Field notes

HPC — High Performance Construction

Thought leadership from a builder running a homebuilding company on AI — what works, what broke, and the data behind the calls. Two threads: the case for attainable housing, and how AI actually runs a construction back office.

Isometric illustration of a timber-framed house on a blueprint that resolves into circuit traces

The Blueprint

Attainable Housing

The California Fee Friction Study: The Number We Couldn't Compute

We attempted a comparable fee total for one standard home across 188 California jurisdictions. The result—658 validated line items but zero complete totals—shows why fee transparency is an entity-resolution problem before it is a math problem.

August 16, 2026Read more →

Attainable Housing

How the Nimble Attainability Index Works: 11 Metrics, Open Data, No MLS Required

The current NAI uses 11 public-data components and attainability-first v4 weights. Here is the formula, what changed, and what the score deliberately does not claim.

August 16, 2026Read more →

Attainable Housing

The Permit Friendliness Index: 188 Jurisdictions, One Steep Curve

We graded California jurisdictions from public housing-production data. Of 178 with enough evidence to score, 141 earned a D or F—and ten received no grade at all.

August 16, 2026Read more →

AI in Construction Ops

How We Used AI to Build 5 New Lines of Revenue

California changed the density laws, and most homeowners have no idea what their lot can now hold. Here is what we asked ourselves along the way, what worked, what still needs a human — and the five revenue lines that came out of it.

August 7, 2026Read more →

AI in Construction Ops

8 Ways We Are Implementing AI for New Opportunities That We Couldn't Before

There are two ways to use AI: optimize what you already do, or do things you couldn't do before. Eight projects from an AI-first homebuilder working the second bucket.

July 30, 2026Read more →

The Blueprint

Chat → Cowork → Agent

Thirty-five-plus scripts and a growing bench of agents into building this system, the most valuable thing I've learned about AI agents is when not to use one. That's an…

July 30, 2026Read more →

The Blueprint

Governance before capability

One of my agents once tried to delete a set of files because the comments in the code said they were 'removed.' The comments were wishful thinking — the files were in…

July 30, 2026Read more →

The Blueprint

One source of truth per domain

Walk into almost any construction office and ask a simple question — 'What have we spent on that job so far?' — and you'll get three answers. One from the estimator's…

July 30, 2026Read more →

The Blueprint

Start with your data

By the time we got around to auditing the memory system behind our AI — the database of facts, corrections, and hard-won lessons it's supposed to consult before doing…

July 30, 2026Read more →

The Blueprint

The bet: why a small homebuilder went AI-first

Before there was a system, there were 2,572 lines of notes spread across seven files. I counted. Project notes, lessons learned, half-finished plans, reminders about…

July 30, 2026Read more →

The Blueprint

The daemon: 21 jobs that run whether I show up or not

At 5:55 every morning, a program wakes up and checks whether a different program will be able to do its job at 6:30. If the answer is no, my phone gets a message with…

July 30, 2026Read more →

The Blueprint

The morning brief

At 6:30, six mornings a week, my phone buzzes with a Google Chat message. It's not from a person. One recent example:

July 30, 2026Read more →

The Blueprint

The stack we actually use

People who ask about our 'AI stack' are usually braced for a logo parade — the slide with thirty software badges arranged like a NASCAR hood. I'm going to disappoint them…

July 30, 2026Read more →

The Blueprint

Vector, the chief of staff

Some hours of my day are worth $5,000. Others are worth about ten bucks. The unsettling part is that on a calendar they look exactly the same — same little rectangle, same…

July 30, 2026Read more →

The Blueprint

What 'AI-first' actually means

When I tell people I run an AI-first construction company, they picture one of two things: a chatbot answering my email, or a robot in a hard hat. It's neither. There is…

July 30, 2026Read more →

The Blueprint

Who this is for (and who it isn't)

At some point in the last year, somebody — a vendor at a trade show, a nephew, a man on LinkedIn with suspiciously white teeth — told you that AI is about to change…

July 30, 2026Read more →

Attainable Housing

Anatomy of the NAI: Nine Core Metrics, Open Data, No MLS Required

Every metric in the Nimble Attainability Index runs on free public data — Census, Redfin, FRED, HUD, and building permits. Here's the exact formula for each one, why we weighted them the way we did, and what we got wrong in our first article.

March 4, 2026Read more →

AI in Construction Ops

The Software Behind Every Nimble Project

Six platforms, 890+ tools, and one feedback loop. Here's how we assembled an AI-powered operating system that compounds with every project.

March 3, 2026Read more →

AI in Construction Ops

How We Stress-Tested Our Own Article — and What It Taught Us About Data-Driven Honesty

We wrote an article about being data-driven. Then we hired a skeptic to tear it apart. The result was uncomfortable, educational, and exactly what our content needed.

March 2, 2026Read more →

AI in Construction Ops

Why Construction Software Still Feels Like It's From 2010

After building FluidCM from scratch and using every major platform on actual job sites, here's what the construction software industry gets wrong — and what we're doing differently.

March 2, 2026Read more →

Attainable Housing

Stockton's Housing Gap: What the Data Actually Says

We ran the Nimble Attainability Index on Stockton and its neighbors. The numbers tell a story of a market building the wrong product at the wrong price — and a missing middle that no one is filling.

February 27, 2026Read more →

Attainable Housing

Backtesting the NAI: What 14 Years of Data Told Us About Our Own Assumptions

We built a scoring engine to predict buyer-favorable markets. Then we tested whether it actually works. Here's the honest result — and what we're doing about it.

February 25, 2026Read more →

Attainable Housing

Under the Hood: How the Nimble Attainability Index Works

Eleven metrics, five public data sources, one score that learns from its own predictions. Here's exactly how we measure whether a market is building what people can afford.

February 18, 2026Read more →

AI in Construction Ops

Why We Decided to Build an AI-First Development and Construction Company

We faced three ways to bring AI into a young homebuilding company and chose the hardest one: a decision-making system. Here's the reasoning — and the housing data infrastructure we built to back it.

February 9, 2026Read more →

Attainable Housing

Why Attainable Housing Is the Next Frontier

The gap between median income and median home price has never been wider. We explore how right-sized development — not mega-projects — can restore balance to local markets.

January 28, 2026Read more →

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Notes from a builder running a homebuilding company on AI — attainable housing, construction ops, and the systems behind them. No spam, unsubscribe anytime.