Built for my mom. Then for everyone.

My mother told me she wanted to live in an ADU one day — closer to family, more affordable, on her own terms. I figured I'd help. After all, I'd spent five years at one of the largest general contractors on the West Coast, rising to senior engineer on a billion-dollar public infrastructure program. I'd managed budgets, schedules, and scope on projects that served entire cities.

But ADUs were a different world. The permits, the setbacks, the feasibility questions, the budgeting — every city had different rules, and there was no single place to bring it all together.

So I built the traditional builder tools: spreadsheets, Gantt charts, takeoffs, cost trackers. It worked — for me. But when my mom saw it, she said it was too complex. She didn't want to become a project manager. She just wanted to go from an idea to a plan she could trust.

That became the mission: deep expertise underneath, radical simplicity on top.

I took everything I knew — from construction, from years of machine learning research, from building AI-integrated manufacturing systems in aerospace and defense — and layered a guide on top. Every traditional tool is still there — estimates, schedules, scope tracking, feasibility — but now the AI walks you through the process and generates them for you. Broad strokes when you're dreaming it up, fine-tuned controls when you need them.

That's Strata. It's the tool I wish existed when my mom first asked me for help. And when you're partway through your project and need guidance — you can always come back to it. Ask how things are going, share what you've learned on site, and figure out the next step together.