Design teams already live with AI, Midjourney for mood, ChatGPT for words. Helpful, yes. But architects don’t need party tricks. We need a collaborator. Someone who understands constraints, carries context, and helps turn intent into design—fast.

Today we’re launching Snaptrude AI to all users: an early, working glimpse of human × AI collaboration built for AEC. It runs on the foundation we shipped with Snaptrude 3.0—a connected, cloud-native workspace where program data, design, details, and documentation live together and stay editable.

Snaptrude AI isn’t a replacement for architects. It’s a teammate, an extra set of expert hands when you need them, and a guide when you don’t have one nearby. Our north star: AI that designs like you, and with you, while keeping you fully in control.

Why we built this

For too long, we’ve been asked to adapt to tools built for another era: bending our process around commands and file formats, translating ideas into software before they become drawings.

A few months ago, I watched a senior architect sketch a brilliant concept on a napkin. Thirty years of judgment in a few strokes. She shrugged: “No time to learn another tool. My team’s underwater.”

A week later, I met a young designer working late on tasks a seasoned mentor could resolve in an afternoon, full of potential, missing the accumulated wisdom.

This is broken.

The industry’s answer has been to bolt AI onto old software. It’s like teaching a typewriter to send email. So we started over.

What if AI designed like you?

Not instead of you. Not for you. With you.

A collaborator that reads the brief, studies the site, checks the code, drafts credible options—so you can focus on the idea.

What ships today

This first release targets the earliest phase, where speed, judgment, and iteration matter most.

• From brief or RFP to a first draft. Paste a prompt, attach an RFP, or describe intent. Provide a site. (In the US, you can choose exact parcels.)
• Autonomous site & code reconnaissance. AI analyzes site context, important landmarks, site conditions, orientation, zoning, and constraints based on your inputs.
• Programs that respect reality. It proposes a compliant program and begins to shape it, dimensionally appropriate space blocks and early diagrams you can present.
• Stacking & early massing logic. Sensible story/department arrangements that give you credible starts not just pretty pictures.
• Design inspiration you can take further. Explore multiple directions, then continue inside Snaptrude’s connected design canvas.

Everything is editable. Delegate what you want automated. Intervene anytime. You keep authorship.

Who it empowers

• Senior architects & design leaders gain an execution arm, validate ten ideas before lunch, explore more options, make better calls.
• Junior designers get a steady hand on the shoulder, fewer obvious mistakes, more time learning by doing.
• Teams share a living substrate: program, geometry, documentation connected from day one.

And because Snaptrude is deeply interoperable, you can move without friction: export to Rhino or Revit (Grasshopper or native modeling), or import envelopes into Snaptrude to pack and test programs within minutes.

Born in the cloud. Built for collaboration.

The future isn’t “the past with better rendering.” It’s a connected ecosystem where data flows, AI understands context, and you keep creative control. That’s why Snaptrude was built from scratch as a cloud platform where design, data, and documentation live together, and where AI can actually help.

Now, with Snaptrude AI, we add a collaborator who thinks like a designer.

This Is Just the Beginning, here’s what’s next (near-term)

This first release focuses on early-stage design, site analysis, programming, spatial blocking. It's intentionally limited. We want you to see the foundation we're building on.

• Envelope Agent. Zoning-compliant envelopes that consider orientation, views, and daylight, creative, not cookie-cutter.
• Program Packing. Departmental blocks placed within the envelope, then iterated with circulation and cores per local code and typology norms.
• Massing → BIM, automatically. Our sketch-to-BIM and space-template methods convert massing into LOD 300/350 models, with you in the loop.
• Bring your knowledge (privately): for enterprises the ability to bring in your knowledge/data in a private environment to make this AI adhere to your standards.

The vision is simple: AI handles execution, you drive creation.

We're being completely open about our roadmap because we want to build this with you, not for you. Your feedback will shape every feature we develop.

Principles we won’t compromise

1. Your agency first. You decide what to delegate and when to take the wheel.
2. Transparency over magic. See assumptions, edit them, rerun.
3. Interoperability. Bring envelopes in. Take models out. No lock-in.
4. Speed with standards. Faster only counts if it’s compliant and buildable.

A New Era

The best tool is the one that disappears. The one that lets you think in buildings, not in commands. The one that amplifies your expertise rather than replacing it.

This is what we've built. This is what we're giving you today. It won’t be perfect and it shouldn’t be. It’s a collaborator you can shape with us. Try Snaptrude AI on a real brief and a real site. Tell us where it shines and where it falls short. We’ll listen, we’ll ship, and we’ll keep raising the bar.

P.S. Leading a complex pursuit or new typology? Reply to join the early Envelope Agent cohort; we’re co-developing it with a small set of teams.