Project Totals appear when analysis is ready (and the wait got more fun)
The project page now hides the Project Totals card and Step 2 Scope Review until your room analysis actually has something to show. No more disabled buttons taunting you. No more "Loading…" subtitle staring back. When the analyzing spinner stops, both sections appear at once with real numbers and an actionable Draft Scope button.
What changed
Three things came together:
- Project Totals and Step 2 Scope Review stay hidden until after analysis. Before this update, the moment you added a single photo, both sections would slide into view — but Project Totals would just say "Loading…" forever because there were no analyzed dimensions to display, and Step 2's Draft Scope button was disabled with no way to know what was wrong. Now they wait for the actual signal. Nothing shows up until you've clicked Analyze and the room has finished.
- Project Totals lands open with real numbers. The cross-room dimension rollup now finishes inside the same analyze job as the photo read, so by the time the spinner stops, the card is fully populated. No more clicking ↻ Analyze. You just see your floor sqft, wall sqft, and perimeter sitting there ready to use.
- The analyzing wait got personality. While a room is processing — which is now a longer wait, because more work is happening up front — the status text rotates through real analysis observations ("Squinting at the corner," "Triangulating from a doorknob," "Counting outlets for scale") mixed with the AI being a little self-aware ("Thinking sideways," "Wishing I had x-ray vision," "Trying to smell the grout… right, can't smell a picture"). Sit on a long enough wait and you'll catch one of the rarer one-off jokes too.
What you'll notice in practice
- Drop a photo into a room with no notes yet. You'll see the Notes box flagged red. Nothing else on the page yet.
- Add a voice or text note. Still nothing below — you have to actually run analysis.
- Hit Analyze. Status spinner runs for a minute or two with the rotating copy. When it finishes, Project Totals appears already open with your numbers in it, and Step 2 Scope Review appears right below with an active Draft Scope button.
- Click Draft Scope. Goes fast now — typically 10–15 seconds — because the project synthesis was already prepared as part of the analyze job. Used to be the slow click in this flow; not anymore.
Why we made the analyze wait longer
Total time-to-proposal is actually the same or slightly faster than before — we just moved where you wait. The cross-room rollup (the work that builds your Project Totals from each room's analysis) used to run when you clicked Draft Scope. Now it runs at the end of analysis instead, so the room itself takes a bit longer but the Draft Scope click is fast. Net effect: the heavy wait happens while you can still scroll around the page, add more rooms, or step away — instead of staring at a spinner with nothing else to do.
If something still feels off
If you ever see Project Totals stuck on "Loading…" after a successful analysis (it shouldn't anymore, but just in case): reload the page. The card will pick up the numbers from your saved synthesis. If the Draft Scope AI returns an empty list — rare, but it can happen on a transient model hiccup — BidCraft now retries automatically, and if the retry also fails you'll see a clear message pointing you at what to add (a note, more photos) rather than a blank screen.
Full walkthroughs:
- How photo analysis works — what happens during the analyze wait.
- Editing project dimensions — what's in the Project Totals card and how to override.
- Reviewing the scope of work — what to do once Step 2 unlocks.