Elitek, Precision Diagnostics, and AirPro Diagnostics email a PDF invoice. Somebody at the shop has to read it, type the operations into the estimate, calculate the DRP-compliant markup without triggering an audit, zero out the tax if applicable to sublet labor, and manually attach the PDF to the insurance portal. It is a twelve-minute round trip per invoice, run twenty times a month, by somebody who should be defending supplements. Agent 02 watches the accounts-payable inbox, OCRs the invoice, pulls the shop's DRP contract profile from the SMS, applies the exact markup math, creates the manual sublet line items via the estimating API, and attaches the original PDF to the workfile. Invoice-to-billable line in under 90 seconds.
Sublet vendors are no longer optional. With 60% of repairs now requiring at least one ADAS calibration and OEM-specific scan tool coverage expanding faster than any single shop can license, the modern MSO runs an average of 20 sublet invoices per month — calibrations, programming, module configurations, high-voltage diagnostics on EV workfiles, and network architecture troubleshooting beyond in-house capability.
The vendors are excellent at the technical work. They are universally indifferent to the shop's estimating workflow. Elitek sends a one-page PDF with line items like "Static Forward-Facing Camera Calibration — 2023 Toyota Highlander — $385." Precision Diagnostics sends a two-page PDF with a pre-scan summary, a post-scan summary, and a separate charge for the trip. AirPro sends a JSON-adjacent PDF with OEM scan tool session IDs that the adjuster will demand to see. None of these arrive as structured data. All of them require a human to transcribe.
The transcription is the easy part. The hard part is the markup math. Every DRP contract defines a different sublet markup allowance. State Farm's Select Service matrix caps sublet markup at a specific percentage. GEICO ARX runs a different cap. USAA allows a higher markup but requires the original invoice attached. Progressive wants the markup disclosed as a separate labor line. The administrative assistant or estimator must remember which carrier is on which workfile and apply the exact allowed markup — overshoot and the adjuster audits the line and disputes payment; undershoot and the shop has just volunteered gross profit back to the insurer.
Then comes the upload. The original PDF must be attached to the workfile via the SMS image attachment endpoint so the adjuster can verify the vendor actually performed the calibration. In CCC that is a drag-and-drop into the workfile; in Mitchell it is a call to /api/v1/ImageAttachment; in Audatex it is a portal upload with a mandatory category tag. If the PDF is missing, the supplement is rejected and the shop eats the sublet cost.
The full round trip — email open, PDF read, VIN lookup, RO match, markup calc, line entry, tax zero-out, PDF upload, email reply to vendor confirming receipt — consumes 10 to 14 minutes of administrative time per invoice. At 20 invoices a month, that is 4 to 5 hours of purely mechanical work. And because humans tire and adjuster matrices change quarterly, the markup math is wrong often enough that shops silently leave roughly $250 of monthly gross profit on the table.
Sublet reconciliation is not just an admin drag. It is a silent margin leak — the markup under-capture on calibrations alone exceeds the cost of half the agents in this catalog.
The trigger is an inbound email with a PDF attachment, from a sender address on the shop's recognized-vendor allowlist. The agent subscribes to the shop's accounts-payable or estimating inbox via Gmail API, Microsoft Graph, or IMAP (depending on the shop's mail provider) and fires on message.received events where the sender domain matches a configured vendor profile.
Vendor allowlists are shop-configured during onboarding. The default list includes Elitek Vehicle Services (@elitekvs.com), Precision Diagnostics (@precisiondiagnosticsco.com), AirPro Diagnostics (@airprodiagnostics.com), asTech (@astech.com), and OEChoice. New vendors are added by the shop in under a minute.
