Assemble · the primary product

Build your workfile with every piece witnessed as it comes in.

Most appraisal software only helps you fill in fields. Athena Systems North Star's Assemble does that — and witnesses every piece as it comes in. You supply the documents — the engagement letter, your comps, the sketch, in-field photos and notes — and each one is fingerprinted the moment it enters your workfile. When you seal the workfile, your record shows where every piece came from.

Why this matters

The check — Evaluate, our $25 product — runs your already-finished report against 407 rules and records the result. It's useful on its own. But that record can only show what North Star saw at the moment you uploaded: this is the file you sent, this is when, and this is what the rules said. Whether the report itself is right is still your professional judgment.

Assemble is what North Star was built for. When you build your workfile in North Star, every piece is witnessed as it comes in: the engagement letter, a comp you pulled, the front-exterior photo from your phone, the sketch from your tablet's measuring app. You supply each document; North Star fingerprints it the moment it enters the workfile. Your sealed record shows where every piece came from, start to finish.

For a regulator or attorney three years from now, that's the difference between “the appraiser said so” and “here's the source, here's exactly when it was captured, and here's how it was used.” The record earns its full weight in Assemble.

How Assemble works, start to finish

Your workfile is built inside North Star, and every piece is witnessed as it comes in. Each assignment moves through the same stages — Gathering, Drafting, Review, Signed, Delivered — and here is the path from the first document to delivery.

Open and activate the assignment

Open a new assignment on the North Star website and pay the $99 activation fee through Stripe's secure checkout. No subscription, no saved card. If you run the North Star desktop agent and connect your Gmail inbox (opt-in, limited early access), the agent reads your engagement inbox, pulls the order details out of the engagement letter — client, intended use, property, due date, fee — and drafts a reply for you to send. Nothing is sent for you.

What's witnessed: when you connect Gmail, the agent records a secure SHA-256 fingerprint of the engagement letter the moment it arrives, along with who sent it and when. You confirm, reclassify, or reject each item before it enters the workfile.

Add your sources

You supply the documents — the comps you pulled, the flood certificate, county-recorder and tax-assessor records, prior reports. Upload them to the assignment as PDF, Word, or photos. North Star reads each one and pulls out the content, including OCR of scanned or image-only pages. A required-document checklist tracks what the workfile still needs and ticks items off as you upload; mark a slot N/A when it doesn't apply.

What's witnessed: if you run the desktop agent, it fingerprints each file the moment it lands on your computer — a secure SHA-256 hash plus where it came from — and you confirm, reclassify, or reject it before it enters the workfile. North Star never scrapes the MLS, Zillow, county portals, or any other site. You supply the documents; North Star witnesses them.

Capture the property

On inspection day, the North Star mobile app captures photos, sketches, voice notes, and text notes. It works without a signal and syncs to the assignment once you're back in coverage. Voice notes are transcribed on our servers, and the transcript appears on the assignment once it's ready. Every capture lands on the assignment, where you can promote it into your source files.

What's witnessed: each photo carries its EXIF details and, if you allow location, a best-effort GPS badge, and each capture gets a secure SHA-256 fingerprint when it reaches the assignment. You can draft an assignment on the phone, but activation ($99) happens on the web.

Pick your rules, draft, and check

Drop in the engagement letter and North Star suggests the rule sets that apply; you pick the ones for this assignment. It then drafts a USPAP report addendum (Standards Rule 2-2(a)) section by section, with placeholders flagging anything that needs your words. The draft is a starting point — you review and edit every section. Run the compliance check against the rules you chose and the findings come back sorted by how serious each one is, each with where the rule comes from and how to fix it. Fix it, add an exception, or accept.

What's witnessed: the rules you selected, every draft paragraph and manual edit, each exception you add, and the check result — your workfile, the rules, the findings, and the time.

