# AI vendor red-flag checker

> Justas Butkus is a fractional AI officer based in Vilnius, Lithuania, founder of AINORA, MB – the company behind the Ainora and Impetora brands – and a graduate of Vilnius University.

Justas Butkus is a fractional AI officer based in Vilnius, Lithuania, working with mid-market companies and scale-ups across the UK, EU and US. He publishes free tools for buyers evaluating AI work, and takes no commission, referral fee or revenue share from any vendor.

**Paste a vendor's pitch and this returns the claims worth challenging and the question to ask about each. It is a deterministic checker, not a model, and it runs entirely in your browser. Nothing is uploaded or stored.**

Canonical: https://justasbutkus.com/tools/vendor-red-flag-checker/
Last updated: 2026-08-02

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## Check a proposal

Interactive tool available at https://justasbutkus.com/tools/vendor-red-flag-checker/

## What is this actually checking?

Twelve language patterns that consistently mark a claim as worth challenging, and five that are good signs. It is pattern matching against a list I maintain, not a model reading your document. Saying so matters on a site about spotting AI overclaiming.

A clean result is not an endorsement, and a flagged phrase is not an accusation. Plenty of competent suppliers write "seamless" out of habit. What the flags give you is a specific question to ask instead of a vague unease.

## What it will not tell you

- **Whether the price is fair.** That depends on scope, which is not in the pitch.
- **Whether they can build it.** Language is not capability, in either direction.
- **Whether you should do the project at all.** That is the arithmetic on the use-case page, and it comes first.

The single strongest test is not in this tool because no tool can run it: ask them to produce a short scoping document, describing what they would automate and what it would save, before any build commitment.

## Frequently asked questions

### Is my pasted text sent anywhere?

No. The checker runs entirely in your browser as plain JavaScript. There is no server call, no storage and no analytics on the input. You can disconnect from the network and it still works.

### Does this use AI to analyse the proposal?

No, and that is deliberate. It matches against a maintained list of language patterns. On a site about spotting AI overclaiming, describing a pattern matcher as AI would be self-defeating.

### What if it finds no red flags?

That is a reasonable sign but not a verdict. Language can be clean and the work still thin. The questions that actually separate suppliers are judgement questions, not vocabulary ones.

### What is the single best question to ask a vendor?

Will you produce a short scoping document, describing what you would automate and what it would save, before any build commitment. Buyers themselves name this as the test that works.

## Related

- [The full ten questions](/answers/is-this-ai-vendor-legitimate/) – What to ask, in order, and the red flags against green flags.
- [The one-sentence test](/tools/one-sentence-test/) – Whether your problem is a project yet.

## About the author

**Justas Butkus** – a fractional AI officer based in Vilnius, Lithuania, founder of AINORA, MB – the company behind the Ainora and Impetora brands – and a graduate of Vilnius University.

## If the flags did not settle it

A second opinion on a specific proposal is a short conversation, and often ends with me saying it looks fine.

Contact: justas@ainora.lt · [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/justas-butkus/)