Voice AI: How Hunter Builds Estimates in 3 Minutes

Writing estimates is one of the least favorite parts of being a contractor. You walk a job, take notes on the back of a receipt, drive back to the office, open a spreadsheet, and spend 45 minutes pricing out materials and labor. Then you do it again tomorrow for a different customer. Multiply that across a week and you're losing hours that could be spent on billable work.

Hunter changes that. It's a voice-powered AI estimation tool built into FairTradeWorker. You talk through what you see on the job site, and Hunter turns that into a structured, professional estimate in about three minutes.

How It Works

Open the FairTradeWorker app on your phone. Tap the microphone. Start describing the job the same way you'd explain it to your lead carpenter or your supplier.

“Kitchen gut and remodel. About 180 square feet. Ripping out existing cabinets, countertops, and flooring. New custom cabinets, quartz countertops, LVP flooring. Moving the sink to the island, so we need plumbing rough-in. Adding four recessed lights and under-cabinet lighting. Client wants a tile backsplash, subway style.”

That's it. Hunter listens, extracts every detail, and runs it through ConstructionAI, our custom-trained estimation model built on 18,000+ real construction projects. Within seconds, you've got a full estimate broken down by CSI division.

What You Get Back

Hunter doesn't give you a single number and call it a day. You get a structured breakdown that looks like something you'd spend an hour building in Excel:

• CSI Division Breakdown: Every line item organized by trade division. Demolition, rough carpentry, plumbing, electrical, finishes. Each with labor hours, material costs, and equipment if applicable.
• Material Takeoff: Quantities and unit costs for every material Hunter identified. Cabinets, countertop square footage, flooring, tile, lighting fixtures, plumbing fittings.
• Labor Estimates: Hours by trade, using current rate data for your market. Not national averages from 2019. Actual pricing that reflects what tradespeople charge in your area.
• Timeline Projection: Estimated project duration based on the scope, accounting for trade sequencing and typical lead times.
• Exclusions and Notes: Hunter flags what it didn't include so you can add anything that's missing before sending the estimate to your client.

The AI Behind It

Hunter isn't using a generic language model to guess at prices. It runs on ConstructionAI, a custom model we built from scratch specifically for construction estimation. The training data comes from real completed projects with real costs, not national averages scraped from the internet.

That means when Hunter prices out a plumbing rough-in for a kitchen island, it's pulling from thousands of similar scopes with known outcomes. The result is an estimate that's close enough to use as a starting point and detailed enough to adjust into a final bid.

Edit, Adjust, Send

No AI estimate should go out the door without a contractor's eyes on it. Hunter gives you the foundation; you make it yours. Every line item is editable. Swap materials, adjust labor rates for your crew, add line items Hunter missed, remove ones that don't apply. The estimate recalculates in real time as you make changes.

When it's ready, generate a clean PDF with your company branding and send it directly to the homeowner through the platform. Or export it to QuickBooks and handle it through your existing workflow. Either way, what used to take 45 minutes at a desk now takes 3 minutes on the job site and 5 minutes of review when you have a free moment.

Who Gets Access

Hunter is available on the Solo plan ($29/month) and above. Free tier contractors can still bid on jobs and use the platform, but Hunter's voice estimation and ConstructionAI-powered breakdowns are part of the paid experience. For most contractors, the time saved on a single estimate pays for the entire month.

We built Hunter because contractors shouldn't need to be good at spreadsheets to price a job accurately. The skill is in knowing what a project takes. Hunter just translates that knowledge into a format that wins work.