AI for general contractors: one office for subs, inspections and draws.

General contracting is the trade where both the schedule and the money wait on someone else's sign-off. Framers, plumbers, electricians, insulators and drywall crews are booked in a chain whose links are the county's inspections, and on a financed new build the cash arrives in draws that the lender releases against its own checklist.

Supervised AI assistants can keep both gates in view. They can hold an inspection calendar built from the county's sequence as the owner entered it, draft next-inspection notices for the subs who are waiting, log every notice and release, and check for gaps before draw day. They do not request inspections on their own, decide whether a stage is ready, sign or send a lien release, submit a draw or speak to the lender. This page summarizes the project office; the one-person GC article follows a single week of it, and the lien waiver tracker article sets out the paperwork.

A service company books one visit and invoices it. A builder runs a chain of trades, each waiting on the last, and the links in that chain are inspections. When a framing inspection comes back with corrections, every trade the county's sequence places after it is now waiting for an unknown date. What goes wrong is the telling: a sub who was not warned turns up to a house that is not ready, or takes another job and is gone when it is.

The money has its own chain. On a build financed by a construction loan, what must be complete and documented before the next payment is whatever that loan's draw terms say, so the office works from the builder's own copy of them. And in California a sub's or supplier's preliminary notice warns the property owner that a lien claim is possible if that party goes unpaid, so the release for each payment matters as much as the payment.

Counties and cities differ in which inspections they require, what they call them and the order they come in. This article does not state a sequence, and an assistant should never assume one. The owner enters it once for each jurisdiction the company builds in, from that building department's own documents and the conditions on the permit: each inspection's name, what has to be in place before it is requested, which trades wait for it and how it is booked.

From that entry an inspection-calendar Bot keeps one calendar per project: the next inspection, every sub whose start depends on it, and the date the builder intends to request it. When the builder records a result, the Bot redraws the chain behind it and drafts a short notice to each affected sub saying what passed or failed, what they now wait on, and that the date is the builder's estimate rather than a promise. If a permit lists an inspection the owner's entry lacks, the Bot flags the mismatch and stops instead of filling the gap from general knowledge. If the calendar Bot's overnight routine reaches a step that needs the builder's yes, the request lapses after roughly ten minutes (Cursor's help pages say thirty) with nobody there and the step is skipped, so the morning starts from sub notices still in draft.

Judgment stays on site: readiness, corrections and the call for a re-inspection are the builder's, and the result is recorded by whoever met the inspector. Booking through a county portal needs a custom integration, or the Bot working the portal in its browser under supervision where the county allows it and once tested; either way, a person types the login.

The assistants in this design are built on Grok Bot, an agent product that runs on Cursor-hosted cloud computers. A Bot has a name, a defined job and a conversation of its own, and it does its work on a persistent cloud computer that carries a browser, a file system and a command line. It uses a connector where one exists and, for many other web tools, the browser; a site may block automation, and logins, two-factor codes, CAPTCHAs and payments are done by a person taking over the computer.

The documentation names no construction project management system, lender draw portal or county permit portal. Reaching any of them is a custom integration, built for the systems the builder actually runs, tested, and only as far as each vendor's API and terms permit. Email to subs is prepared as an editable draft that a person reviews and sends. The documentation describes no telephony and no texting, so a sub who only answers the phone still hears from the builder.

Routines repeat the preparation on a schedule, at least five minutes apart. Which steps stop for approval is configured by the builder and depends on the tool, the risk and the rules written for it.

Based on the Grok Bot documentation at docs.x.ai as checked on 15 October 2026. Its statements on Bot rules, Bot-to-Bot messaging, routine triggers, connected apps, approval expiry and payments were rechecked against docs.x.ai and Cursor's help pages on 26 October 2026. The trade examples are Aevrion's illustrations, not documented Grok Bot use cases. Aevrion Ops is an independent consultancy. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by or a partner of xAI, SpaceXSI or Cursor. Grok Bot is named here only to describe it.

The Contractors State License Board (CSLB) publishes California's rules for home improvement contracts. As checked on 15 October 2026, its consumer page says the following. These are one state's rules, and the page addresses home improvement projects; which of a builder's own contracts they govern is for the builder and the builder's lawyer to settle.

• IN WRITING

  In California a written contract is required for home improvement projects over five hundred dollars, and the contract and any changes to it must be written, legible and easy to understand.

• CANCELLATION RIGHTS

  The contract must tell the consumer about their rights to cancel or rescind it.

• DOWN PAYMENT

  No more than one thousand dollars or ten percent of the contract price, whichever is less, with no exception for special-order materials.

• PAYMENT SCHEDULE

  A detailed written schedule, and no payment beyond the value of work performed, apart from the down payment.

• PERMITS AND COMPLETION

  Written direction on who obtains the permits, and a completion date.

• CHANGE ORDERS

  A change to price or scope needs a written change order signed by customer and contractor before the change; it then forms part of the contract.

A contract-review Bot can compare each draft contract with a checklist the builder and the builder's lawyer wrote, drawn from the California items above where they apply. It returns a document with headings: each checklist line, whether the draft contains it, and the clause it matched. A down payment above the owner's entered limit, a payment schedule with no stage descriptions or a missing completion date is flagged, and the Bot stops there. It suggests no wording, decides no applicability and sends nothing to the customer.

