A few years back, I was running customs operations for a brokerage that handled a high-volume account—same kind of shipment, Canada to the U.S., over and over. These were routine moves, nothing unusual.
And yet… every so often, someone would fat-finger the entered value. Instead of $100,000, it’d get entered as $10,000,000.
Now, the system didn’t throw an error. The data wasn’t technically “invalid.” It was just… wrong. Obvious to a human. Invisible to the software.
Each time, we were stuck apologizing. Chasing corrections. Explaining to the customer why a shipment that should’ve been boring turned into a problem.
If you’ve been in this industry long enough, you’ve got stories like that, too.
Why We Built AI Checks
At Chain.io, we’ve been on both sides of this—inside the world’s biggest shippers and the freight forwarders who serve them. We know what it’s like to be buried in emails, spreadsheets, and dashboards, still unsure whether everything’s actually on track.
So we built AI Checks to solve a simple but critical problem: How do you catch what your team doesn’t have time to check?
You define the rules in plain English. We watch your live shipment data—from forwarders, customs brokers, carriers, whoever—and flag what’s off. No dashboards. No logic trees. Just fast, clear answers delivered where your team is already working.
Want to make sure shipments to the EU use the right Incoterms? Check.
Need to stop any departure that doesn’t have commercial docs uploaded 48 hours prior? Easy.
Trying to enforce milestone timing across a global forwarder network? Write the rule, and we’ll do the rest.
What Makes This Different
We’re not building AI for the sake of it. We’re building simple, practical tools to help shippers move faster with fewer surprises. Here's what that means:
- Plain-English rules – You write the checks in your own words. No coding. No flowcharts.
- Live, partner-fed data – We work with what your network already sends—TMSs, ERPs, spreadsheets, FTPs.
- Human in the loop – You decide what happens when a check fails. Notify a partner? Log an issue? Stay in full control.
- No new dashboards – We drop the results into your existing systems—because the last thing you need is another place to log into.
And That Story? Here’s How It Ends Now.
Back to that Canada-to-U.S. shipment with the $10M typo. With AI Checks, we would’ve solved that in 10 seconds.
One rule: “Stop all shipments with entered value over $1,000,000.”
Done. No crisis. No apology email. No firefighting.
That’s the kind of oversight we’re offering—lightweight, intelligent, and totally under your control.
Want In?
We’re opening up early access to a select group of shippers. You’ll get concierge onboarding, real support from our product team, and a say in where this goes next.
If you’re ready to stop chasing problems and start preventing them, I want to hear from you.
Sign Up For The Beta
