Home Depot is embedding artificial intelligence deeper into the daily workflow of professional contractors with a new tool designed to compress one of the most time-consuming steps in any job: building a project material list.
The retailer this week introduced Material List Builder AI, a feature within its Project Planning platform that allows remodelers, builders, and specialty trades to generate detailed, job-specific material lists in minutes using natural language, voice input, or existing documents.
For contractors, assembling accurate material lists has traditionally meant searching across product catalogs, comparing prices, checking availability, and re-entering information into spreadsheets or project software—often multiple times. The process is slow, repetitive, and prone to errors that can delay projects and inflate costs.
Home Depot’s new tool is designed to replace much of that manual work. A contractor can describe a project—such as a bathroom remodel, deck build, or kitchen renovation—and the system interprets the request to create a grouped list of required materials organized by project phase. Users can dictate details from a job site, paste in text from estimates or messages, or start with templates for common project types.
After review and edits, the tool surfaces product recommendations tied to the contractor’s preferred pricing and current inventory availability. Materials can then be ordered directly, and the list saved for reuse on future jobs.
“Pros often tell us that their most valuable resource for any job is time, so we’re focused on delivering solutions that empower Pros to work smarter and faster,” said Mike Rowe, executive vice president of Pro for The Home Depot. “Material List Builder AI generates reliable, comprehensive job lists in a fraction of the time it would take to complete this process manually.”
The feature is available at no cost to members of Pro Xtra, the company’s loyalty program for professionals, and is integrated into Home Depot’s broader Project Planning platform.
For wholesale distributors serving plumbing, HVAC, electrical and building trades, the significance of the tool goes beyond convenience. It illustrates how AI is being used to pull contractors earlier into a digital planning and purchasing workflow—well before a formal purchase order is placed.
By inserting itself at the project planning stage, Home Depot is shaping not just where contractors buy, but how they decide what to buy. Material selection, pricing visibility, inventory checks, and ordering are increasingly happening inside a single digital environment tied directly to the retailer’s supply chain.
That integration is reinforced by services Home Depot promotes to Pros, including trade credit, scheduled and same-day delivery, two-hour pickup, preferred pricing, and dedicated account support. The AI tool effectively acts as a front door into that ecosystem.
For distributors, this raises competitive pressure to match not only product availability and pricing, but also the digital tools that influence specification and planning. Contractors using AI-assisted material lists tied to live inventory and pricing may have less incentive to shop across multiple suppliers or manually source items from distributor catalogs.
It also highlights a broader shift: AI is moving upstream in the buying cycle, from search and checkout into estimation, planning, and job costing. That is territory where many distributors still rely on manual processes, PDF catalogs, or basic ecommerce sites.
Home Depot’s move signals that the battle for Pro customers is increasingly being fought in digital project planning tools—where the material list is built, not just where the order is placed.
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