Changelog
What shipped, when.
Backdated release log of LouieAuto's production evolution. 71 modules, one operator, four quarters in live deployment.
Louie Live — ambient floor AI, four modes
- Louie Live shipped — Voice-first earpiece advisor for the showroom floor. Mobile PWA at
/louie-live. Works with AirPods, earbuds, or phone speaker. - Active mode — Tap-to-ask. Captures question via Web Speech API, injects deal context (FICO range, vehicle, trade), routes to Claude, returns spoken response via ElevenLabs TTS (voice
IKne3meq5aSn9XLyUdCD, turbo model). - Passive mode — Continuous background listening. Detects 20+ buyer trigger keywords (rate, payment, trade, warranty, credit, etc.). Auto-surfaces coaching card with talk track when signal fires.
- Lot Walk mode — Inventory-aware walkaround prompts. Pulls live or demo inventory; returns vehicle-specific talking points for the lot.
- Brief mode — Pre-shift intelligence brief. Aged units, top lender of the week, floor priorities — spoken on demand via
/api/louie-live/brief. - Deal context bar — Inline FICO/vehicle/trade/rate capture stored in
sessionStorage. FICO stored as range label (deep-sub / sub-prime / near-prime / prime / super-prime) — never raw score in client storage. - 3-layer graceful degradation — ElevenLabs TTS → browser
SpeechSynthesis→ silent card display. Text fallback prompt if mic access denied. - 17 new API routes verified 200 — Reserve optimizer, F&I penetration, service-to-sales, conversation intel, video follow-up, unsold reactivation, predictive stocking, recon estimator, unit financials, inter-store transfer, lender leverage, owner brief, deal compliance, recall-at-POS, PVR causal attribution, service advisor coach, BDC routes — all mounted at
/api/*on pm2 id=13, port 4011. - Security pass — CSP enabled; cross-tenant dealership_id scoping fixed across 5 routes; Math.random() removed from financial calculations; hardcoded absolute paths replaced with
path.join(__dirname,...).
Site audit pass — presentation, flow & bug fixes
- Screenshot tab fix — Removed
loading="lazy"from hidden Deal Desk and Inventory Aging screenshots; images now load on page load and display correctly on tab switch. Added explicit1440×900dimensions to prevent layout shift. - Blank white section resolved — First screenshot (Morning Briefing) removed from lazy loading entirely; browser now reserves correct 16:10 aspect ratio before fetch, eliminating the ~690px CLS that caused the blank white gap above the inventory aging chart.
- Team page entity bug — Fixed malformed
·rendering as literal text on the Founder role card. Now displays correctly asBuilder Founder · Sole primary contributor. - Traction ticker corrected — Homepage platform bar updated from "14 mo" to "18 mo" in continuous production, consistent with all other pages.
- Demo CTA copy — "Log in and he'll walk you through everything himself" changed to "Click once and he'll walk you through everything himself" — removes friction implication on a page that explicitly has no login.
- Orphan "system status →" text removed — Hero badge row text was
rgba(255,255,255,0.55)on a cream background, making body text invisible and leaving only the gold link floating. Full div removed. - Mid-CTA in capability cards — Added "Seen enough? Three more capabilities below — or just see it all live right now. Take the floor →" between cards 3 and 4 in the What Louie Does section.
- GM Dashboard reveal copy — Added "This is the real product. Live. Right now." serif header above the Monday morning dashboard mock browser frame.
- Bottom padding reduced —
section.wrapdefault 100px bottom padding overridden to 48px on the features section, reducing the dead cream space before the dark screenshot section.
Voice BDC, Intelligence Hub & multi-rooftop stores
- Voice BDC — Twilio inbound + outbound calling, live call routing, transcript capture to CRMCommunications.
- Intelligence Hub — Outcome capture layer records deal results back to AI training corpus; JSONL export for fine-tune datasets.
- Multi-rooftop store management — Dealer Group tier supports N stores with per-store FICO profiles and inventory segmentation.
- Desk Agent v2 — 3 deal-structure strategies (cash-flow, equity-pull, term-bridge) auto-selected by deal profile.
- RAG layer — Xenova/all-MiniLM-L6-v2 embeddings on 13-entry knowledge base; semantic retrieval replaces keyword lookup.
- 15 new routes verified 200 on pm2 id=13, port 4011.
GM dashboard, Reports suite & Connections Hub
- GM dashboard — live AT-A-GLANCE, store performance tiles, Morning Briefing with weather integration.
