Appointment and Dock-Scheduling AI Agent

What this agent does

Books against real capacity, and records the misses

Where a load needs a door, ingest the site capacity, dock rules and free-time terms.

When a slot is requested, offered, refused, confirmed or changed, write it as a first-class timestamped event.

Reason

Where no slot is available, record the unavailability rather than retrying quietly against the same window.

When an ocean container is involved, read free time, its start trigger and the rate from the governing tariff or contract.

Where detention terms are contractual, read them from your own agreement and show them beside the appointment.

Decide

When a facility constraint blocks a booking, show the constraint rather than hiding it behind an optimistic slot.

Where a booking would otherwise be confirmed, route it to the named person who owns the door instead.

Out

When the cycle closes, retain the requests, offers, refusals, arrival, check-in and release times.

Where a write action runs, it stays inside the approval boundaries agreed during implementation.

→ Product statement

The agent proposes and records; a named person confirms, and none of this is a regulatory obligation you are meeting.

Example workflow

One appointment, request to confirmation

AgentHuman

1Booking need raisedLoad plan, container availability, tender acceptance or a changed ETA

2Capacity gatheredSite dock rules, open windows, equipment constraints, free-time terms and the load, each with its source

3Booking preparedSlot, constraints, terms and confidence

4Controls appliedCapacity checks, dock-rule checks, free-time and contract checks and the confidence threshold

No human action required

Stages 1 to 4 run unaided and confirm nothing — the slot is proposed, and the person's lane opens at the confidence gate.

5DecisionBranches at the confidence threshold

High confidence

Goes to the named person to confirm.

Low confidence

Adds a site-team read first.

A person confirms

The slot is held with its constraints, the terms read and the confidence.

Confirm · Adjust · Send to the site team

Confirmed — booking released▼

6Yard and TMS records updatedOnly where write access and approval policy allow it

7Outcome evaluatedSlots offered, unavailability recorded, arrival against booking and what each cycle actually took

Changes

Every change to a confirmed booking is counted in the evaluation.

What should not run autonomously

Human approval stays in control

Outside the boundary — human approval required8 items

Confirming a booking or committing a dock slot.

Deciding who may properly be billed for a charge.

Deciding whether a detention claim is payable.

Agreeing free time, its start trigger or the rate.

Automation boundaryAgent acts unaided

✓Propose slots against the capacity a site has published.

✓Record requests, offers, refusals and changes as they happen.

✓Read free time and detention terms from your own contract for the named owner.

✓Hold the booking for the named person who owns the door.

Any write happens inside the boundaries agreed at implementation, never ahead of approval.

Releasing a driver, a trailer or a container.

Changing a site's dock rules or its open windows.

Deciding that a charge was unreasonably assessed.

Changes to the booking rules or the contract terms.

Example output

One appointment, annotated

Everything the agent proposes is attached to the capacity it was read against.

Scheduling output · single bookingIllustrative example

Load

Slot proposed

Window offered

Capacity source

Confidence

Terms read

Import container

Second window offered after the first was refused by the site

07:00–09:00 local

Site dock schedule, live

88%

Free time and its start trigger

As receivedTaken from the site's published capacity and your own contract.

What was recorded Slots requested and offered The window that was refused Free time and start trigger

Why it matters laterWhen a charge is contested the carrier must establish reasonableness.

ActionConfirmAdjustSend to the site team

What the score decidesBelow the configured threshold the booking picks up a site-team read before.

Value

Where AI adds value

The same four claims, placed at the point in the workflow where each one applies.

Where the value landsValue 01 – 04

Every appointmentFrom the TMS or the yard queue

03Booking

Book against real capacity

Draw on the site's published dock rules, its open windows and the free-time terms in your contract.

01Approved path

Book it against the real gate

Routine bookings come back proposed with the misses logged.

02Human review

Send the rest to a person

Unavailable windows, constraint conflicts and low-confidence bookings are marked, so the site team's read starts where risk concentrates.

04Build an evidence trail

The appointment, the capacity it was booked against and the person who confirmed it stay on the booking.

Integrations

Typical integrations

Five system groups connect to the same agent. Which of them are in scope is decided in discovery.

