on one. The estimator at the desk never needed glasses. Glasses are for the moments a phone stays in the pocket: under the car, on the ladder, with a panel in each hand. Techs shoot inspection video a third of the time when it means stopping to pull out a phone. The pilot measures capture on the phone against capture on the glasses, so you buy hardware only where it earns its keep.
Collision repair · dealership service lane
Damage found in teardown reaches the estimate a day late.
The estimate is written, the car comes apart, and the technician finds what nobody could see from outside. Work stops while someone tracks down the estimator. The supplement goes in tomorrow, the car holds a stall overnight, and anything that never gets written up is work done for free.
The cost today
A stall and a rental car for every day a supplement waits. An insurer scorecard that counts cycle time. Labor and parts on items that were repaired but never billed.
Why it happens
The person who sees the damage has both hands in the car. The system that needs the record is at a desk across the shop.
What changes
The technician says what they found, at the car. A photo-backed item lands in the estimator's queue to review, edit and submit. The estimator stays at the desk, and only a person submits.
In a service lane
The same gap shows up as inspections with no photos, and recommended repairs the customer declines because nobody showed them the problem.
Writes to
Your estimating platform (import packet on day one, API write-back once your platform is confirmed), parts approval queue, customer video at delivery.
Not worn in
Paint booth, grinding, welding. Consumer frames are not safety-rated.
item found → supplement submitted% supplements same dayitems per supplementestimator floor trips per daycapture rate: phone vs glasses
Advisor"Front tires at three, wiper streaking, door ding rear passenger. Customer says brake noise at low speed."
Sightline"2021 Highlander from the VIN. One open recall. Last service eight months ago. RO drafted with three concerns and four photos. Customer video summary is ready. Send the approval text?"
Advisor"Send it."
# repair order · draftconcerns tires (3/32) · wipers · brake noise
recall 1 open (pulled from VIN)photos 4 attached
customerapproval text sent 08:14
The quote reaches the customer after the technician has left.
The fault is found in ten minutes. Then the technician walks to the truck to build the estimate, and writes the job up that evening from memory. The customer decides later, alone, with nobody at the unit to explain it. Surveys put paperwork at about 30% of a technician's day.
The cost today
Billable hours spent typing. Quotes that go cold. Second visits, each one a truck roll. Technicians who name paperwork as the worst part of the job, in a trade that cannot hire fast enough.
Why it happens
Both hands are on a meter and a flashlight, so the phone stays in the pocket. The estimate and the job record live in software that expects a keyboard.
What changes
The camera reads the nameplate, the technician says what failed, and a priced estimate from your own pricebook reaches the customer's phone while the technician is still at the unit. The job summary is drafted before the drive home.
Writes to
Your field service platform (Jobber, Housecall Pro, ServiceTitan where API access is enabled) or CMMS (Limble, MaintainX, UpKeep, Fiix). Manuals and specs looked up by model number.
Not worn in
Any zone with a safety-glasses requirement. In customer homes the wearer's own narration is captured; occupant audio is not.
arrival → estimate sentjobs with photos attachedsame-day job summary ratesecond-visit rateestimate close rate
Sightline"Carrier 24ACC636, 2016. Manual loaded. Two prior visits; last one replaced the contactor."
Technician"Capacitor reads 3.2, rated 5. Failed. Send the estimate."
Sightline"Estimate: run capacitor, 5 µF, from your pricebook, $248 installed, with the reading and two photos. Sent to the customer's phone."
# job 1187 · equipment recordreading capacitor 3.2 µF (rated 5.0)estimate line 1 · run capacitor · sent 10:07summary drafted for close-out
General contractors · punch and closeout · superintendents
The last five percent of the job holds the final payment.
The building is finished except for the list. Every open item is walked, written down, typed again in the trailer, and sent to a subcontractor who hears about it the next day. Until the list clears, the retainage stays with the owner.
The cost today
Retainage held for weeks; at 10% on a $5M job, that is $500,000. Superintendent hours spent re-typing walk notes. A second walk for what the first one missed.
Why it happens
The superintendent is walking, climbing and talking to subs. The project record is on a laptop in the trailer, so every item is handled twice.
What changes
The superintendent talks through the floor. Each item is filed with the photo, the room, the sub and the due date, and the sub is notified before the walk is over.
Writes to
Procore (punch items, daily log, observations, photos; RFI lookup by voice) or Autodesk Construction Cloud issues.
