Axiara: why a reference price should not become an official price

A useful quotation assistant has to do more than return a number. It has to preserve the distinction between the information it found and the information someone has authorized.

Axiara explores that distinction in costing and quotation. The starting point is not “how much can an agent do?” but “which decisions should each source and tool be allowed to influence?”

Three kinds of information, three different roles

An official price baseline, a price in an old document, and a recent market observation may all be useful. They do not carry the same authority.

• Main: the official baseline, maintained manually.
• Learn: reference information learned from historical documents.
• Market: market information collected for reference.

The learned and market layers can inform a result without overwriting the official baseline. This separation is a product decision before it is a storage decision.

A concrete example: a price that deserves a second look

Suppose a quote contains an item priced differently from both the official baseline and a recent market reference.

A review should bring those differences to someone’s attention. It should not silently decide that the newest observation is correct and replace the official price. The right next step may involve checking the source, understanding the context, or asking the person responsible for that baseline.

The example is hypothetical. Its purpose is to show why finding evidence and authorizing a change are different actions.

Four modes describe permissions, not a fixed journey

The repository defines archive, query, batch quote, and review as capability boundaries. They are not four mandatory screens in sequence.

• Archive covers official-price maintenance and reference collection, with the corresponding write restrictions.
• Query looks up a single item’s official cost, market range, and process notes.
• Batch quote handles Excel or BOM entries using templates and constraints.
• Review compares quoted values against baselines and references to surface anomalies.

A single-item question need not become a batch job. A review need not grant permission to edit the official price book.

Put the boundary somewhere stronger than a prompt

Axiara uses FastAPI for the service and LangGraph for orchestration, with separate data layers and tool permissions. A prompt can describe a rule; storage and tool boundaries give that rule somewhere concrete to live.

The work I want an agent to reduce is the gathering and checking around a decision. The decision’s authority should stay visible.

Read the Axiara product story and the repository’s architecture and mode definitions. Technical details checked on September 6, 2026.