Intended use
What Cala does, and what it won’t do
The limits are written as plainly as the features, and in the same place. If you only read one line on this page, read the next one.
Cala is decision support for a qualified engineer, not for automated control, interlocks or safety functions.
This page is the plain-language summary. The canonical statement of intended purpose, limitations and AI disclosure is the intended use and AI disclosure document, and if the two ever disagree, that one wins.
What Cala is
Cala is a desktop app for engineers who troubleshoot complex equipment. You load the machine’s OEM manuals, its service bulletins and your own notes. Cala builds a picture of that machine on your computer and works the problem with you: it lays out what else it could be, quotes the evidence from your own documents with the page, orders the checks by what each one rules out, and writes a service report at the end.
It runs on macOS and Windows. It’s built for the issue nobody has written up, because that’s the one that costs days.
What it does
It reads your documentation into a picture of your machine
You load the OEM manuals, the service bulletins and your own notes for the tool you work on. Cala pulls out what's in them and builds a picture of that specific machine. It lives in a database on your computer, and it's there every session after.
It lays out what else it could be before it ranks anything
Candidates come from how the subsystem actually works, spread across six kinds of cause: thermal; mechanical; electrical; contamination; control and software; alignment and metrology. Only then does it start ruling things out. When a kind of cause doesn’t apply, it says why, so you can argue with the exclusion instead of never seeing it.
It quotes the values that decide something, with the page
A value that decides something is shown the way it appears in your document, with the document and the page named. Where Cala is reasoning past your documents instead of reading them, it says so on the line, and assumptions are written as assumptions.
It tells you when the evidence isn’t there
If the value isn't in anything you've loaded, Cala says so instead of producing a number of the right shape. At 2 AM that's a more useful answer than a plausible one.
It orders the checks by what each one rules out
The sequence isn't a list of everything you could measure. Each step is placed so it removes as many surviving candidates as possible.
It ends in a service report file
The symptom, what was checked, the ranked causes with their evidence and citations, the assumptions each one rests on, and what was concluded. Every export carries a line, stamped by the app, saying the content is AI-generated and has to be verified against OEM documentation and procedures.
Where it stops
None of this is a roadmap item waiting to be closed out. It’s what the product is.
- It’s only as good as what you give it
- If a subsystem has no documentation loaded, Cala has nothing to work from. It says the evidence is missing instead of filling the gap with something that reads well.
- It can be wrong
- It can misread a value, or miss a document you never gave it. That's why anything decisive is cited: so you can check it against the page instead of trusting it.
- It never touches your equipment
- Cala has no connection to any tool, controller, PLC, host or fab system. It reads documents you load and it writes files. It can't move anything.
- It’s for the issues nobody has written up
- If the problem is already in your wiki or your ticket system, use those. Cala isn't the expensive way to look something up.
- It’s early, and parts of it are unfinished
- The Windows build isn't code-signed yet, so Windows warns you on first launch. There is no on-prem version. Cala has no customers yet.
What it must never be used for
Cala is there to help a qualified engineer decide. The uses below are outside what it’s for. Putting it to them is misuse of the product, not a limitation of it.
- Inside an automated control loop of any kind, on any equipment.
- As an interlock, a permissive, or any part of a safety function.
- As a replacement for the OEM procedure, the service manual or the equipment maker.
- As the only basis for acting on a tool, without a qualified engineer checking the finding against the source document first.
- By someone who isn’t qualified to judge whether the answer is wrong.
Automated control, interlocks and safety functions are excluded in the terms and conditions as well as here. On industrial equipment, that’s the exclusion that matters most.
Who it is for
An engineer who can already tell when an answer is wrong. Cala is built to be argued with. It shows what else it could be before it ranks anything, quotes the evidence instead of summarising it, and labels the assumptions, so you know which half of an answer you still have to test.
If you can’t check its reasoning against the source pages, you’re not the reader this was built for, and you shouldn’t act on what it gives you.
Intended use, limitations and AI disclosure, the canonical document.
Real investigations, to see it run end to end.
How Cala protects your data, including what leaves your computer.
Cala's answers and extracted knowledge are AI-generated. Verify against the source documents and OEM procedures before acting.