Consent, seal, and deliver

Before anything is sealed, you pass a consent gate — a short set of attestation checkboxes that are hashed into the seal. Then North Star seals the workfile and you download the deliverables, each with a matching seal file: a URAR review PDF (a sectioned review draft, not a Fannie 1004 replica), a comp grid PDF, a report addendum PDF, and a MISMO 2.6 XML file. The MISMO file is an early draft with partial coverage — useful for review, not for AMC delivery. North Star never produces the finished, signed appraisal report. You do.

What's witnessed: your consent attestations, the seal itself, and the whole trail behind it. The seal uses SHA-256 and an ECDSA P-256 signature, and records the time it was sealed, so anyone can later confirm the record is genuine.

What the Assemble record proves

With the check, your Evaluation Report tells you what your report was checked against, when, and what came back — findings you act on. That's real protection, but it's narrow on purpose: we didn't help create the report, and there's nothing sealed to verify later.

With Assemble, your record proves much more. Because every piece is witnessed as it enters your workfile, the record can show a great deal more about the evidence behind the report:

What an Assemble record also proves

Where every piece came from. Each data point in your workfile links back to a witnessed source — an email, a document you supplied, an in-field photo, a sketch. The record proves where the fact came from.
When every piece was captured. The photo from the inspection, the comp you added, the sketch you finished — each is recorded with the time it entered the workfile, witnessed into the chain.
What was done with it. Every draft paragraph, manual edit, and exception is logged with who did it and why. The record shows what you selected, edited, and accepted along the way.
Photo and sketch integrity. Each photo and sketch gets a secure SHA-256 fingerprint when it reaches the assignment, so any later change to the file shows up.
A full chain of custody. A regulator or attorney can ask "show me what this workfile was built from," and the record lays out each witnessed source, when it arrived, the rules you selected, and the edits and exceptions along the way.
The record stays there when you need it. Assemble keeps your workfile documents for 5 years from the assignment effective date — matching USPAP, WAC 308-125-210, and OAR 161-050 record-keeping rules — plus another 2 years if you flag the assignment as the subject of a legal or regulatory matter. Sealed records are kept indefinitely, so your shareable records stay valid for as long as you need them. Full retention policy →

What an Assemble record still does not prove

That the value conclusion is correct. Even with a full trail of where everything came from, the value opinion is your professional judgment. The record shows what you considered; it doesn't do the analysis for you.
That you observed the property accurately. Photos prove what was captured; they don't prove your inspection notes are complete or your condition rating is right.
That outside source data is accurate. If a comp's reported sale price was wrong at the source, the record proves you supplied that figure — not that the figure is correct.
That the appraisal meets rules outside our rule sets. Same as the check — the record is measured against the rules in force at sign-off, not against any blanket standard.
Legal advice or a professional opinion. Software, not judgment.

See the how-it-works page for the full picture across both products.

What it costs, and how to start

Assemble is $99 per assignment, paid when you activate the assignment and before any work runs. No subscription, no monthly minimum, no per-seat fee. Payment goes through Stripe's secure checkout, and no card is ever saved.

The AI work uses your own provider key if you bring one — Anthropic today, with more providers rolling out — and that AI bills to you with no surcharge. Without a key, North Star uses its own and adds a per-call surcharge, always shown before you're charged.

Prefer to start smaller? Evaluate is the $25 check for reports you've already finished — a low-risk way to see how North Star handles your work before you assemble a full assignment.

Signing up is free. You can browse all 407 rules and verify any sealed record without paying; you pay only when you activate an assignment.

The trust story, in one paragraph

Most appraisal software is a glorified word processor. North Star builds your workfile while keeping a tamper-evident record of every piece that goes into it. When you build a workfile in Assemble, the record at the end isn't only proof you sent a file — it's proof you added this comp at that time, that you took the front-exterior photo at this location on that date, and that you made this adjustment for that reason. Three years from now, when a question comes in, the record answers it without anyone having to take anyone's word for it. That's what North Star does.

Start your first assignment.

$99 per assignment, paid when you activate. No subscription, no saved card. Sign up free and pay only when you're ready to assemble.