AI Disclosure

Last updated September 20, 2026.

Plain-language summary: When you use Ask OakTend or any other feature marked AI-generated, you are talking to a computer program, not a person. It is built on Anthropic's Claude. It can give home maintenance guidance and rough cost ballparks. It is not a licensed contractor, inspector, engineer, plumber, electrician, or attorney, and it cannot replace a permit or an inspection. If you smell gas, see sparks, see water intrusion, or suspect a structural problem, stop and call a licensed professional or 911 or your utility. We also use some automated, rules-based tools behind the scenes; none of them can deny you service without a path to a human at support@oaktend.com.

1. You are talking to an AI, not a person

Ask OakTend and the other features listed below are software. No human writes, reviews, or approves an individual answer before you see it. Every answer, cost figure, document read, or drafted message from these features is generated by an artificial intelligence model, specifically Anthropic's Claude, running on Anthropic's paid commercial API. OakTend does not train its own model and does not fine-tune Claude on your data.

The in-chat disclosure shown at the top of every Ask OakTend session reads:

"You're chatting with an AI assistant, not a person."

This line, or one materially like it, is shown every time the chat opens, not just the first time, consistent with California's bot disclosure law (Business and Professions Code sections 17940-17941).

Answer questions about home maintenance, home systems, and general upkeep
Give rough cost ballparks for repairs and replacements
Suggest maintenance tasks based on your home's systems and age
Read and summarize an uploaded quote, invoice, or document, and flag things that look missing or unusual
Draft a first-pass job post, apply message, estimate, or follow-up for you to review and edit before sending
Pull structured details (systems, ages, warranty dates) out of an uploaded photo or PDF for you to confirm or correct

3. What it cannot do

Ask OakTend and every other AI feature in the app is not, and is not a substitute for:

A licensed contractor, plumber, electrician, roofer, or HVAC technician
A licensed home inspector, structural engineer, or other licensed engineer
An attorney or legal advice of any kind
A financial advisor, tax professional, or insurance adjuster
A permit, code inspection, or any government approval
A firm quote, an appraisal, or a binding offer of any kind

Nothing the AI generates has been reviewed by a licensed professional before it reaches you. It can be confidently wrong, including about prices, safety, code requirements, and what a document says. Treat every AI-generated answer as a draft to check, not a fact to act on without confirming it yourself.

4. Safety: stop and call a professional

If you notice any of the following, stop what you are doing and contact a licensed professional, and if it is an emergency, call 911 or your gas or electric utility right away, before relying on anything Ask OakTend tells you:

The smell of gas
Sparks, burning smells, or exposed wiring
Water intrusion, active leaks, or flooding
Any sign of structural damage (cracks, sagging, shifting)

Ask OakTend may remind you of this, but the responsibility to stop and get real, licensed help in an emergency is yours, not the AI's.

5. Cost figures are ballparks, not quotes

Any price, cost range, or estimate that Ask OakTend, the quote analyzer, or any other OakTend tool gives you is a rough ballpark for orientation only. The in-app disclaimer shown with these figures reads:

"OakTend's cost figures are ballpark estimates. Confirm with a local pro before you commit."

These figures are not appraisals, not offers, not quotes, and not a promise of what any contractor will actually charge. Get real quotes from licensed pros before you commit to any project.

6. What data is sent to Anthropic

When you use an AI feature, your question and relevant context are sent to Anthropic's API to generate a response. For a homeowner using Ask OakTend, that can include your first name, property address, city and state, basic facts about your home, the county assessed value and our estimated value if we have them, your home systems, up to thirty (30) of your open maintenance tasks, up to six (6) of your recent issues, short summaries of documents you have saved, your recent job posts, any photo or file you attach, and the text of your question. Section 5 of our Privacy Policy has the full list. For a contractor using the pro tools, it can include their own account context, such as trades and service area, license and verification status, and the content of an uploaded quote, invoice, or past-job document.

OakTend uses the paid, commercial Anthropic API, not a free or consumer product. Under Anthropic's commercial terms, API inputs and outputs are not used to train Anthropic's models. Nothing you send to Ask OakTend is used to build an advertising profile of you, by OakTend or by Anthropic.

7. Where your chat history lives

Ask OakTend conversation transcripts are not stored on OakTend's servers. They are kept only in your own browser's local storage, on your own device. If you clear your browser data, switch devices, or use a different browser, your chat history will not follow you. OakTend's server stores only usage counters (how many questions you have asked), not the content of your questions or the AI's answers.

8. Rate limits

Ask OakTend has daily and short-burst usage limits, because each question has a real cost to us at the AI vendor. During our preview everyone has the same daily limit. When memberships open, OakTend Plus and OakTend Pro members will get higher limits than free accounts. When you hit a limit, the assistant tells you so rather than failing silently.

9. Reporting a bad answer

If Ask OakTend or another AI feature gives you an answer that is wrong, unsafe, or otherwise concerning, tell us. Contact support@oaktend.com, or use the Help page inside the app if you have an account. We review reports to improve prompts and fix bad behavior, though we do not review every conversation as it happens.

10. Other automated features

OakTend also uses smaller, non-AI-chat automated tools behind the scenes:

Fraud and risk scoring: a rules-based system (not machine learning) that looks at salted, one-way hashes of signals like device, IP address, phone number, parcel, and email. It flags suspicious activity for review; by default it does not automatically block a purchase.
Job routing: a posted job is shown to contractors who listed that trade and serve that area.
Document field extraction: automatically pulls structured fields (like a system type or a warranty date) out of an uploaded document or photo for you to confirm or correct before anything is saved to your account.

None of these automated systems makes a final decision that denies you service, access, or a purchase without a path to human review. If any automated decision affects your account, you can always reach a person by writing to support@oaktend.com.

11. In-chat disclosure text

The following one-line disclosure is shown at the top of every Ask OakTend session, before you ask anything:

"You're chatting with an AI assistant, not a person."

See the OakTend Terms of Service for what OakTend is and is not responsible for, and the OakTend Privacy Policy at oaktend.com/privacy for the complete account of what we collect and how it is used.

13. Contact

OakTend LLC, a California limited liability company

2108 N Street, Suite N, Sacramento, CA 95816

Support: support@oaktend.com

Legal: legal@oaktend.com

Phone: (714) 468-5480

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