- 22-integration Connections Hub — unified status dashboard; admin-write, broker-read role gates. Auto-writes .env + pm2 restart on /configure.
- 15-report PDF suite — puppeteer-core engine; daily DOC, F&I summary, aged inventory, BDC performance + 11 more. Auth-gated (paid dealer only).
- Sierra F&I training — 6 subprime-F&I modules, 30 lessons, 30 quizzes, 6 printable PDFs, Louie Coach tutor mode.
10 free-API intelligence moat layer
- 10 public data sources wired live: CFPB, BLS, Census, NHTSA, USAspending, Treasury, EIA, OpenChargeMap, NOAA, BEA.
- Moat bridge — hourly aggregator writes k≥5 composite signals to /root/shared/moat-signals.json; LouieAuto reads via /api/moat/aggregate.
- "Get Louie Your Data" /connect page — DMS-aware upload, CDK/Reynolds header-sniff, public demo mode.
- Chat layout fix: input area capped at 240px, quick-action chips horizontal pill-wrap. Market Intel tab state race condition resolved.
AI valuation surface — investor-grade public pages
- /facts, /proof, /compare, /security, /metrics — structured investor fact sheet, operator-proof page, competitive matrix, security whitepaper, and metrics methodology pages.
- /blog — 8 operator-POV posts from the founder on dealership software, lender routing, F&I coaching, aged inventory, and the vertical-AI market.
- 27 structured-data blocks across the marketing surface (SoftwareApplication, Dataset, FAQPage, Product, Organization, Person, TechArticle, BreadcrumbList).
- robots.txt opened to all major AI crawlers on marketing pages; /app, /admin, /api remain private.
Live moat refresh — nightly public indicators
- jobs/moat-refresh-live.js pulls FEDFUNDS, DGS10, DRCLACBS, GASREGW, UMCSENT, TOTALSA from FRED nightly at 04:00 UTC.
- /api/moat/public endpoint — publicly readable, no auth, returns 20 live indicators with source URLs and timestamps.
- moat_intelligence table expanded from 8 static entries to 20 live+static.
Broker-readiness hardening
- git init + full secret scrub; nginx security-header hardening; restic encrypted backup repo.
- 9-document data room scoped and written.
- Broker access-token system + audit log.
Strategic acquisition mode + own-AI-provider router
- Own-AI-provider router — Anthropic, OpenAI, Azure, GCP, local Ollama supported with per-request routing rules.
- Strategic acquisition demo — 3-tier /demo experience tailored to acquirer evaluators.
- CSV importer for DMS data migration.
11 net-new dealer modules
- Leads router, schedule hub, owner dashboard, delivery tracker, goals, leaderboard, lender workbench, VIN+NHTSA lookup, admin leads, reports, companion.
- Central _mount.js router infrastructure; 7 routers live.
- Zero crash runtime across pm2 145 → 153 restart cycle.
Dealership-data knowledge base — operator encoding
- 12-table knowledge base rebuilt (3,059 rows of operator-encoded desk knowledge).
- Cross-DB ATTACH in Louie system prompt for live knowledge reads.
- Per-store FICO variance model, named-appraiser trade-in routing.
Broker demo polish pass
- Deal Intel tabs + pricing page + admin leads page.
- Schedule + delivery + leaderboard + goals + owner-dashboard + lenders routers.
- Full site-wide nav + footer redesign.
Live production across the operator's group
- Founder deploys Louie in his own stores as primary desk-intelligence tool.
- Fall-through rate on stipped deals drops from ~15% to ~3%.
- F&I product cancellation rate drops ~35% under customer-matched recommendations.
Car Guy Whisperer — operator-voiced AI desk manager
- Whisperer module ships — operator-encoded system prompt with 30 years of desk-management decisions.
- Verbatim customer word-track generator for payment-vs-down conversations.
- Per-deal lender recommendation with funding-velocity prior.
F&I coaching and lender routing first cuts
- F&I coaching module with customer-matched product recommendations.
- Lender-routing v1 with rules engine; later replaced with pattern-recognition layer.
- FTC Safeguards Rule control matrix scoped.
First operator deployment
- Initial single-rooftop pilot in operator's dealer group.
- Core modules: BDC, lead response, inventory analysis, PVR tracker, OFAC compliance, morning briefing.
- Anthropic-only provider; single-tenant SQLite deployment.
Project start
- Architecture sketched on paper after CDK 2024 outage.
- First prompts written against dealer-group submission history.
- Data model scoped around deal-desk workflow, not general-ledger workflow.