Hardhat Support
Hardhat is a local-first bid workspace for heavy-civil estimators. Use the guidance below for the fastest answer, or email support with the details listed at the bottom of this page.
Getting Started
- Open a reference bid from Home to create an editable working copy, or choose New Estimate.
- Use the included demo rates immediately, then upload your company labor, equipment, and material CSV files when ready.
- Add pay items and build each item from activities, resources, materials, subcontractors, and markup.
- Review the bid, save a snapshot, close unit prices, and export the proposal or bid sheet.
Saving and Recovery
Hardhat autosaves after you pause editing. The toolbar shows whether changes are saving or saved. Closing the app triggers a final ordered save.
Signed App Store builds keep the workspace in Hardhat's protected app-group container. If a workspace cannot be read, Hardhat preserves the unreadable file in its Backups folder and opens sample data instead of overwriting it.
Imports and Exports
macOS asks you to choose files and destinations because Hardhat runs in the App Sandbox. If an import or export fails, try a folder you own, such as Documents, and make sure the source file is not open exclusively in another app.
Company Rates
Demo rates make a clean install usable. Upload company CSVs from the onboarding strip or Codebooks area. Existing priced rows are retained when stock catalog rows are added.
Hardhat MCP
Open Hardhat Settings → Hardhat MCP for the signed helper path, read-only tool list, privacy boundaries, and a copyable Cursor configuration. Save recent edits before querying them from an MCP client.
Contact Support
Email hi@masonearl.com with:
- your macOS version and Hardhat version;
- what you expected and what happened;
- the exact error message, if one appeared;
- a screenshot with sensitive bid information removed.
Please do not email confidential estimates, codebooks, customer data, or credentials. See the Hardhat Privacy Policy for data-handling details.