// Trigger payload (normalized email event) { "eventType": "email.received", "inboxId": "ap@shop-7741.com", "from": "billing@elitekvs.com", "subject": "Invoice #E-2026-44821 — RO 041532", "vendorProfile": { "id": "VEND-ELITEK", "category": "ADAS_CALIBRATION" }, "attachments": [ { "name": "Invoice_E-2026-44821.pdf", "mimeType": "application/pdf", "sizeBytes": 184622 } ], "bodyText": "Please find attached invoice for RO 041532...", "receivedAtUtc": "2026-04-15T14:22:31Z" }
Agent 02 runs a six-stage routine. Every stage is deterministic and auditable. The OCR stage uses Anthropic's multimodal vision to extract structured fields from the PDF. The markup stage is pure arithmetic against the carrier matrix — no judgment. Nothing writes back until the RO match confidence exceeds a configured threshold.
Submit the PDF to Claude's vision layer with a structured extraction schema: vendor name, invoice number, invoice date, vehicle VIN, RO number if present, line items (operation + cost), subtotals, taxes, and total. Confidence scores returned per field.
Query the SMS by VIN and by RO number (if present). Confirm the vehicle is active and in an estimating state. If match confidence falls below 0.85, short-circuit and route to the estimator inbox with the PDF attached — no silent writes on ambiguous matches.
Pull the carrier + program from the workfile. Look up the sublet markup allowance in the shop's DRP contract matrix (e.g., "State Farm Select Service — sublet markup capped at 25%; original invoice must attach; markup disclosed as separate labor line").
Calculate cost × (1 + cap%) to the cent. Determine whether sales tax applies to sublet labor in the shop's state (varies by jurisdiction). Determine whether the carrier requires markup disclosed separately vs. folded. Produce the line-item structure the SMS expects.
Call the estimating API (Mitchell Transactional, CCC Secure Share, or Audatex) to create the sublet line items under the correct labor category. Tag them "Agent-Proposed" with the vendor invoice number in the line note for adjuster visibility.
POST the source PDF to /api/v1/ImageAttachment (Mitchell) or the CCC Secure Share workfile attachment endpoint. Tag the attachment with the correct visibility category (insurer-visible, internal-only, or customer-facing per carrier requirement).
The estimator opens the workfile in the morning. A new sublet line is already in the estimate, the markup is mathematically correct for this carrier's matrix, and the original PDF is attached. A one-line note in the workfile reads "Agent-Proposed — Elitek Invoice E-2026-44821 — Review." One click to accept. Supplement ready to submit.
/api/v1/ImageAttachmentOne minute of agent runtime replaces twelve minutes of administrative swivel-chair data entry — and protects $191.25 of markup the carrier matrix explicitly allows.
The economic case for Agent 02 is two-pronged: hard-dollar markup capture (the shop systematically undercharges markup on sublet today) and soft-dollar admin reclamation (the hours spent transcribing PDFs disappear). Both compound across vendor invoices per month.
Annualized, Agent 02 returns approximately $5,160 per shop per year on a low-complexity integration. At scale across a 6-location MSO, that is $31k/year — before counting the downstream effect of faster supplement submission (sublet lines are frequently the long pole that delays an entire supplement by 48–72 hours).
A reconciled sublet line unblocks the entire supplement. Cycle time compresses by hours, rental exposure shrinks, and the cashier collects earlier. Agent 02's reported $430/month is the floor — not the ceiling.
Agent 02 integrates three surfaces: the shop's accounts-payable email inbox (via Gmail API, Microsoft Graph, or IMAP), the estimating system's write-back API, and the shop's DRP matrix configuration store.
| Function | Endpoint / Source | Auth Model |
|---|---|---|
| Inbox subscription (Gmail) | users.messages.watch | OAuth 2.0 + Pub/Sub |
| Inbox subscription (Outlook) | MS Graph /subscriptions | OAuth 2.0 + app cert |
| Inbox subscription (IMAP) | IMAP IDLE on shop server | App password + TLS |
| PDF OCR / extraction | Anthropic Messages API, vision | Platform API key |
| RO lookup by VIN | GET /workfiles?vin={vin} | Shop SMS OAuth |
| Sublet line creation (Mitchell) | POST /api/v1/RepairOrders/{id}/Lines | OAuth 2.0 + client cert |
| PDF attachment (Mitchell) | POST /api/v1/ImageAttachment | OAuth 2.0 + client cert |
| Workfile attach (CCC) | POST /workfiles/{id}/attachments | CCC Secure Share OAuth |
| DRP matrix lookup | Internal config store | Private, shop-scoped |
The routine is deliberately narrow. The agent does not reason about whether a calibration was necessary; it reconciles what the vendor performed against what the carrier will pay for, and it routes to human review on any ambiguity.