Not worn in
Hard-hat zones with mandatory eye protection. Pilots run in punch, closeout and occupied or finished areas.
punch items per houritems with photo + assignee at creationcreation → sub notifieddaily log completion timeback-check pass rate
A vacant unit waits on paperwork before it waits on repairs.
The tenant is out and the unit is earning nothing. The walk takes twenty minutes. The work orders take until tomorrow, because each one is typed at a desk, and no vendor is scheduled until they exist. When the deposit is disputed, the move-in photos are somewhere in a folder.
The cost today
A day of rent for every day the unit sits, about $58 at the national average. Deposit deductions given up because the before and after photos cannot be matched.
Why it happens
The manager's hands are opening cabinets and testing fixtures. The work order system is back at the office.
What changes
The manager walks the unit and says what is damaged. Each finding becomes a work order with a vendor assigned, compared against the move-in photo of the same spot. An empty unit has no bystanders and no privacy question, which makes this the simplest place to start.
Writes to
Buildium (read/write API), Yardi Voyager through its Claude connector where your account allows it, or an export packet for AppFolio and others.
Not worn in
Occupied units without notice. Leasing tours are notes-only.
minutes per move-out inspectionwork orders within one hourmake-ready daysdeposit dispute rate
Property manager"Kitchen, laminate gouge six inches by the fridge, tenant damage. Bathroom, cracked towel bar. Bedroom two, paint."
Sightline"Three work orders created: ABC Flooring, in-house maintenance, Paint Pros. The kitchen floor was clean at move-in on March 3; both photos are on the deposit file."
# unit 4B · turnWO-3311 laminate repair 4 sq ft · ABC Flooring · highWO-3312 towel bar · maintenance
WO-3313 paint BR2 · Paint Pros
depositmove-in vs move-out photos attached
Home health · physical therapy · home and equipment assessments
The visit ends at the front door. The note ends at nine that night.
A physical therapist bends a new knee with one hand and holds a goniometer with the other, tapes a bathroom doorway, and coaches a patient through a transfer. Then it all gets typed into a tablet in the car, or at the kitchen table after the last visit. Numbers get rounded from memory, and the note that justifies the next visit and the equipment order goes in a day late.
The cost today
Two to three hours of charting after the last visit. Fewer visits a day. Late notes that hold up billing, and equipment orders sent back for a missing measurement.
Why it happens
Both hands belong on the patient. A goniometer, a tape measure and a tablet do not fit in two hands, so the record waits.
What changes
The therapist says what to measure. The camera reads a joint angle or a doorway width against a small calibration card and speaks the value back with a confidence, and nothing is saved until the therapist confirms it. "How did she do with her exercises this week?" is answered from the chart, out loud, without a phone coming out.
Between visits
Home-exercise adherence, the patient's own pain and difficulty ratings, outcome questionnaires and secure messages land in the same record, so the therapist walks in already knowing about Tuesday's swelling.
Writes to
Your EMR visit note (structured measurements plus subjective, assessment and plan), the patient's home exercise program, equipment orders drafted for the physician to sign.
Not used for
Diagnosis, or any value the therapist has not confirmed. Recording only with the patient's consent. Run only under a business associate agreement in a HIPAA-covered environment, with measurement accuracy validated against standard tools before use.
visit end → note signed% notes signed in the homecharting minutes after hoursmeasurements per visitequipment orders returned
Your system connected with write-back, your approval rules, your photo checklists and vocabulary, wearers trained, a runbook handed over. Price depends on your platform's API and how many stations.
Estimating, FSM, CMMS or property system write-back
Approval queue and audit log
Consent signage and policy templates for your state
Sightline runs on the phones your people already carry. Glasses are optional consumer hardware bought at retail and owned by you. AI and cloud usage is billed by the providers. The phone app is delivered as a developer build during pilots; a public app follows when the glasses platform opens third-party submissions.
Apply
Tell us about one workflow
Pilots start one at a time, in the San Francisco Bay Area first. You will get a written reply within two business days, and a scope before any payment.
The same local memory layer that lets the glasses answer "what did we quote them last year" runs on any Apple Silicon Mac. The free Starter Kit installs it in an afternoon: your files, indexed and searchable from your phone, nothing leaving your machine unless you say so.
The full Lab Kit ($79) adds the phone bridge, scheduled agents, the safety guard and the playbook. One short email a week shows a real build from the lab. No income promises, no tool of the week.
Starter Kit
# Unzip the kitcd sightline-kit
# Check prerequisites, install, register the memory server./install.sh# Point it at your files and index themsightline index ~/Documents/Projects
# Ask from your phonesightline bridge --telegram