You can say what you want, and the tool has appropriate guardrails to make sure what you're going to build is safe.

Something that helps homeowners build anything on their property, for example https://myhomecat.com

Can I ask you how you're designing it right now? I could whip up some designs for you for free.

- What type of floor? (2x4? 2x6? will it hold me and my chair without collapsing?)

- What roof type? How big should the overhang be? What's easier to build yourself vs looks nicer but a real pain to build?

- How many windows should be in my office?

- How do I build something within my budget?

- What size of shed should I go with for my purpose? (workshop? office?)

I'm working on https://myhomecat.com - which lets you do all of this. If you enter your address and the kind of shed you want (i.e. 10x12 office), you should be able to get something fully code-compliant that figures out all of your details. It's still early so it doesn't cover every edge case, but the idea is there and it works really well from the feedback I've gotten.

The basic workflow is:

1. Record a video of the property.

2. HomeCat picks out details and reconstructs your property.

3. We help you plan and design a project, like a new rear deck.

4. Once you're happy, you get a drawing set containing permit-ready plans (site plan, floor plan, elevations) that are ready for permit submission.

You can explore example scans and download some of the plans we have produced here: https://myhomecat.com/try

The idea came from conversations with homeowners, contractors, engineers, and municipal building departments. Homeowners often did not know what their municipality expected, while contractors spent time hand-drawing plans - only to get rejected, delaying the project. We also manually prepared site plans for several homeowners. Seeing how happy they were pushed us to work on this idea.

The technical pipeline has four main parts.

First, we use computer-vision models to identify elements such as walls, windows, doors, and other objects in a property video, and to estimate their dimensions and positions. We only extract parts of the property that are needed for the permit; we won't extract anything that isn't.

We then convert those elements into a structured building model using a custom, Revit-like BIM system. Designs are assembled from components, which lets us apply local municipality codes like the Ontario Building Code or the California Residential Code.

Next, we evaluate the design against rules we've learned from previous permit submissions. Requirements can vary not only by state or province, but also by municipality and drawing type. We use those rules to include extra detail that allows the permit to be approved faster.

Finally, a custom vector-rendering engine projects the BIM model into to-scale site plans, floor plans, and elevations.

For comparison, here is a deck drawing set prepared around Ontario requirements: https://myhomecat.com/16x16-spacious-raised-deck-5798e862

And here is one prepared around California requirements: https://myhomecat.com/10x12-budget-ground-level-deck-01ba4d7...

And here is a property we scanned recently: https://myhomecat.com/2-storey-semi-detached-dwelling-2a0f4b...

We are still early, and the complete design tool is not publicly available yet. Construction documents have real-world consequences, so we are initially limiting the types of projects and jurisdictions.

Our long-term goal is that in the future, we can empower anyone to plan, design, and get permit-ready plans, in any part of the US and Canada, and for any home project.

We would especially appreciate if you would reach out to us to help you bring your home project to life. We're exploring not just outdoor, but also indoor renovations, and projects that might not even need a permit. And just for the HN community - we can provide initial concept designs for free.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49187965

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

Agreed on all of this too. This is why we built the CLI tool - to shift left the work.

Big agree on the CLI being open and letting you bring your own inference provider. We’re holding off on it until we get more feedback from some of our hardcore users.

With the help of AI coding tools, engineers are writing more code than ever. Code output has increased, but the tooling to manage this hasn't improved. Background agents still write bad code, and your IDE still writes slop without the right context.

So we built wispbit. It works by scanning your codebase for patterns you already use, and coming up with rules. Rules are kept up to date as standards change, and you can edit rules any time.

You can enforce these rules during code review, and because we have this rules system, you can run a CLI locally to review using these rules. You can think of it as a portable rules file that you can bring anywhere.

We put a lot of work into making a system that produces good rules and avoids slop. For repository crawling, we have an agent that dispatches subagents, similar to Anthropic's research agent. These subagents will go through and look for common patterns within modules and directories, and report back to the main agent, which synthesizes the results. We also do a historical scan on your pull request comments, determine which ones were addressed, filter out comments that wouldn't make a good rule, and use that to create or update rules.

Our early users are seeing 80%+ resolution rates, meaning that 80% of comments that wispbit makes are resolved.

Long-term, we see ourselves being a validation layer for AI-written code. With tools like Devin and Cursor, we find ourselves having to re-prompt the same solution many times. We still don't know the long-term implications on AI-assisted codebases, so we want to get in front of that as soon as possible.

We've opened up signups for free to HN folks at https://wispbit.com. We're also around to chat and answer questions!

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45584017

Points: 31

# Comments: 14