// Agent 02 — Routine: sublet_reconciler_v1.2 MISSION Convert an inbound sublet vendor PDF invoice into a correctly marked-up, DRP-compliant line-item entry in the shop's SMS, with the original PDF attached to the workfile. INPUT - email_payload.json (sender, subject, attachments) - invoice.pdf (the attached vendor invoice) - vendor_profile.json (category, default line mappings) STEPS 1. Run multimodal OCR on invoice.pdf. Extract: vendor name, invoice #, invoice date, VIN, RO number if printed, line items (description + dollar amount), taxes, total. Return per-field confidence. 2. If any critical field confidence < 0.85, route to estimator inbox. Do not proceed. 3. Match the invoice to an open workfile. Primary key: RO number. Fallback: VIN + open-status filter. If multiple matches, route to estimator. 4. Load the DRP contract profile for the matched workfile's carrier. Extract: sublet markup cap %, markup disclosure rule (folded vs. separate line), sales-tax applicability in the shop's state, required PDF attachment category. 5. Compute billable = cost × (1 + cap%). Round to cents. Compute disclosed markup if required as separate line. Zero tax on sublet labor if state-exempt. 6. Create line items in the SMS via the appropriate API. Tag each line "Agent-Proposed" with the vendor invoice number in the line note. 7. Attach invoice.pdf to the workfile via ImageAttachment (Mitchell) or attachments endpoint (CCC/Audatex) with correct visibility tag. 8. Emit a summary record to the agent's audit log. CONSTRAINTS - Never exceed the DRP cap%. If the vendor cost itself looks inflated vs. historical median for the same operation, flag for review but do not modify vendor cost. - Never write to a closed or paid workfile. - Never silently write on confidence < 0.85. - If PDF is password-protected or OCR fails, route to human. - All writes are idempotent by invoice # (retry-safe). OUTPUT SCHEMA { invoiceId: string, workfileId: string, createdLines: [{ lineId, operation, cost, markup, billable }], attachmentId: string, routedToHuman: boolean, routingReason?: string, runtimeMs: number }
Agent 02 is the lowest-friction agent in the catalog. It touches no estimating judgment, requires no shadow mode for correctness (OCR accuracy is measurable against vendor invoices on day one), and delivers recovered markup from the first invoice it processes. Typical go-live: 10 business days.
Provision OAuth to the shop's AP inbox. Configure vendor allowlist (top 5 sublet providers by volume). Mirror the shop's DRP matrix into the agent's contract-rule store. Validate OCR accuracy against 15 historical invoices (target ≥95% field accuracy).
Walk every active DRP program in the shop's book. Encode each as a machine-readable rule: cap%, disclosure style, tax behavior, attachment category. This is the one-time heavy lift. Most shops have 6–10 active DRPs; expect ~4 hours of estimator lead time to validate.
Flip on write-back to the SMS. First invoices are reviewed 1:1 with the estimator lead for three days. Confidence threshold for silent writes starts conservative (0.90) and relaxes to 0.85 once the shop has seen ~25 clean runs.
Days 1–3: inbox wiring + OCR validation. Days 4–7: DRP rule encoding. Days 8–10: supervised live writes. Week 3+: autonomous operation, estimator reviews only flagged exceptions. Payback period: first invoice processed (negative-cost from day one).
The markup math is already in the DRP contract the shop signed. Agent 02 does not introduce new rules — it enforces the ones the shop already agreed to but does not consistently execute. That is why it pays for itself in week one.