CO Narrative & Budget Commentary

This article covers two related AI features that help you document and explain financial decisions on your project: the Change Order Narrative Writer and the Budget Health Commentary panel. Both produce observations based on your actual data — never predictions or financial advice.

Requirements

Pro or Enterprise subscription. AI features are not available on the Free tier.
Anthropic API key. A valid key must be saved in Settings → AI Configuration. See BYOK Setup.

Change Order Narrative Writer

Writing change order justifications is one of the least enjoyable parts of construction administration. The narrative needs to be professional, factual, and detailed enough to withstand scrutiny from owners, lenders, and inspectors. The AI Change Order Narrative Writer generates a draft justification based on the change order's metadata and your recent daily logs.

Generating a Narrative

Open a change order. Navigate to the Change Orders tab in your project and open the change order you want to document. Make sure the change order has a description, cost impact, and reason filled in — the AI uses this information to generate the narrative.

Click "Generate Justification." The button appears inside the Change Order modal. The AI sends the change order metadata along with relevant daily log entries to generate a 100–250 word professional justification.

Review the draft. The generated narrative appears in the modal with three safeguards visible (described below). Read the entire narrative carefully before proceeding.

Three Safeguards

Change order narratives carry legal and financial weight. Baulit enforces three explicit safeguards before you can use an AI-generated narrative:

Safeguard	What It Does
Amber disclaimer banner	A visible warning at the top of the generated narrative reminding you that this content was AI-generated and must be reviewed for accuracy.
Confirmation checkbox	A checkbox labeled "I have reviewed this AI-generated content" that you must check before the Use button becomes active. You cannot apply the narrative without explicitly confirming review.
Explicit action button	A "Use This Narrative" button that only activates after you check the confirmation box. This prevents accidental application of unreviewed content.

Editing, Discarding, and Regenerating

After the AI generates a narrative, you have three options:

Use This Narrative. Check the confirmation box and click the button to apply the text to your change order. You can still edit it afterward in the change order form.
Discard. Click Discard to throw away the generated text and write your own narrative from scratch. No AI call is consumed for discarding.
Regenerate. Click Regenerate to get a fresh draft. The AI produces a new narrative each time, which may vary in wording and emphasis. Each regeneration counts as one AI call.

The AI drafts, the builder decides. The AI bases the narrative on the data you have entered in Baulit. If the change order metadata is incomplete or your daily logs are sparse, the narrative will lack substance. Always verify that every claim in the narrative matches reality before applying it to your change order.

Budget Health Commentary

The Budget Health Commentary provides an on-demand AI analysis of your project's budget status. It appears as a collapsible panel within the Budget Detail Report and gives you a plain-language reading of where your budget stands based on actual cost data.

Accessing the Commentary

Open the Budget Detail Report. Navigate to Reports → Budget Detail in your project. This report shows your cost categories, estimated vs. actual spending, and variance data.

Expand the AI Commentary panel. The panel is gated on your API key — it only appears when you have a valid Anthropic key configured. If your project has no budget data entered, the panel is disabled with a message explaining why.

Click "Generate Commentary." The AI analyzes your budget data and produces a summary of observations. This typically takes 5 to 10 seconds.

What the Commentary Covers

The AI examines your cost categories, compares estimated vs. actual spending, and highlights noteworthy patterns. A typical commentary might note:

Which cost categories are over or under their estimated budgets
The magnitude of variances in dollar terms and percentages
Categories where no actual costs have been recorded yet
The overall budget health based on what has been spent so far

What the Commentary Will Never Do

The Budget Health Commentary is strictly limited to observations about your existing data. It will never:

Forecast future costs or project final budgets
Make predictions about overruns or savings
Offer financial advice or recommendations
Express confidence levels about budget outcomes
Suggest how to allocate remaining budget

Blacklist enforcement. The AI system has a built-in blacklist of forbidden words including "forecast," "projection," "confidence," "predict," and similar terms. If the AI accidentally uses any of these words, the system automatically retries the generation to produce a compliant response. This ensures the commentary stays within the bounds of factual observation.

Safeguards

Like the Change Order Narrative, the Budget Health Commentary includes safety controls:

Amber disclaimer banner. Clearly marks the content as AI-generated analysis.
Confirmation checkbox. You must check "I have reviewed this AI-generated content" before relying on the analysis for any decision.

These safeguards exist because budget data is sensitive and consequential. A misinterpreted number or incorrectly stated variance could lead to poor financial decisions on your project.

Usage and Costs

Each generation — whether a change order narrative or a budget commentary — counts as one AI call against your monthly usage limits. Regenerating a narrative counts as an additional call. Discarding a generated result does not consume a call.

Tips for Both Features

Enter good data first. Both features are only as good as the data in your project. Complete change order metadata and thorough budget entries produce significantly better AI output.
Use narratives for documentation, not decision-making. The AI writes narratives to document decisions you have already made. It should not be driving your change order strategy.
Share commentary with caution. Budget commentary is useful for internal review but may not be appropriate to share directly with owners or lenders without editing for context and tone.
Keep daily logs current. The Change Order Narrative Writer references recent daily logs to support the justification. If your logs are sparse, the narrative will lack supporting evidence.