The Boat Is Fixed. The Invoice Is Still in Pieces.
A technician replaces a pump, adds two hours, and photographs the corroded fitting. The office has the estimate. Purchasing has the parts receipt.
A forward deployed AI engineer follows the job from diagnosis through customer approval, repair, quality review, and invoicing. A boatyard does not need an AI captain. It needs a clean work record.
Build the Contract Before the Connector
The agent reads technician notes, photos, estimates, and supplier documents. It proposes the vessel, job, labor, parts, issue, and billing treatment. Rules verify authorization, quantities, rates, and evidence. A person approves scope changes and customer charges.
OpenAPI 3.2.1 defines a standard description for HTTP APIs. In simple terms, each system agrees on the fields it accepts and returns before anyone writes the connector. This turns integration from guesswork into a testable contract.
Failures need structure too. RFC 9457 defines machine readable problem details for HTTP APIs. Instead of “sync failed,” the queue can say the work order is closed or the approval is missing.
Use six states: diagnosed, quoted, approved, performed, checked, posted. Only approved transitions reach the ERP. Repeated requests must return the same result, not invoice the owner twice.
Reuse the Boring Machinery
The reusable agentic asset is the connector, schema, extraction prompt, rules, approval queue, error model, audit log, and evaluation set. Over the past eight months, these parts have become easier to package and test. Yard policy remains specific. Generic automation is how tidy demos become expensive messes.
The ERP stays authoritative for inventory, labor, receivables, and accounting. AI proposes messy details. Code enforces state and arithmetic. People approve money and risk.
Measure the Handoff
Illustrative calculation: 45 weekly jobs at 14 minutes of reconciliation require 10.5 hours. At five minutes each, they require 3.75 hours. At an assumed loaded labor cost of $48 per hour, 6.75 recovered hours equal $324 of weekly capacity, not guaranteed profit or payroll savings.
Track unbilled labor, parts without job codes, approval age, failed postings, returned invoices, and first pass posting accuracy. Any cash improvement must be proven through actual invoices and collections.
If the repair is complete but finance cannot see it, the wrench did its job. The system did not.