Beware of AI Tech Packs, Even From "Professionals"

I expected new founders to start using AI to make their own tech packs. That was

always going to happen. What I did not expect was how fast it would show up from

people selling tech pack services.

I came across a post n LinkedIn recently from someone presenting themselves as

a tech pack expert. The graphic was a side by side comparison, a basic tech pack

next to a detailed one, with the detailed version as the example of good work.

It looked polished. Beige backgrounds, nice typography, close up photos of a

blouse, construction callouts numbered down the side. Here it is below:

Then I read it and quite literally 95% of it was objectively incorrect.

The seam allowances were wrong.

It called for 2 cm of sleeve ease. The sleeve in the sketch is full and gathered.

2 cm of ease will not come close to producing that sleeve. Those two things are

on the same page, contradicting each other, and nobody noticed.

The shoulder seam callout was an image that does not make sense. It is a

photograph next to the words "press open," but the picture is not showing what

the instruction describes.

The cuff callout said to turn the hem allowance to the inside. As opposed to the

outside, apparently. That is not a specification, it is a word salad sentence.

The hem called for 2 cm. That is not what is drawn in the sketch, and it would

not work on a curved hem anyway.

The interior finish said "French seam on side panels," and the photo next to it

is not a French seam.

Pressing came up three separate times in three separate places, which is what

happens when text is generated rather than written by someone thinking about

the order of operations.

And for all that detail, basic information was missing.

 Why this matters if you are a founder

Every one of those errors is invisible to someone who has not worked in

production. That is exactly the problem. The document looks more thorough than a

real tech pack, because AI is very good at generating things that look thorough.

Your manufacturer will spot it immediately. What happens next is one of two

things. Either they decline the project, because a tech pack like this signals

that the whole process is going to be a mess, or they take the job and start

making their own decisions about everything the document got wrong. Then you pay

for samples that are not what you asked for, and you have no idea why.

This is worse than having no tech pack at all.

How to spot an AI tech pack

Some things I have noticed:

Beige. AI loves beige. Warm neutral backgrounds, cream paper, gold accents,

fabric draped artfully in the corner.

A single page that does everything. Real tech packs run many pages because there

is a lot to document. If someone is showing you one beautiful page with

everything on it, that is a marketing graphic, not a tech pack.

Close up photos of the garment used as construction callouts. Photographs are

fine as reference, but they are not how you specify construction. That needs

diagrams.

Everything looks clean and nothing is specific. This is the tell that matters

most. Scan for actual numbers, actual seam and stitch types, actual measurements

at actual points. If the language is confident but you cannot find a single

piece of information a factory could work from, it was generated.

Basic information missing while unusual details are over explained. Generated

documents are strangely uneven. They will give you a paragraph on pressing and

no bill of materials.

What to ask for

If you are hiring someone to make your tech pack, ask to see a full one. Not a

cover page, not a graphic, the whole document for one garment. Ask what software

they work in. Ask whether the tech pack has been used to produce anything.

Anyone doing this properly will have real work to show you.

AI is genuinely useful for plenty of things, and I use it every day. It cannot

do this yet. It does not know how a garment is built, and it cannot tell when

the sleeve it specified will not match the sleeve it drew.

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I'm Tatyana, founder of TM Tech Packs. I make tech packs that factories can

actually work from. If you want a second opinion on one you already have, send

it over.