Solar proposal claims after the residential credit ended: a pre-send review.

Solar sales material ages badly. A proposal template or standard email written before 2026 may describe the federal residential clean energy credit as if it still applied. The IRS page on that credit now says, as checked on 15 October 2026, that it is not available for any property placed in service after December 31, 2025. Savings and lease wording carry older risks, which the FTC's solar guidance sets out.

A claims review sits between a drafted proposal and the person who sends it. An assistant reads the document and flags every sentence about tax credits, savings, utility rates, leases and power purchase agreements, naming the page each one conflicts with. The owner decides what changes and sends the result. The assistant never decides that a claim is acceptable, never writes a savings figure and never tells a homeowner what they can claim.

The IRS page for the Residential Clean Energy Credit, section 25D, carries one sentence that every solar proposal now has to be checked against: the credit 'is not available for any property placed in service after December 31, 2025.' That is the page's wording as checked on 15 October 2026; the page itself shows it was last reviewed or updated on 4 July 2026. The condition is the date the property is placed in service. The page says nothing about the date a contract was signed or a deposit paid, so a proposal must not suggest that either date matters; that question, too, belongs to the homeowner's tax professional.

Other paragraphs on the same page still describe how the credit worked for qualifying property installed from 2022 through December 31, 2025, and how it was claimed. That is the historical rule. It is not evidence that a homeowner buying a system today can claim the credit, and no proposal may imply that they can. The FTC's solar page, dated April 2022, says in general terms that a buyer might be eligible for federal, state or local tax credits; that sentence predates the end of 25D, so the review takes federal credit status from the IRS page alone.

This is not tax advice: whether a particular homeowner can claim any credit, for any year, is for that homeowner's tax professional to decide, and a proposal should say so rather than answer it. The IRS page also needs a fresh check on the day this article goes live, and again whenever a proposal template is revised, because the page can change.

The FTC's consumer page on solar power for your home (as checked on 15 October 2026) is written for homeowners, which makes it a fair test: if a homeowner who had read it would find a claim misleading, a person looks at the claim. The page also warns against companies that press for a quick decision.

What counts is that the steps run the same way every time, so they are written down once and every document goes through all six. The steps are Aevrion's pattern, not a feature of any product.

1. 01

   Intake

   Decides

   Will this document reach a homeowner: a proposal, a sales email, a lease or PPA summary, or a template?

   Output

   The document attached in the review Bot's conversation, with its type and the template it came from

2. 02

   Credit wording

   Decides

   Does any sentence describe a federal tax credit, its amount or a homeowner's eligibility?

   Output

   Each such sentence quoted beside the IRS end-date sentence and the date that page was last checked

3. 03

   Savings and rates

   Decides

   Does any sentence treat future rates or savings as certain, or leave out the utility's fixed charges?

   Output

   Flagged sentences; any figure marked as the designer's or owner's, not checked by the Bot

4. 04

   Ownership model

   Decides

   Is this a lease or PPA, and does it give credits, incentives or RECs to the homeowner?

   Output

   A flag for every conflict with the FTC's lease and PPA warning

5. 05

   Contract against proposal

   Decides

   Do the contract's payment increases, power minimum, maintenance, fees and early-termination terms match the proposal?

   Output

   A side-by-side list of every difference

6. 06

   Decision and send

   Decides

   What changes, and is the document ready?

   Output

   The owner's edits and decision; the owner sends it

A clean review means only that nothing on the list was found. It is never a finding that a proposal is compliant.

The claims-review Bot is a Bot the owner creates in Grok Bot under Aevrion's pattern, with one job and its own conversation. The owner attaches the proposal, contract or template there; the documentation lists PDFs, Word files and email files among the attachments a Bot can read, up to six at a time on the desktop. The Bot returns a reviewable document with each flagged sentence quoted and the reason beside it, and the six review steps are saved as a skill, a reusable set of instructions, so the order does not drift from one proposal to the next.

