How Archie works

Cost estimates

Tell Archie what you're building — a project type and address, a square footage, or just a plain-English description like "finish my basement into a one-bedroom with a bath" — and it returns a construction cost estimate as a low–mid–high range, broken down phase by phase, along with a rough timeline and the permits you'll likely need.

You don't have to speak in construction terms. Archie reads a free-text description, classifies it into real, priced scopes of work, and tells you how confident it is. It also adjusts for how the work gets done — general contractor, owner-builder, or DIY all price differently.

Budget tracking

Every project has a live budget organized by construction phase. Each line item tracks the original forecast, the accepted bid, the expenses you've actually paid, and any change orders — so you always know what's spent to date and what's left against your budget.

When a contractor quote comes in — over email, WhatsApp, or chat — Archie logs it as a bid for your review. A quote never silently changes your forecast; you approve it first. Your budget lives in one place, and you can share a clean budget page with your GC or lender.

Timeline & phases

Archie builds a schedule of construction phases with durations, start and finish dates, and the tasks that belong under each phase. You set the start date and your target finish; the phase durations come from the scope of work.

As real life happens, you can anchor the schedule to actual events — "the GC starts demo on July 1" — and Archie recalculates the dates and which phase you're currently in. There's a shareable timeline view so everyone on the project sees the same plan.

Tasks

Tasks are to-dos with an assignee, due date, priority, and status (backlog, to-do, in progress, done, or cancelled), shown on a board in your dashboard. Each task lives under a timeline phase, so the plan and the work stay connected.

Create tasks by hand, ask for them in chat or WhatsApp, or let Archie pull them out of an email automatically. Tasks Archie finds on its own go to your review queue before they land on the board — the rule of thumb is simple: if it's something a person has to go do in the real world, it's a task.

Permits

Give Archie an address and a scope of work and it identifies which permits you're likely to need, who your local building department is, the typical timeline and fees, and the next steps to take — tracked on a Permits tab you can update as each one moves along.

For New York City, Archie goes deeper: it distinguishes alteration types (ALT-1, ALT-2, ALT-3), points you to the right DOB NOW portal, and includes step-by-step filing guides. It's honest about certainty, too — it flags when permit info is confirmed for your city versus a typical default, and never presents an unverified list as gospel.

More tools

Beyond the core project workspace, Archie includes a set of focused tools — also available as free calculators on the site:

Home Value Forecast estimates a property's after-repair value for different renovation scopes, showing the value each one adds and how much of the cost it recoups. It's a market analysis, not an appraisal.
Inspection Prep reads a home-inspection report and sorts the findings by urgency — fix now, within six months, within a year, or defer — with a cost range for each.
Investment Strategy Planner compares renovation strategies for a property and ranks them by return.
Feasibility, zoning, and building-code lookups tell you what you can build on a given lot and the rules that apply.

Email

CC or forward any project-related email to Archie — a contractor bid, a permit update, a scheduling change. Archie reads the thread, extracts what matters, and replies in-thread when a reply is useful.

WhatsApp

Add Archie to the WhatsApp group your crew already uses. Ask it anything about the project — budget status, permit timing, what a contractor already committed to — and it answers from your project's own history, not generic advice.

See it answer three real questions in the WhatsApp walkthrough, or add Archie to your group directly.

The agent & its tools

Archie isn't a form or a set of buttons — it's an AI agent. When you send a message or a document, it works out what you're actually asking and reaches for the right tool: pulling numbers from your project record, searching your past emails and documents, running an estimate, checking permits or zoning, looking up a product or company on the web, drafting a reply, or creating a calendar invite.

Answers are grounded in your project's own history — what a contractor committed to, what's in the budget, what's outstanding — not generic advice. And it works the same whether you reach it by email, WhatsApp, or the dashboard.

Data & approvals

When Archie extracts something from an email, document, or message — a budget change, a new task, a vendor's contact info — it doesn't get saved to your project automatically. It goes into a pending-approvals queue first, so you always see and confirm what's about to change before it becomes part of the record.

Low-risk details like a new contact save on their own; the things that matter most — budget, tasks, timeline, vendors, change orders — wait for your review in the dashboard's "Needs your review" area. When you tell Archie a value directly and confirm it, you're the approver, so it saves straight away.

FAQ