Pylon + AI: 25 tools, and the signed quote stops being retyped
Pylon runs on a connector we build and maintain ourselves, with 25 tools across projects, designs, quotes, hardware prices, materials and STCs. The quote a customer signs can now be read line by line, priced off your own catalogue, and checked against what the proposal actually said.
The customer signs the proposal on Tuesday. On Wednesday somebody opens Pylon in one window and the job system in the other and types the quote across, line by line, panel by panel, hoping the totals come out the same at the end.
They usually do. When they don’t, nobody finds out until the invoice.
Pylon is now live on FloConnector, on a connector we build and maintain ourselves, with 25 tools. That is Pylon the solar design and proposal software, not the customer support desk that shares its name. Most of this post is about what those tools reach. Some of it is about a number in Pylon’s API that looks like the balance owing and isn’t.
YouHawthorn Road signed this morning. What's on the quote?
ClaudeThe 6.6 kW design they accepted: 15 Jinko 440 W panels, a Fronius Primo 5.0 inverter, balance of system, a switchboard upgrade from your materials list, and installation. $8,950 including GST, less 39 STCs at $37, so $7,507. The $1,400 Solar Victoria rebate comes off the balance owing, which is $6,107 before the deposit.
That is the proposal, the line-item editor and a calculator, read in the time it takes to read it.
What “25 tools” covers
| Area | Tools | What it reaches |
|---|---|---|
| Projects | 5 | The site, the customer, the sold status, and a way to start a new one |
| Designs and their quotes | 4 | System size, components, every quote line, proposal links, job sheets |
| Hardware catalogue and prices | 4 | Datasheets by SKU, and what you charge for each panel and inverter |
| Materials | 4 | Your own list: cabling, isolators, labour lines, switchboard work |
| Team, files and add-ons | 5 | Who owns what, and the optional extras on your proposals |
| Activity | 2 | Proposals signed and shared, payments received, projects changed |
| Incentives | 1 | STC count and zone for an Australian install |
| 25 tools | 20 read, 5 write | 8 flagged sensitive |
That is Pylon’s published design-side API, plus the parts a token can reach that Pylon hasn’t written up yet. Your materials catalogue is the main one of those: it isn’t in Pylon’s API documentation at all, so we mapped it against a live team and tested every call before shipping it.
Every one of the 25 has been run against a live Pylon team, once on our development stack and again on production. 24 of them did their job. The 25th, creating a project, was tested as far as Pylon allows, which is further down.
The quote, line by line
pylon_get_design_quote returns every line on a design: the panels and inverter with their quantities, balance of system, labour, rebates, the STC deduction, and the lines you’ve hidden from the customer’s proposal. Ask for the customer’s view and the hidden ones drop out, leaving exactly what they were shown.
Pylon hands totals back as floating point, so $626.00 arrives as 62599.99999960001. The connector rounds totals to whole cents, rebuilds the subtotal, tax and total from the lines, and checks its total against Pylon’s. The answer is in the result as totals_agree, so a quote that doesn’t add up says so rather than looking fine.
Then there is the number that looks like the balance owing.
Pylon’s design summary carries a field called amount_payable_formatted. It is the total less the deposit. It ignores rebates and loans, which in Victoria are often the biggest lines on the page.
We checked the rebuilt figure against Pylon’s own web proposal, to the cent, before trusting it.
Your prices, not the catalogue’s
Pylon prices a design from what you’ve told it each component costs. Those prices are readable here, newest first, by component type, SKU or your own product code, with the history behind each one.
pylon_set_component_price changes what Pylon adds for a component on every future design. It doesn’t touch designs that already exist, it keeps the old price as history, and it is flagged sensitive, because a price change is the kind of thing a person should have asked for.
Materials work the same way: read them, search them, add one with its price, cost and markup, change one, archive one. One Pylon habit is handled for you here. Price, cost, markup percentage and markup amount are replaced as a group: send a new price on its own and Pylon resets the cost to nothing. We found that by watching a $30 cost vanish during testing. The update tool now reads the current figures first and sends them back with your change, so changing the price changes the price.
Starting a project never spends credits
Pylon charges credits when a project is committed, about 50 for a site with high-resolution imagery. No tool in this connector can commit a project or spend a credit, and that is enforced when the connector loads, not left to a description.
There are two ways to start one.
A draft, through the API. pylon_create_project makes an uncommitted project at an address, for a person to confirm in Pylon. It checks your reference number first and refuses rather than making a duplicate. Pylon switches this feature on team by team, though, and it is off by default. Your token’s permissions make no difference: we tested a token with every permission and got the same refusal. If your team doesn’t have it, the tool says so in Pylon’s own words, and Pylon support is the people to ask.
