Ask the Manual

A worker opens an asset — by scanning its QR code or from the asset page in the dashboard — taps Ask the manual, and types or dictates a question in English or Spanish. The answer streams back with page references to the manual it came from.

For example: a worker asks “how do I reset this pump after a power outage?” and receives step-by-step instructions marked with page references (“p. 14”) telling them where to look in the manual.

If an asset has no manual attached, the feature tells the worker to ask their manager to upload one. See Assets for how to attach manuals.

Each question sends four things:

• Manuals
  Everymanual attached to that asset — each uploaded PDF plus each manual link — is sent, so the answer can cite across all of them. An uploaded PDF too large for page citations (over 32 MB or over 100 pages) has its text extracted and sent as plain text instead: still answerable from, but without page chips. A linkedPDF over 32 MB behaves worse: it fails the whole question, including the other manuals on that asset, and the worker is told the manual couldn’t be read. Upload a file that large rather than linking it.
• History
  The 5 most recent service logs for that asset, from any worker — date, notes, and whether the log was flagged. No photos, no form answers, no worker names.
• Photos
  Up to 3 photos the worker attaches to the question, so they can point at what they are looking at.
• Question
  The question text itself, and which language it is in.

Worker names, contact details, staff records, and billing data are never sent to the AI provider.

Every question runs on Opzaco’s standard model. An owner sets a ceiling on model quality in Organization settings under Response quality:

Fast

Most economical. Always available. Answers most manual questions.

Balanced

Recommended, and the default for new organizations.

Best

Highest quality, and the most expensive.

The setting is a ceiling, not a default — workers always start on the cheapest model and only move up when they choose to. When a stronger model is available, a small “Try smarter model” button appears under an answer; tapping it re-asks the same question one quality level up, never past your ceiling. While we tune this feature, the button may not appear for every worker yet.

Each worker gets 20 questions per day. The higher-quality retries described above have their own smaller allowances — 10 “smarter” and 3 “best” retries a day — so they never eat into the 20 regular questions.

Counters reset at midnight in your organization’s timezone. In the iPhone app a worker can see how many they have left; on the web they get a clear message when they run out.

Questions, the answers, and the page citations are stored in your organization’s own Opzaco database, scoped to your organization like every other record. They give you a record of what workers needed help with.

Photos attached to a question are different: they live in temporary storage and are cleaned up as soon as the answer finishes, including when the worker cancels or loses connection. They are never written into your permanent photo storage. Cleanup is best-effort — a failed delete is logged rather than retried — so treat it as prompt disposal, not a guarantee of the exact moment.

Your content is not used to train AI models. Anthropic’s commercial terms contractually prohibit training on customer content.

The AI provider does not retain your content. Every AI request Opzaco makes sets zero-data-retention explicitly, which restricts processing to providers that do not keep your content at rest once they have responded. This is about the provider — the question and answer themselves are still stored in your own Opzaco records, as described above.

Requests are routed through the Vercel AI Gateway, which records usage totals for billing. Opzaco is configured to use Anthropic’s Claude models for every tier today. The no-training and gateway retention terms are contractual — ask Opzaco for the current provider agreements if your review needs them in writing.

An owner can switch Ask the Manual off for the whole organization at any time from Organization settings. Answers stop immediately for every worker; the button may linger on a screen that has not refreshed, but it will not answer. Nothing else in the app changes.

AI usage is metered per question and appears as an AI line item on your monthly invoice. A question at the Fast level costs a fraction of a cent to a few cents, depending on manual length and whether that manual was read recently. Escalations cost several times more, which is why they carry their own tighter daily limits. Ask Opzaco for current rates before budgeting against these figures — they move with provider pricing.