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HOW IT WORKS

Four steps. Sixty to ninety seconds.

Researching a car is free and instant. This is the deeper walkthrough of the paid part, what happens between tapping Generate and the buyer's report landing on your phone.

START FREE, NO UPLOAD

Research any car in two taps.

Open the Research tab, pick a year, make, and model, or enter a VIN, and VINly pulls NHTSA recalls, owner complaints, and crash-test ratings, plus EPA fuel economy and estimated yearly fuel cost. Free, no account, straight from the public record.

The four steps below are the paid part, the full AI buyer's report on a specific listing.

THE FULL REPORT · $3.99

Screenshot the listing.

01

In Marketplace, take a screenshot, or several. Multiple images is fine; we read all of them. Share to VINly with the iOS share sheet, or open the app and paste.

We accept anything legible: the listing page, photo grid, seller's response thread, description block, photos with VINs in them.

We extract the details.

02

Year, make, model, trim, price, mileage, location, title status, VIN if visible, pulled from the screenshots automatically.

On the Review screen, fix anything we read wrong (private sellers love unusual abbreviations). VINly uses your corrected values for everything downstream.

Sonnet researches the model.

03

Anthropic Sonnet 4.6 runs the full research pass: known failures for that generation, service intervals due at your mileage, NHTSA recalls, owner-forum problem patterns, regional price comps.

Takes 60-90 seconds. The pulse-ring screen cycles a model-specific fact while you wait.

You get the verdict.

04

Opening offer, walk-floor, verdict pill (worth seeing / inspect / negotiate / buy if verified / walk away), known issues with cost ranges, the message to send the seller, the questions to ask, the things to check.

Export as PDF + share to a mechanic. Star + shortlist your top 5. Reports stay on your device.

DATA FLOW

What goes where.

Plain version. The full statement is on the privacy page.

  • Your screenshots

    Encrypted in transit · processed for ~90s · not retained.

  • VIN (if present)

    NHTSA vPIC (public API) for decode.

  • Year / Make / Model

    NHTSA Recalls & Complaints (public APIs).

  • Listing text + model context

    Anthropic Sonnet 4.6 via Supabase Edge Function.

  • The finished report

    Returned to your device. Lives in local storage only.

Want the full pipeline diagram + source list?

Read the methodology →