Smart Draft
From linked evidence to a draft answer. The coordinator still reviews every word.
Smart Draft is an assistive feature inside the annual reporting workspace. It turns the inspection, IDDE, BMP, and enforcement records you already linked to a question into a starting-point draft of an answer. Staff read, edit, and accept the draft. Smart Draft never submits, certifies, or locks a report.
01 · No blank-page reporting
The annual report should not start as a blank document.
The hardest moment in annual reporting is the blank cell. A coordinator opens an MCM 4 question and tries to recall what construction inspections happened in October, who closed the deficiency on 4th Street, and which permit appendix the question is asking about. The records exist. They are scattered. The blank page makes them feel further away than they are.
Smart Draft starts the answer from the records you already linked to the question. The draft is a beginning, not an end. The coordinator reads the draft, edits the parts that need judgment, and saves the answer. The act of writing is shorter, and the time saved goes back into review.
What blank-page reporting feels like
- A coordinator stares at a blank cell on the annual report and tries to remember what work was done last March
- Someone exports a spreadsheet, sorts by date, and copy-pastes summary lines into the report
- An answer is paragraph-style and reads as if it was written from memory, because it was
- The state-agency reviewer asks for the records behind a number, and they live in three folders, two inboxes, and a binder
02 · Evidence-linked narratives
Drafts are built from records you can point to.
Smart Draft does not invent program activity. It assembles a narrative from the records that have been linked to the question. The underlying evidence stays visible alongside the draft, so a coordinator can verify each fact before accepting it. The full story of how counts roll up across all six MCMs is on the annual reporting page.
Evidence kinds Smart Draft can read from
- Construction site inspections from MCM 4
- Post-construction BMP inspections from MCM 5
- IDDE incidents, screenings, and source-tracing records from MCM 3
- Public education events and outreach activities from MCM 1
- Public participation records and meeting minutes from MCM 2
- Municipal facility inspections and good-housekeeping logs from MCM 6
- Enforcement actions and notices of violation
- Staff training records
03 · Default mode
Default Smart Draft is template-based and deterministic.
By default, Smart Draft runs in a local, template-driven mode. The draft is assembled from the linked evidence and a set of question-aware templates inside NPDESTracker. The default mode does not contact an external AI provider. No customer records leave the tenant in the default mode, and the same inputs produce the same draft.
For agencies that want richer narrative drafting, an optional external AI mode can be configured per tenant. When that mode is enabled, Smart Draft sends a limited, field-whitelisted slice of linked record context to the configured provider. The optional mode is off by default and can be disabled at any time. Full disclosure, including what fields are sent and how to disable the optional mode, is on the Smart Draft and AI page.
04 · Staff review
Every saved answer is a human action.
The draft is a starting point. The coordinator reads the underlying records, edits the wording, removes anything that does not belong, and saves the answer. The audit log records the action against the user who saved it, regardless of how the draft was produced. Smart Draft is not autonomous, and it is not a shortcut around staff judgment.
What changes for the coordinator
- The draft starts populated with linked records, not as a blank field
- The coordinator reads, edits, and accepts the draft as a normal answer
- The audit log captures who saved the answer, when, and what evidence was linked
- Drafting time on a long-form question drops, and the typing that remains is review and judgment, not retrieval
05 · Hard limits
What Smart Draft does not do.
Some boundaries are worth stating directly, so there is no ambiguity for procurement and IT review.
- Smart Draft does not submit annual reports to a state agency
- Smart Draft does not certify the report or capture signatory information
- Smart Draft does not lock or unlock reporting years
- Smart Draft does not replace staff review of every saved answer
- Smart Draft does not provide legal, regulatory, or compliance advice
- Smart Draft does not determine whether a record satisfies a permit requirement
06 · Security posture
Tenant-scoped. Auditable. Operator-controlled.
Smart Draft runs inside the same tenant-scoped architecture as the rest of NPDESTracker. A draft only ever reads records inside the agency's own tenant. Smart Draft activity contributes to the standard answer-level audit log, alongside other reporting actions.
The optional external AI mode is a configuration choice and can be disabled at any time by an operator at your agency. NPDESTracker does not use customer data to train public AI models. Full security framing for the platform is on the security page.
Further reading
- Disclosure Smart Draft and AI: full disclosure of default mode, optional external AI mode, and limits
- Product Annual reporting: how counts roll up from records and how the report assembles
- Trust Security posture: tenant isolation, audit trails, hosting, and secure development
- Pricing Pricing: pilots and the Annual Platform for small and mid-sized Phase II MS4 permittees
See Smart Draft on real-shaped data.
Open the demo and walk through a Smart Draft run on a sample question, with the linked evidence visible alongside the draft. Browse-only, no signup, no call.