Grounded first, general second
Your documentation is searched before anything else, and an answer that came from it is labelled as such. An answer that did not is labelled too — the technician always knows which they are reading.
AI manual search
Search that understands the question and the error code
A technician’s question is half plain English and half exact strings. “Why does it keep locking out” needs meaning. “HK42FZ011” needs the exact characters. Tinker runs both and combines them.
Technician asks
What does code 33 mean on the Carrier 58MVC, and how do I clear it?
Tinker answers
Code 33 is a limit circuit lockout. The furnace has opened the limit switch during a heating cycle and locked out to protect the heat exchanger.
- Confirm the limit switch is closed with the blower running.
- Check the filter and return air path for restriction.
- Measure static pressure at the coil before resetting.
Safety: disconnect power at the service switch before removing the blower door.
Source: Carrier 58MVC Furnace Service Manual, page 118 — opens at that page.
What makes an answer trustworthy
A citation you can open
Each source names the document and the page and opens the original PDF at that page, through a short-lived private link. Nothing is public and nothing is permanent.
Room for a second source
A long manual will happily return ten near-identical passages. Tinker caps how much of the answer any one document can occupy, which is what makes a conflict between two documents visible.
An honest refusal
When nothing in your library supports an answer, Tinker says so in the same words every time, rather than producing something plausible.
Follow-up questions keep the thread
“What was that figure again?” searches with the earlier questions in mind, so a follow-up still finds the manual it refers to — and a follow-up about something else does not inherit the last answer’s citations.
Confidence, stated
An answer built on one weak match does not get presented with the same confidence as one two documents agree on.
The shape of an answer
Not a paragraph of prose. The structure a technician can work through with a meter in one hand.
- Direct answer
- What the thing actually is, in one or two sentences.
- Steps
- Ordered, in the sequence the source gives them.
- Tools and parts
- What the procedure calls for, named in the documentation rather than guessed.
- What you should see
- Expected readings and what they indicate — only where a source actually states the interpretation.
- Safety warnings
- Carried through from the source rather than invented, and shown before the steps they apply to.
- Sources
- The documents and approved fixes the answer used, each openable at the page.
How the search works, in more detail
How does Tinker search a manual?
Two ways at once. A semantic search finds pages that mean what the question means, even when the words differ. A keyword search finds exact strings — error codes, part numbers, model numbers — that meaning-based search blurs together. The results of both are combined, and the page that both agree on wins.
Why does it cite a page number instead of just answering?
Because on live equipment the answer has to be checkable. A citation naming the manual and the page, which opens the original PDF at that page, is the difference between a tool a technician trusts and one they stop using after it is wrong once.
What happens when the manuals do not cover the question?
Tinker says so. It does not fall back to guessing from general knowledge and present it as though it came from your documentation. Where your policy allows it, it may consult the open web and label those sources clearly as web sources, not company documentation.
Can it read scanned manuals?
It reads the text layer of a PDF. Many scanned manuals have been run through OCR already and work fine. A scan with no text layer at all is marked as failed rather than silently indexed as an empty document, so you know to source a better copy.
Does it use manuals that are still processing?
No. Only a document that has finished processing successfully is ever searched. A manual that is still being read, or that failed, cannot appear in an answer.
Does it show the diagrams?
Yes. Figures on the cited page are extracted when the manual is processed and shown alongside the answer, so a wiring diagram arrives with the procedure that refers to it.
See it on your own manuals
We will set up a pilot with your documentation, your technicians, and your equipment — so you are judging Tinker on your own work, not on a demo dataset.