The AI specification assistant explained

The job the assistant is trying to do

A special specification is not written from nothing. It is assembled: a published reference holds thousands of articles, your project needs a few hundred of them, and the document has to cite the right ones, in the right edition, with the values the text leaves open.

So the painful work is not the prose. It is the selection, the consistency between the text and the quantities, and the reading before issue. That is where an assistant has something to offer, and it is also where you need to know exactly what it does.

What an assistant can propose

Four moves, not one.

It can propose to add an article of your template to the project tree. It can draft the text of a sub-section of an article, the description or the execution for instance. It can propose to drop a sub-section that does not concern the project. And it can propose a bill-of-quantities line attached to an article, with its unit, its quantity and the detail of the calculation.

Every proposal names the article of your own template it applies to. That is structural: a proposal without a target does not exist. It is also the first thing to look at, because a good clause in the wrong place is still a mistake.

The assistant may also explain what it proposes. That explanation is useful and it is not a citation: it says why it proposes, not where the text would come from. The difference matters, and we come back to it below.

What stays the architect's decision

Five things, and none of them is automatable.

The reference and its edition. The contract names them. The tool does not choose them.

Which articles apply. A building is not a sum of ticked boxes. What enters the document depends on the brief, the budget and the design decisions.

The values left open. The CCTB marks the passages the project must complete. Those are technical decisions, not blanks to fill.

The derogations and the project-specific clauses. They exist because the standard text does not foresee your case.

The consistency with the drawings. No assistant reads your drawings for you.

What an assistant does not do

It does not sign. Professional liability follows the author of the document, and a proposal you keep becomes your clause.

It does not decide compliance. The content checks raise points of attention and forbid nothing: they suggest, you decide. Other checks can hold an export back, for instance while a generation is still running.

It does not warrant the text it produces. Our terms say it plainly: content produced with AI assistance is provided as a draft and you remain responsible for checking it before relying on it.

It does not replace reading. A clause you have not read is a clause you cannot defend at the acceptance of the works.

And it does not cite a standard. This is the most common confusion and the most expensive: a drafting assistant produces text, it does not bring you the standard behind it. When a standard appears in proposed text that the source material never carried, it is flagged for you as that text is written, in the editor, instead of being removed in silence, because a legitimate citation stays your decision.

Checking a proposal in three moves

These three hold whatever tool you use.

1. Read the index and the title of the target article, and set them against the edition your contract cites.
2. Open what the proposal points at and confirm the text says that. A plausible explanation is not evidence.
3. Check the unit and the measuring clause of the attached line. That is where gaps cost money, not in the prose.

In ArchiMind

Generation writes into the document. It takes a revision checkpoint before the first change, then applies its proposals; if it cannot take that checkpoint, it writes nothing and the proposals stay pending. So you do not approve clause by clause before anything lands: you read back a document that is already drafted.

The chat assistant works the other way round. Every write it proposes waits for your confirmation before it is applied.

On quantities, the figure your model carries wins. Our own geometric measurement is a cross-check, and a disagreement between the two is recorded and shown rather than settled in silence. The quantity check changes nothing by itself: it can offer you a value taken from a row of your own model, and applying it is a write you confirm.

Prices need your attention. The product carries no price database. The assistant is instructed to leave the price empty when it has no source, and what the record keeps is a declared provenance, not a verified one. Check a price before you rely on it.

What the IFC model gives, in two parts. Read from the file: the storeys, the elements and the quantity table. Produced by the model: a short project description and a classification. The first come from your file, the second are a proposal, and you should not take one for the other.

How a project starts. From a .cdcx export of VitruV or from an IFC model. Importing a Word or PDF document is not available yet and is coming soon.

The limits, in plain terms. The trial runs fourteen days and covers one project. The plans then differ by how many projects and how many seats.

What to remember

A specification assistant selects, drafts and attaches. It does not choose the reference, does not decide compliance and signs nothing. The useful question is not whether it will be wrong, because it will be. It is whether you can see where, early enough for the correction to cost nothing.

Further reading: the CCTB explained, which reference applies to your project, and the definitions of specification and special specification.