The documentation recommends explicit approval boundaries for sending messages, publishing content and accepting legal terms, among others. For this Bot the owner gives the boundary as a lasting rule and repeats it in each request: it may read and flag; it may not send, publish, edit the original or contact anyone. A remembered rule guides the Bot without enforcing anything, and an approval governs only the action proposed and cannot undo one already taken, so the safest version of this Bot has no reason to send at all. Any covering email it drafts waits in the owner's own conversation for the owner to send or discard.

The IRS sentence and the FTC warnings live in a dated reference file in the shared workspace, and the Bot quotes from that file rather than from memory: the documentation says a Bot's memory is no substitute for an authoritative source. When the owner re-checks the IRS page, the file is dated again, and a weekly routine lists templates not reviewed since; if the file is missing, the routine says so.

Based on the Grok Bot documentation at docs.x.ai as checked on 15 October 2026. Its statements on Bot rules, Bot-to-Bot messaging, routine triggers, connected apps, approval expiry and payments were rechecked against docs.x.ai and Cursor's help pages on 26 October 2026. The trade examples are Aevrion's illustrations, not documented Grok Bot use cases. Aevrion Ops is an independent consultancy. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by or a partner of xAI, SpaceXSI or Cursor. Grok Bot is named here only to describe it.

These are Aevrion's starting examples; each installer adds lines from its own templates.

• QUALIFIES FOR THE FEDERAL CREDIT

  Any statement that a system bought now earns the residential clean energy credit. Conflicts with the IRS end-date sentence.

• NET PRICE AFTER THE CREDIT

  Any price that subtracts a federal credit. The price is the owner's; the review flags only the subtraction.

• YOUR BILL DISAPPEARS

  Leaves out the utility's fixed charges, which the FTC says are still paid.

• RATES WILL KEEP RISING

  States a future rate as fact, where the FTC says future rates are hard to predict.

• INCENTIVES INCLUDED WITH YOUR LEASE

  On a lease or PPA, the FTC says the homeowner is not eligible for tax credits or financial incentives and cannot claim RECs.

• CANCEL WHENEVER YOU LIKE

  Conflicts with any early-termination fee in the contract, and with the FTC's warning about ending a lease early.

• PRICE GOOD TODAY ONLY

  The quick-decision pressure the FTC warns homeowners about. The owner decides whether it stays.

A claims review can say that a sentence conflicts with a dated government page. It cannot say what a homeowner will save, whether they can claim a credit, or what a contract means in law. Savings and production figures come from the designer and the owner; the Bot never calculates or restates them. Tax questions go to the homeowner's tax professional, and a disputed contract term goes to a lawyer. The owner decides what is sent, and sends it.

This review covers solar proposals only; insulation claims are handled separately in this series. Where a proposal assumes a panel upgrade, the capacity verdict belongs to the electrician.

Run every template, standard sales email and lease or PPA summary through the review once, and fix them before reviewing single proposals.

Scoping this review with Aevrion Ops covers the dated reference file and its re-check routine, the flag list, the skill and its approval boundary, and how documents travel to the Bot from existing systems, which is custom integration work that depends on each vendor's API or terms and on testing. The workflow automation readiness assessment comes first, and an unwritten flag list will hold down the pre-send review's rule clarity score.

1. The IRS page, as checked on 15 October 2026, says the residential clean energy credit is not available for any property placed in service after December 31, 2025; re-check it on the publication date and whenever a template changes.
2. Older paragraphs on the IRS page describe the historical rule, not current eligibility, and whether any homeowner can claim anything is for their tax professional to decide.
3. The FTC's solar warnings become review lines: rates hard to predict, fixed charges still paid, no credits on a lease or PPA, contract matching the pitch, and ending a lease early.
4. A claims-review Bot reads, quotes and flags against a dated reference file; it never writes a savings figure or decides a claim is acceptable.
5. The owner decides every change and sends every proposal.