TMS and load recordsMcLeod · MercuryGate
Trimble · Revenova

Dock and yard schedulingOpendock · Terminal49
Yard management systems

Warehouse and siteWMS · site dock schedules
Gate and check-in systems

Agent

Appointment and dock scheduling

Reads the capacity
Proposes the slot
Holds for confirmation

Contracts and chargesTransportation agreements
Detention and demurrage files

Observability & evaluationOpenTelemetry · Langfuse
Supported monitoring/evaluation sources

Integration availability depends on the client's existing systems and API access.

Agent controls

Six layers between the model and the booking

The controls sit inside one another. What none of them catches is set out below.

L6 · Outermost — last line of defenceInward → L1 · closest to the model

L6Rollback / safe modeNarrow the agent to slot listing when evaluation or production signals degrade.Roll back

L5Version monitoringTrack model, prompt, dock-rule and contract-term configuration changes.Track

L4TraceabilityRecord requests, offers, refusals, changes and the times they carried.Record

L3Confirmation heldHold the booking for the named person; it governs who confirms, not whether the slot will hold.Gate

L2Capacity rulesTest each slot against the site's published capacity and dock rules; a conflict returns the booking.Restrict

L1Confidence thresholdsRoute low-confidence bookings to a site-team read before anything is held.Require review

Model coreBooking prepared — the slot, the constraints, the terms read and confidence

L1 – L2Test whether a slot may be proposed

L3Puts confirmation in a person's hands

L4 – L5Keep the booking and the capacity behind it

L6Narrows to slot listing when signals degrade

How Nestack evaluates it

Evaluate the whole booking cycle — not only the slot that was kept.

Coverage runs the whole depth of the workflow, and every layer is cut by slice.

Surface — the appointment the site sees

Depth of coverage ▼

E1Final-output evaluationWere refusals and unavailable windows written down as events?

E2Step-level evaluationDid the agent read the current dock rules and the right contract?

E3Tool evaluationDid it book the correct site, the correct door and the correct load?

E4Confidence calibrationDo low-confidence bookings actually attract more site-team reads?

E5Slice evaluationHow does performance change across specific sites and shifts?

E6Business outcomeHow many bookings were changed, and how many should have been?

Floor — the record a contested charge is read against

Failure modes

Where each failure originates in the agent

Seven failure modes, placed at the stage each one originates.

Agent lifecycleDirection of processing →

01 · Retrieval1 mode

AW-03

Stale capacity read

A slot is proposed against a window since taken.

Stage gathersDock rules, open windows, terms and the load

02 · Reasoning2 modes

AW-04

Constraint read as soft

A facility restriction is treated as a preference.

AW-06

Unavailability not logged

A refused window passes without becoming an event.

Stage proposesThe slot, the constraints and confidence

03 · Tool / write2 modes

AW-02

Booking held without a person

A slot is committed before anyone has confirmed it.

AW-05

Duplicate booking

The same load takes two windows at one site.

Stage writesOnly where write access and approval policy allow it

04 · Output1 mode

AW-01

Wrong contract terms read

Free time is taken from a tariff that does not govern.

Stage returnsThe appointment the site and the driver work to

05 · Change / Version1 mode

AW-07

Silent capacity regression

A model or rule change loosens what the agent will propose.

Stage tracksModel, prompt, dock rules and contract terms

Sev-1 · confirmed with no person Sev-2 · unavailability lost Sev-3 · capacity degrades, booking routes to review

See the complete Transportation failure-mode catalogue →

Affected slices

The shifts nobody counts are the ones that fail

Night and weekend bookings are the under-counted population here: fewer people watch them and their misses are logged late, so a total flatters them. Nestack reports the change rate by site and shift, not only in total.

Slice performance — reported separately, not only in aggregateIllustrative example

Slice	Failure rate	Lift	Status
Sites with no published capacity	4.9%	3.9×	Review
Night and weekend shifts	3.5%	2.8×	Review
Import containers under free time	1.9%	1.5×	Watch
Standing scheduled appointments	1.1%	0.9×	Normal

Bar: change-rate lift vs. standing-appointment baseline · scale 0–4.0× · tick marks the 2.0× review threshold 2 of 4 slices over threshold

Evidence-linked improvement

The cycle ends the week the case ships

The cycle ends when a case exists in the suite, not when the miss was discussed. That suite is what the next appointment booked is measured against.

Improvement cycle · five stagesSwitchback — the path turns at Improve and returns at Learn

01Detect

Change rate rises at a site or on a shift.

