Evaluate early site-planning AI by testing repeatability, the sources behind its checks, disclosed limits and the point of professional review. A polished rendering alone cannot show whether a scenario is useful for a development decision.
Four questions separate a usable early-stage planning tool from a demo.
1. Does the same input produce the same output?
Run the same site boundary and requirements through the system twice. If the answer changes materially without an input change, the system should disclose that behaviour and its cause. A planning option should be reproducible from its inputs, or the workflow should identify the controlled source of variation.
2. Is the output checked against something real?
Trace each claimed planning check to the applicable source and the site measurement used. A plausible layout does not prove that the governing rule has been checked.
3. Are limits disclosed before they matter?
Every early-stage system has a boundary: unusual site geometry, a rule it does not encode or a condition it cannot observe from available data. A credible workflow names those limits and makes the uncertainty visible in the output.
4. Where does professional sign-off occur?
Early planning output should remain clearly labelled as schematic until the responsible qualified professional completes the required review. The test is whether that hand-off is built into the workflow, rather than hidden in a footer after the result has already been treated as final.
What this means in practice
Test repeatability, trace a site assumption to its source, inspect known failure cases and identify the required professional review. One polished image cannot establish those checks.
This is an evaluation framework, not a claim about a specific competing product or a compliance certification.