Answers to the most common questions about TrunkSubmittal, the AI-powered submittal compliance review agent that automatically analyzes incoming submittals by comparing them against the relevant specification sections and any associated RFIs.

How submittals reach TrunkSubmittal:

TrunkSubmittal is the first of a suite of agents that detect document discrepancies and streamline compliance across construction workflows. As an AI-powered submittal compliance review agent, TrunkSubmittal is designed to proactively reduce risk and save time in construction workflows. It automatically analyzes incoming submittals by comparing them against the relevant specification sections and any associated RFIs (Requests for Information).

By using natural language processing, TrunkSubmittal analyzes unstructured data (i.e. unformatted text) and:

TrunkSubmittal addresses key pain points in the submittal review process:

Our Submittal Agent currently supports Product Data submittals, which include the following subtypes:

In addition to Product Data submittals, we also support the following document types and corresponding subtypes:

1.) Test Reports

2.) Certificates

3.) Operation & Maintenance (O&M) Manuals

4.) Sustainability and LEED

5.) Final Warranty

6.) Sample Warranty

7.) Qualifications

If you're one of the assigned users on the project as configured by your admin during setup, TrunkSubmittal will be accessible directly from your left-side menu under the “Agents” section.

As shown in the screenshot:

This view keeps you updated with the latest findings and gives you quick access to past and present submittal compliance data.

Here’s the step-by-step process:

There are three stages within the technical journey to trigger a submittal review in Trunk Tools.

Stage 1: The system decides whether to queue the submittal for processing.

First-Time Attachments

The submittal didn’t have any attachments before and now it has at least one new attachment (from anyone).

New Attachments from the Submitter

The submittal already had attachments before and the submitter adds at least one new file.

The system won’t start processing if:

If none of the trigger conditions are met, the system stops and does not check the submittal again unless it’s updated in the source system.

Stage 2: Our system does its thing on the back end to get the job queue rolling.

Stage 3: Our system determines eligibility of the submittal and publishes it to our system.

After stage 2, we check for the eligibility of the document. The eligibility criteria are as follows:

If all criteria are met, the submittal and supporting documents are passed from the TrunkText app to the our AI model for review. At this point, the submittal appears in the All Submittals table with the three dots in-progress status indicator.

Currently, those submittals won’t be automatically reviewed by TrunkSubmittal unless the spec connections exist in the structured data.

We offer a feature that allows users to manually trigger a review at any time. All you have to do is select the submittal(s), the spec section(s), and the RFIs and start the trigger. Please see the video here for visual details and instructions.

Yes! You can start a manual review any time by taking the following steps:

2. Following the next steps to select Submittals, Specs, and RFIs.

3. Dropping or selecting an existing Submittal from your Integration documents, then clicking ‘Select Spec Section’ to select the Specification, and lastly, optionally selecting RFIs.

TrunkSubmittal currently supports PDF documents up to 200MB in size, which should cover the vast majority of Submittals. However, if a document exceeds this limit, it will not be successfully processed by the agent.

During the initial setup of the TrunkSubmittal agent, the project manager selects which users should have access from a list of all users on the project. This allows the team to control visibility and ensure that only the relevant stakeholders, such as PEs, APMs, or Submittal Managers—receive the compliance analysis.

All selected users receive access to the same compliance analysis for each Submittal Analysis. TrunkSubmittal runs a single review, and the resulting findings, including compliant, partially compliant, or non-compliant flags, are shared with each authorized user.

There is no variation in analysis results between users. Everyone sees the same structured output and insights, ensuring consistent understanding and action across the team.

Each user has their own version of the artifacts generated by TrunkSubmittal. This includes the compliance analysis results and the draft email.

If a user makes edits or saves changes, those updates are only visible to that individual. The artifacts are not shared or synced across other users on the project.

We do review the entire specification, but the comparison is intentionally designed to use the submittal as the primary document. Rather than matching every line of the spec against the submittal (which could trigger false negatives), we focus on whether the submittal satisfies the relevant parts of the spec. If something critical is missing or mismatched, that’s when we flag it.

Yes, we’re doing a semantic comparison powered by a Large Language Model (LLM) rather than strict keyword matching. This means that if the submittal uses slightly different wording but captures the same technical intent as the spec, it won’t be flagged unnecessarily.

However, material changes or missing required standards will trigger alerts. We’re aiming for a balance between accuracy and flexibility.

Absolutely. The prompting logic we use includes explicit instructions to detect and appropriately interpret substitution requests, including common phrasing like “or equal” products. The system handles these cases with contextual awareness, so the system doesn’t automatically mark them as non-compliant.

Yes, Compliance reports can be downloaded as a Word document.

When a new submittal is created in the source system (e.g., Procore or ACC), our system receives a webhook event with the new submittal and ingests the associated file. We then process the file through our pipeline to prepare it for analysis.

Once the document is fully processed, TrunkSubmittal is triggered and completes its compliance review in approximately 5 minutes.

The ingestion and processing stage can take up to 30 minutes.

Yes, you may select an individual completed review, update the documents, and re-run the review with new documents.

“Distribute” is a function of our custom agents. When a user clicks “distribute” the submittal will be distributed to every user on that project as an artifact. It does not go away and becomes a permanent artifact on the project. Download is primarily used instead of distribute.