02Diagnose

By the shift after the miss, the booking and the capacity it was taken against are still recoverable.

03Improve

Changes carry a version and the bookings that prompted them.

04Verify

Release is held until the affected cases pass.

05Learn

The case is kept permanently, and the scheduling rules move with it.

Learn → DetectThe return edge. The next detection runs against a suite one case longer.

Typical build scope

Twelve workstreams across six weeks

The build scope read against the delivery timeline. Week structure follows the six-week plan — discovery, sources, booking workflow, evaluation, integration, then production validation and handover.

Workstream Week 1Week 2Week 3Week 4Week 5Week 6

01Scheduling workflow discovery and boundary definition.

02Yard and TMS source assessment.

03Site dock-rule, free-time and detention-term mapping.

04Capacity and load-record ingestion.

05Slot logic and event recording.

06Confidence scoring and site-team routing.

07Booking confirmation workflow.

08Yard and TMS integration.

09Capacity and detention cases.

10Guardrails and booking controls.

11Booking-trail instrumentation.

12Deployment, documentation and Agent Care handover.

12 workstreams · 6 weeks · bar shows the weeks a workstream is active — several run in parallel Final scope and sequence confirmed in discovery

Engagement tiers

What each tier includes

Rows are the capabilities named in each tier's scope. Higher tiers include everything below them.

Capability✓ in scope · — not at this tier PilotOne site, one shift pattern ProductionProduction yard and TMS AdvancedMultiple sites / regions

Introduced at Pilot

Booking against published capacity✓✓✓

Confirmation held for a person✓✓✓

Booking-accuracy baseline✓✓✓

Introduced at Production

Reporting by site and shift—✓✓

Confirmation workflow in your systems—✓✓

Approved write-back—✓✓

Yard-system integration—✓✓

Introduced at Advanced

Multi-site dock rules——✓

Multi-stage site approvals——✓

High booking volume——✓

Multi-site scheduling controls——✓

Build price From $5,000 From $8,000 Custom quote

Final build priceConfirmed after discovery based on integrations, workflow complexity, transaction volume, approval controls and deployment requirements.

Separate from buildBuild pricing is separate from recurring Agent Care, which covers managed monitoring, evaluations, incidents and verified improvements after launch.

What we need from you

What you bring, and what we build with it

Each input maps to a piece of build scope and a week in the delivery timeline.

You bringWe build with it

01Your site dock rules and open windows → Capacity and load-record ingestion and event mappingWeek 1

02Representative past bookings → Booking baseline, slot logic and event recordingWeek 2

03Your free-time and detention terms → Site dock-rule, free-time and detention-term mappingWeek 1

04Access to relevant APIs, feeds or exports → Yard and TMS source assessment, then integration setupWeek 2

05Bookings you would not want kept → Detention cases and failure-mode testingWeek 4

06What a booking may never decide on its own → Confidence scoring, site-team routing, guardrails and booking controlsWeek 3

07Named people who confirm a booking → Confirmation workflow, then pilot and production validationWeeks 5–6

Nothing else is required Deployment, documentation and Agent Care handover are ours.

Delivery timeline

Four phases across six weeks

The bands follow the actual work, which is why the fifth week doubles rather than pads.

Phase W1W2W3W4W5W6

Discovery W1

Build W2 – W3

Evaluate W4 – W5

Pilot & Launch W5 – W6

Week focus W1Scheduling workflow discovery, dock-rule mapping and the boundary W2Yard and TMS integration and the booking baseline W3Booking workflow, confidence logic and confirmation controls W4Evaluation suite, capacity cases and failure-mode testing W5Site integration, a pilot site and targeted corrections W6One booking cycle run under the site team, then handover

Reading the bandEach bar covers only the weeks its work is named in. The week 5 overlap is real, not padding.

At the end of W6The cycle closes validation and Agent Care owns the running agent.

DurationSix-week plan shown · typical delivery 4–6 weeks depending on scope confirmed in discovery.

Next step · Transportation AI agent

Build a scheduling agent that leaves a record worth having.

Show us your sites, your dock rules and your free-time terms. If you can name the person who owns the door and bring one contested charge, we will map the booking workflow around the evidence that charge turned on.

Discuss this agent →

Nestack Agents · Appointment and dock schedulingAGT-TR-09 · Agent Care available after launch