Cara Construction AI — Executive Summary¶
Platform: Cara Construction AI (caraconstruction.ai) · First tenant: Pinley Mechanical
Last updated: 2026-06-03 · For: Conor + office team
The live plan is the 8-week build (C14–C17)
This summary's month-by-month (June → September) is the original launch framing, kept for context. The current delivery plan is the live 8-week build, tracked from each feature's frontmatter + Linear status: the Project Timeline (Gantt) and the 8-Week Lock Status. The "what we need from Conor", top risks, and accounting-direction sections below still stand.
Where we are
- Bid → Project pipeline is live since Cycle 5 (May)
- Soft launch Jun 29 on Codilas/AWS cloud → on-prem rack cutover mid-July
- Full maturity wave Sep 7 (compliance + pricing intel + closeout)
Today's snapshot¶
Cycle 5 closed 2026-06-01 with 47 of 60 issues done. The end-to-end bid pipeline is shipped: bid invite intake → AI scope + equipment extraction → estimate builder (live collab + alternates + revisions) → takeoff with calibration → award → project module (overview / budget / POs / submittals / RFIs / COs / daily logs). Cara MVP is in review. Production cluster preparation and on-prem rack assembly are underway in parallel with feature work. 28 days to soft launch.
Milestones¶
Jun 29 soft launch → Jul 13 stabilization end → Jul 17 rack cutover → Jul 27 AI Doc Gen ships → Aug 24 Compliance R1 ships → Sep 7 Q3 close
June — Soft launch on cloud (Jun 1–29)¶
- Bid → Project pipeline production-hardened and demo-ready end-to-end
- Cara MVP ships as a lightweight in-app chatbot bubble + RAG over your data (no memory layer or agent capabilities yet — those land July/August)
- AI Auto-Takeoff + AI Assembly Extraction ship as operator-supervised demos on your real PDFs (Jim approves each system pass — not a one-click takeoff)
- Production infrastructure stood up on Codilas/AWS — Cloudflare DNS, AKS prod, blue-green deploy, Sentry/OTel, branded email
- Office onboards Jun 29 — Conor + Alex + Jim are the first daily users
July — Stabilization + AI Document Generation (Jun 29–Jul 27)¶
- Jul 1–13 pilot stabilization sprint — 60% bug-fix capacity absorbs your team's first 2 weeks of real feedback; 40% seeds the next wave
- Mid-July rack cutover — workloads migrate from Codilas/AWS to your on-prem rack; AWS becomes hot standby with near-live data sync
- Jul 13–27 AI Document Generation suite — AI Handoff Scope · AI Submittal Register · AI RFI drafting · AI SOV via Cara · Proposal PDF · CO Subcost Tracker (Cara × Tasks delegation moved to September per Jun 2 alignment call — read-only RAG bot first, write-actions after reliability validated)
- Compliance entity scaffolds begin — foundations for the August Compliance R1 release
August — Compliance R1 + Workflow Maturity (Jul 27–Aug 24)¶
- Aug 10 (Workflow Maturity Wave 1) — PO Approval Phase 2 · External Users + Client Portal MVP · Documents preview pane · Smart Upload v2 · CO Drawing Overlay AI · Permission Matrix admin UI (self-service role × module access)
- Aug 24 (Compliance Round 1) — COI management · compliance check rule engine · review page · org insurance status · renewal tracking (30/10/3 day reminders) · secure upload portal · compliance gating on PO + site access
- Meeting Hub MVP + Email + Calendar → Cara Memory (depend on your specs landing in time)
- Schedule Sync AI — GC schedule → internal schedule generation
September — Pricing Intelligence + Closeout (Aug 24–Sep 7)¶
- Master Change Order Log + Foundation/Excel historical import
- Bid Targeting first impl — AI ranks opportunities by win probability + margin
- Pricing Intelligence first impl — composite vendor scoring + cross-job pricing DB
- Compliance UAT + complete — end-to-end testing closes the August scaffolds
- Project Closeout + Punch List — drawing-integrated deficiency tracking
- Cara × Tasks delegation (slid from July) — "Ask Cara" on tasks drafts email replies / Word docs / vendor scope validation
- AR Progress Verification spike + Cara Marketing AI
What's deferred to Sep+¶
| Area | Why deferred |
|---|---|
| Permission Matrix admin UI (self-service roles) | Deferred from Jun 29 — permissions seeded correctly for launch; admin panel ships Aug 10 |
| CAD/BIM Integrations (AutoCAD, Revit MEP) | Awaiting scope spec from Conor |
| Financial Module / Foundation deep integration | Foundation API confirmed insufficient for June/July value — "show on arrival" |
| WIP reports + AP Review via Foundation | Tied to Foundation decision above |
| Full Bid Outcome AI training loop (model phase) | Needs 8+ weeks of accumulated bid data — earliest meaningful start is post-Q3 |
| Cross-job Pricing Intelligence maturity | Multi-tenant + anonymized — requires more than one tenant on the platform |
| Reports module | Awaiting scope spec from Conor |
| Executive Dashboard | Deferred D22 (Apr 30) — awaiting reactivation decision |
| Shop Drawings module | Spike Aug → impl Sep+ |
| Cara persistent memory layer | Awaiting first consumer use case (the memory-layer scope now lives in the Cara feature spec) |
Accounting and Foundation direction¶
Direction as of 2026-08-26: keep running Foundation in parallel for about the next 12 months while the platform matures. After that window, evaluate two paths for accounting, build Cara-native accounting versus integrating a cheaper, more API-friendly package than Foundation. No build starts against either path until that evaluation.
This reflects the earlier finding that Foundation does not expose a consumable API today, so a deep integration is not worth the cost right now. Cara keeps owning the flows Foundation would otherwise cover (budgets, POs, COs, AR billing) inside the product, and the accounting decision stays open until the 12-month mark.
This is the context behind PIN-327 (accounting integration discovery) and PIN-373 (the Foundation API review spike). With the direction captured here, both can be closed.
What we need from you (Conor)¶
Four items currently block the Jun 29 soft launch path:
- 3 real bid+project packages (small / medium / large) for the demo seed data — PIN-369
- Master vendor + organization Excel list — PIN-377
- BuildingConnected API credentials (after paid subscription is in place) — PIN-268
- Jim's Roshid detail drawings (Trimble export) for AI Assembly Extraction demo — PIN-343
Full queue sorted by priority: client-action view
Top risks we're tracking¶
- Cara MVP is RAG-only for June — memory layer + agent capabilities are July/August features. Expectation reset on this is critical so your team isn't surprised on day-1.
- AI Auto-Takeoff at Jun 29 is a guided demo, not unsupervised production — breakthrough toward unsupervised takeoff comes when the symbol + assembly library accumulates training data (C9+ inflection).
- PIN-338 AI Handoff sample doc 8+ days overdue — without it, PIN-299 AI Handoff Scope slips from C8 to C9.
Want depth?¶
Full roadmap with cycle-by-cycle plans, owner allocations, dependency graphs, takeoff engine deep-dive, and risk mitigations: June – September 2026 Launch