Variations - chat to CorePIlot

Why

Variations (change orders) significantly impact project budgets and timelines. Users need to chat with CorePilot about variation status, approvals, financial impacts, and relationships to payment applications. Questions like "What's the total value of approved variations?" or "Show unapproved variations affecting margin" require variation context.

What

Index all variation-related data and enable conversational queries about:

Variation orders (VO numbers, descriptions, values)
Approval status and workflows (internal, client approvals)
Financial impact (added/removed amounts, margin effects)
Relationships to payment applications and certifications
Line item details (BoQ items affected, quantities, rates)

How

Data indexing (coreloops-ai)

Vector DB seeding:

Extract variation data from main DB
Structure context documents:
Variation header: VO number, description, supplier, total value
Approval status: internal/client approval states, dates, approvers
Line items: BoQ references, quantities, rates, subtotals
Payment links: which payment applications include this VO
Financial impact: effect on budget, margin, forecast
Generate embeddings for semantic search
Update on variation creation/modification

Query capabilities:

Filter by: status (approved/pending/rejected), value ranges, dates
Aggregate: total variation value, approved vs pending
Join: variations → payment applications, variations → suppliers
Calculate: impact on budget utilisation, margin erosion

Chat prompts

Sample queries to support:

"Show all pending variations awaiting client approval"
"What's the total value of variations this month?"
"List variations for [supplier name]"
"Which variations are in payment application #5?"
"Show proceed-at-risk variations"
"What's the impact of approved variations on our margin?"

Dependencies

COR-1267: Parent chat interface
COR-1398: Tenant data guardrails
Variation data model and approval workflows
Payment application linkage

Acceptance Criteria

[ ] All variation orders indexed with full details
[ ] Approval status and workflow state available in chat
[ ] Users can query variations by status, supplier, value, date
[ ] Chat calculates total variation impact on budget and margin
[ ] Variation-to-payment-application relationships surfaced
[ ] Line item details accessible through chat
[ ] Proceed-at-risk variations flagged in responses
[ ] Queries scoped to user's tenant and project permissions
[ ] Context updates when variations created/approved/modified