Change orders are a secondary topic on this page. From the superintendent's notes and photos a Bot can draft the description of a proposed change, leaving price, schedule effect and signatures for the builder; California's signed-before-the-change rule for home improvement contracts is one reason the draft exists. Change orders discovered in occupied homes belong to the whole-home remodeling guide in this series.

In Queensland, the Queensland Building and Construction Commission (QBCC) says individuals and companies need a QBCC license to contract for building work valued over three thousand three hundred Australian dollars, and that a subcontractor doing building work for a licensed builder needs an appropriate contractor license for it (as checked on 15 October 2026). A Queensland builder's sub file therefore carries each sub's license class. An assistant can flag a blank field or a sub booked outside the class the owner recorded; a person checks the QBCC register.

In the UK, guidance from the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government explains that an installer in a competent person scheme can self-certify certain building work instead of getting building regulations approval (as checked on 15 October 2026). For a main contractor that adds one column: for each piece of notifiable work, building control or the sub's scheme, as the owner records it. The assistant tracks that the matching record arrives and never decides the route.

CSLB's guidance on preventing mechanics liens in California, as checked on 15 October 2026, describes the paper a property owner should expect: preliminary notices from subcontractors and suppliers, and a signed release for each payment, which the direct contractor collects for the owner. The owner may hold back the next payment until the previous payment's unconditional releases arrive. The notice timing, the release order and the Notice of Completion are set out in the lien waiver tracker article. Other states set different rules, and any deadline is one for the builder's counsel to confirm.

So the builder is the one collecting paper. A lien paperwork Bot keeps the log of notices, payments and matching releases, and before each draw it compares the file with the lender's checklist, entered by the owner from the loan documents, and returns the gaps. The builder chases them, signs what needs signing and submits the draw. No Bot submits a draw request, signs or sends a release, or contacts the lender. The lender's draw portal stays off the Bots' computer: every Bot on an account shares that computer and its browser sign-ins, and separate Bots are not a security boundary, so the portal belongs with the builder or under a separate user account.

The documentation advises a small roster to start: one Bot owning an outcome from start to finish, with a specialist added only when a role is stable and distinct. The first Bot should take whichever gate hurts this builder more, the inspection calendar or the lien log. The other follows once the first is trusted, and contract review after that.

Once two or three Bots share a project, put them in one group with a coordinator. The documentation's own example of a group has a coordinator that can hand out work, and the group keeps every handoff on the record in a single conversation. In a builder's project group the coordinator posts the week each Monday: inspections the builder means to request, the subs waiting on each, draws coming due and the releases still missing. In Aevrion's design the coordinator only posts and assigns, and every draft and approval stays in the owning Bot's own conversation with the builder. The one-person GC article follows such a week day by day.

Each needs the builder's signature or the builder's call.

• INSPECTION READINESS

  Whether the work is ready to be seen, and when to request an inspection or re-inspection.

• CONTRACT TERMS

  Every clause, whether a state's rule applies, and every signature.

• CHANGE ORDERS

  Price, schedule effect and signatures, before the change is built.

• SUBS

  Who is hired, whether license and insurance are in order, and every start date promised.

• PAYMENTS AND RELEASES

  Paying subs and suppliers, signing releases and deciding when to withhold; payment confirmations go through a human takeover. Cursor's help pages add that a card saved in the Bot's Vault can be used at checkout without asking each time, so this design saves no card there.

• THE LENDER

  Every draw request and every message to the lender, written and sent by the builder.

• LEGAL DEADLINES

  Lien deadlines and any dispute, confirmed with counsel, and whether the property owner has recorded a Notice of Completion (in California, the owner's to file).

Begin on paper. Take the last draw on one project and list every payment made from it, the release that should match each one and every preliminary notice received; then list the next three inspections and the subs waiting on each. Wherever the exercise stalls, because a release is in someone's truck or a sub's start date lives only in the builder's head, is where the first Bot belongs.

Aevrion Ops can work through that exercise with a builder: writing down the county sequence and the lender's checklist, designing the Bots and their approval boundaries, and scoping custom integrations to the project management, document and accounting systems the company already uses, if each vendor's terms and API permit and once tested. A builder still weighing the two gates can begin with the workflow automation readiness assessment; one who already knows which gate to tackle first can ask for a scoping conversation through the contact page.

1. In general contracting, inspections gate the subs and lien paperwork gates the draws; a project office keeps both visible.
2. The inspection calendar comes only from the county sequence the owner entered; an assistant never assumes one.
3. As checked on 15 October 2026, California's CSLB says home improvement contracts over five hundred dollars must be written, the down payment is capped, and change orders are signed before the change.
4. Before each draw, a gap check lists payments without releases and lender checklist items not yet in the file; the builder submits the draw.
5. No Bot signs or sends a lien release, submits a draw, speaks to the lender or decides inspection readiness.
6. Start with one Bot for the gate that hurts most, and add a coordinator for the project group once two Bots are trusted.