A link, for everyone else. pylon_build_project_link makes a link that opens Pylon’s map at the site, with the customer’s name, email, phone and reference number already filled in. A person opens it, sees the credit cost on screen, and clicks Confirm location. The connector makes the link and stops there. It spends nothing and changes nothing.
What it will not do, on purpose
It cannot delete anything. Pylon’s API has deletes for designs, prices and materials behind a separate permission. We didn’t ship any of them. Projects and materials can be archived, which hides them and can be undone.
It cannot spend your credits, as above.
It doesn’t upload files. Pylon’s upload takes raw file bytes, which nothing in a chat can supply, and unused uploads expire anyway. The file tools read what’s already there.
Pylon’s CRM is not in this release. Pylon sells its CRM as a separate per-user subscription on top of design. This connector covers design, quoting and pricing, which every Pylon team has.
One thing to know rather than avoid: changes made through the API don’t appear in Pylon’s activity feed. Only changes made in the app do. Your FloConnector call log records every call the AI makes, so the audit trail lives there.
STCs for an Australian install
pylon_calculate_stcs answers the question installers get asked before there is a design at all: how many certificates will this earn? Give it the system size and the postcode and it returns the STC count, the zone and the deeming period, from Pylon’s own calculator. A 6.6 kW system in postcode 3000 is 39 STCs in zone 4. Pass a design and battery STCs are counted from the batteries actually on it.
Once it is more than a conversation’s worth
Ask about one design and the numbers fit in the chat. Ask what every design you’ve quoted this quarter came to, and they don’t.
At that point the connector loads the set into a temporary, in-memory analytics workspace, the model queries the aggregate, and the rows never enter the conversation. There is more on how that works and why it is not a code sandbox, but you don’t have to do anything to get it.
Connecting is a pasted token
Pylon doesn’t offer a sign-in-and-approve flow for integrations, so someone on your team creates an API token in Pylon under Settings, API, with read, write and update permissions, and pastes it into FloConnector. That’s the setup. Leave delete unticked: nothing here uses it.
A token reaches one Pylon team, so it’s one Pylon team per workspace. The token reaches the whole team, so the control sits on our side, in the profile.
A profile decides which of the 25 tools a given endpoint publishes and who on your team can use it. Describe what it’s for in your own words and we switch on the ones it needs. Or make it read only: quotes, designs, prices and STCs to ask about, nothing that changes. For most teams that is the right first month. The price-setting tool is the one to leave off until you trust the rest.
Your Pylon token never goes near the model either way. We hold it encrypted, and the AI only ever gets to ask. That is how credentials work on every connector we run. If you delete the token in Pylon, the next call fails cleanly and the connection is marked for reconnecting, rather than failing quietly behind an “active” badge.
How to connect Pylon to Claude
- Create a FloConnector workspace and open the Pylon connector
- In Pylon, go to Settings, API, and create a token with read, write and update
- Paste it into FloConnector
- Create a profile, describe what it is for, and save
- Copy that profile’s endpoint into Claude as a custom connector
- Ask it something. “What’s on the quote for our most recent signed project?” is a good first test
Common questions
Is this the Pylon support desk? No. This is Pylon at getpylon.com, the solar design and proposal software. The support platform at usepylon.com is a different company.
Can it spend our Pylon credits? No. No tool can commit a project, and committing is the only thing that spends credits. A project link shows the credit cost to the person who opens it, and only their click spends anything.
Why does creating a project say our team doesn’t have access? Pylon switches project creation on per team, and it is off unless you’ve asked. It isn’t a permission on your token. Pylon support can turn it on, and until then a project link does the same job with one click from a person.
Can it get our quote into the job system? It reads every line, quantity and price on the design. With Simpro or ServiceM8 in the same workspace, the AI can read the quote in Pylon and write it onto the job in one conversation.
Can it delete something by accident? There is no delete in the connector. Archiving a project or a material is the strongest change it can make, and both can be undone.
Does it work with ChatGPT as well as Claude? Your Pylon MCP endpoint is a standard connector, so it works with any client that supports them. If the term is new, we wrote a plain-English explainer.
Do I need Pylon’s permission? No. The token is one your own team creates. FloConnector is an independent connector built on Pylon’s API, not an official Pylon integration. Pylon is a trademark of its owner.
What does it cost? Pylon is included on every plan, see pricing. New accounts get free credits to try it. It is in beta, which means connectable today, with every one of the 25 tools exercised against a live Pylon team, twice, and still proving itself in the wild.
25 tools. Read the quote they signed, rather than retyping it.
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