Donald Speedie

Start here — free

The Blueprint

How a Small Homebuilder Runs on AI

A complete, phase-by-phase account of running a construction company on AI — the foundation it needs, the system we actually built, every lesson that cost us something, and the plan to do it yourself. It is being published here a chapter at a time.

11 of 43 chapters published. Start reading →

Foreword

  1. 0.1Who this is for (and who it isn't)
  2. 0.2The bet: why a small homebuilder went AI-first
  3. 0.3What "AI-first" actually means

Part I — Foundation

  1. 1.1Start with your data
  2. 1.2One source of truth per domain
  3. 1.3The stack we actually use
  4. 1.4Governance before capability
  5. 1.5Chat → Cowork → Agent

Part II — What We Built

  1. 2.1Vector, the chief of staff
  2. 2.2The daemon: 21 jobs that run whether I show up or not
  3. 2.3The morning brief
  4. 2.4Giving the system a memorysoon
  5. 2.5The council: how big decisions get madesoon
  6. 2.6The sub-agent fleetsoon
  7. 2.7Enterprise accounting for $5Ksoon
  8. 2.8The 3-axis cost code modelsoon
  9. 2.9Self-correcting cashflow forecastssoon
  10. 2.10Deal intelligence: HABU and the self-healing MLS pipelinesoon
  11. 2.11The market radarsoon
  12. 2.12The dashboard we killedsoon
  13. 2.13The knowledge vaultsoon
  14. 2.14The shipping machinesoon
  15. 2.15Learning loops: how it compoundssoon
  16. 2.16The watchdogssoon

Part III — Scars

  1. 3.1AI systems rotsoon
  2. 3.2Alert fatigue nearly killed the whole thingsoon
  3. 3.3"Done" is a lie (the completion trap)soon
  4. 3.4The authority matrixsoon
  5. 3.5Determinism for dollarssoon
  6. 3.6Guardrails only count if you test themsoon
  7. 3.7Self-policing spendsoon
  8. 3.8Screening shiny objectssoon
  9. 3.9One writer per surfacesoon
  10. 3.10What we'd do differentlysoon

Part IV — The Blueprint

  1. 4.1The readiness scorecardsoon
  2. 4.2Phase 0: clean the data, name the sources of truthsoon
  3. 4.3Phase 1: the assistantsoon
  4. 4.4Phase 2: the scheduled backbonesoon
  5. 4.5Phase 3: agents with authoritysoon
  6. 4.6Phase 4: learning loopssoon
  7. 4.7What it actually costssoon
  8. 4.8Build, buy, or hiresoon
  9. 4.9Working with mesoon