AI agents for architecture and design studios

A small practice is one or two principals who are licensed architects, a few project architects and designers, and sometimes a project administrator and a marketing coordinator. The principals design, keep the client relationship, write fee proposals and seal the drawings. Project architects carry the construction documents and the construction administration: submittals, shop drawings, RFIs, site visits and field reports.

Fees are usually set per phase, from schematic design through construction administration, and the firm often learns a phase ran over only when the invoice is due. Invoices are built by hand each month from percent complete, last month's bill and a pile of consultant invoices. During construction, RFIs and submittals arrive by email and get answered late because nobody saw the due date. Meeting decisions go unrecorded, and an RFQ with its amendments takes an evening to read.

An agent works from your timesheets, project inbox and fee schedules, and every draft goes back to an architect.

• Keeps the RFI and submittal log current from the project inbox and reminds the team of due dates.
• Drafts the architect's field report in the G711 structure from site notes and photos, worded as observation, for the architect to edit and sign.
• Compares each phase's hours against its fee every week and shows which phases are burning faster than the work is moving.
• Drafts monthly phase invoices and their backup from the percent complete the principal sets.
• Reads an RFQ or RFP and builds a compliance matrix of deadlines, required forms and evaluation criteria for the go/no-go meeting.
• Gathers a code and zoning research brief with every citation linked to the official text.
• Turns design meetings into minutes, a decision log and action items.

Design decisions, code interpretation, fee decisions, responses to RFIs and submittal review actions stay with the architects. Under the AIA Code of Conduct an architect must not seal work they do not have responsible control over, so the agent never produces anything that gets stamped. A code brief is a starting point: the architect checks the edition and local amendments, because a plausible but wrong answer is the real risk. Field reports record observation, not inspection, since means and methods belong to the contractor. Whether to pursue a public solicitation is the principal's call. Drawings and client information go only into tools the firm has approved, and stay in your own systems.