Ghost sign documentation software
Capture ghost sign documentation on an iPad that keeps working with no signal, then produce the sign documentation report from your own Word template — with the prose drafted against your own standards library.
Built for heritage groups running teams of roughly 3–50 inspectors.
The loop you are running today
Heritage condition work is fabric-by-fabric and comparative — this element, against its state at the last inspection. That is a relational problem dressed up as a document, and it is why heritage reporting is still done in Word with photographs dragged in one at a time.
The tell is simple: you are running a forms app plus Word plus a spreadsheet plus email, and re-typing the same findings into all four to get one sign documentation report out the door.
How the sign documentation report gets built
Capture it once, offline
Your firm builds the ghost sign documentation form in-app — 25 field types, nesting repeatable groups, compound AND/OR visibility rules, reusable modules and calculated fields. Field capture works with no signal: jobs, forms, photos, notes and audio all queue in an idempotent outbox that only clears once the server confirms receipt.
Link it to your fabric elements and spaces
Enter fabric elements and spaces once, as a register. Every one of your condition observations across inspection rounds then points at a stored row rather than a name somebody typed — and the links survive a disconnected device.
Render your own template
The sign documentation report renders into the Word template you already use — your letterhead, your section order, your clause library — with conditionals, loops over repeats, composable sub-templates and photo grids.
Drafted against your standards, not a generic model
You upload your own reference library — PDF, Word, Excel, CSV — and it is indexed for retrieval. A {{ai: …}} marker placed inside your Word template runs Claude at render time and drops the drafted prose into that exact spot, and {{ai:@space …}} narrows that one paragraph to one named tier of your library.
Where two sources conflict, the retrieved passages are labelled with their authority and the model is instructed to follow the higher one and state what it overrode. A document you mark superseded is excluded outright.
What a heritage firm typically loads
- The Burra Charter and its practice notes
- State heritage office condition assessment guidelines
- AICCM standards for collection and object condition work
- Conservation management plans for the places you monitor
- Your own condition grading scale and photographic protocol
The sign documentation report gets reviewed before it leaves
You write the review framework: a checklist of what a sign documentation report must contain, plus the prose standards you would mark a junior against. Link it to a report template and it runs on its own every time that template renders.
Each finding comes back with a severity — info, minor or major — the sentence at fault, and the evidence that contradicts it. A person accepts or dismisses every one, and that decision is kept against the report rather than lost in a reply-all.
The framework can also be grounded in a named tier of your standards library, so a finding can be raised against your methodology rather than against a general sense of what a good report looks like.
Checks a heritage framework usually carries
- Every element in the schedule carries a condition grade and a photograph
- Change since the last inspection is stated element by element
- Recommendations are tied back to Burra Charter principles
- The significance assessment is consistent with the conservation management plan
The check a document-AI tool cannot run
Every tool in this space reads the finished document. We also hold the structured submission the document was generated from, so the review is a comparison rather than a proofread: The narrative says the verandah is stable; the condition record grades it poor and deteriorating.
That is a contradiction between the report and the field data — invisible to anything reading the sign documentation report on its own, and the class of error that comes back from a client.
The same screen reviews documents produced anywhere else — a subcontractor’s report, a draft from your old system — uploaded as PDF, Word, HTML or text. On that path there is no submission to compare against, so it is your checklist and your standards only.
Enter your fabric elements and spaces once
Every field app can do repeating sections. Almost none can do links between repeating rows — many-to-many, with stable row identity, on a device with no signal.
Each observation points at a stored element, so this year’s condition report can be assembled element by element against the last one instead of read side by side by a human.
It is also what makes the work answerable afterwards. Once the relationships are stored rather than described in prose, a question across every job you have ever done is a query against a spreadsheet-style grid, not a re-read of forty sign documentation reports.
What this is not
Worth knowing before you book a demo, so neither of us wastes the half hour.
- Not field-service dispatch. No timesheets, no parts, no inventory. Scheduling exists to get an inspector to a site.
- No signature capture. If your deliverable has to carry a signed sign-off on the artefact itself, this is not the tool yet.
- iOS only. There is no Android app.
- Field capture is what works offline — jobs, forms, photos, notes and audio. Reports, chat, scheduling and the inbox need a connection.
- No client portal. Reports go out as a file or a password-protected link.
Other heritage work we cover
- Heritage building condition surveysConservation condition report
- Historic cemetery surveysGrave condition survey
- Indigenous heritage surveysCultural heritage report
- Museum object condition reportsObject condition report
- Rock art condition monitoringRock art condition report
- Shipwreck site inspectionsWreck site report
- Statue and monument auditsMonument condition register
- Archaeological site monitoringSite monitoring report
Other disciplines
Rebuild your sign documentation report in SurveyThanks
Bring the Word template you already send clients. If you are coming off another field-forms tool, a filled report can be uploaded, read field by field, and re-rendered into your template.