How CRAFT Works
CRAFT is a trusted automation add-in for AEC professionals that prioritizes reusing proven automations over generating new ones. You describe what you need or use a guided form. CRAFT creates a reviewable automation draft, validates it through a mandatory safety gate, and runs it locally inside your CAD host.
Every automation follows the same path: author, review draft, validate through the Gate, execute locally, and optionally promote to your team's shared library.
Create Your Automation
Reuse-first: CRAFT checks your library before creating anything new. If an existing automation matches your task, you can run it immediately — no creation needed. If a close match exists, CRAFT suggests adapting it. New creation is the fallback, not the default. This keeps your team's library clean and builds on proven work.
When nothing in your library matches, the Quick Builder guides you through creating a new automation. Every path produces the same output: a reviewable draft.
Guided Form
The Quick Builder collects your requirements through a structured form — host application, task type, entity filters, and output fields. CRAFT generates a reviewable draft from a matching template. Choose Quick Start (from a starting point) or Custom (full parameter flow) depending on how much control you need.
Natural Language
Describe your task in plain language — “audit all doors missing fire ratings” or “set corridor layer by category.” CRAFT interprets your intent and pre-fills the guided form. Rule-based parsing runs first; AI assists only when needed for classification.
Context-aware suggestions: When you open CRAFT, the Actions panel suggests relevant automations based on what you're working on. Select a corridor in Civil 3D and see corridor-related actions. Select walls in Revit and see wall audits, schedules, and parameter checks. On first use, CRAFT offers curated starting points to help you get productive quickly.
Three Save Paths
After the Quick Builder creates your draft and it passes the Gate, you choose what happens next:
Run Once
Execute the automation immediately without saving. Good for one-off tasks where you don’t need to reuse the configuration.
Save Preset
Save the parameters locally for personal reuse. Presets are stored on your machine and don’t enter the shared library.
Save as Automation
Publish to your library for team reuse. Governed review and duplicate detection ensure quality before an automation reaches the shared library.
Review Your Draft
Everything starts as a draft that you review before it runs. This is not optional — CRAFT never takes autonomous action. Your draft shows you exactly what operations will be performed, what data is involved, and what will change.
Transparent Operations
See every operation the automation will perform — reads, writes, parameter changes, file outputs. Nothing is hidden. You can modify or discard the draft at any point.
Your Review, Your Decision
The draft is a proposal, not a commitment. Review it, adjust it, or start over. Only when you're satisfied does it move to validation.
Validate Through the Gate
Before any automation executes, it passes through the mandatory Preview/Validate Gate. This is not optional — the Gate is a hard requirement for every consequential operation: run, export, import, and publish.
Preview
See exactly what operations will be performed, what files will be read or modified, what host context is required, and what data (if any) would leave your machine — before anything happens.
Validate
Structural and semantic checks confirm the plan is well-formed, dependencies resolve, and required host context is available. Validation is strictly read-only — it inspects your environment but never modifies it.
What the Gate Shows You
The Gate produces a structured report with seven categories of information. All seven are always present, even when some sections report "nothing to disclose."
Every package and component the automation needs, with exact versions pinned for reproducibility.
What the automation reads (your parameters) and what it produces (reports, changes, exports).
What your CAD application needs to provide — host version, active document, available object types.
A comparison showing what this run will modify versus current state.
Whether any data will be sent over the network, which destinations, and what types. Always shown, even when the answer is “nothing.”
Whether the automation is cleared to run or blocked. If blocked, there is no override — the issue must be resolved first.
When an issue is found, actionable steps to resolve it. CRAFT does not apply fixes automatically.
Example: What You See Before Running
Every automation shows this panel before execution. Nothing runs without your review.
Fail-Closed by Design
If the Gate cannot prove that an automation is safe — because a dependency is missing, host context is unavailable, the license is insufficient, or a structural check fails — it blocks execution. There is no "proceed anyway" option. This is how CRAFT builds trust: you always know what will happen, and nothing runs unless it passes.
Execute Locally
Approved automations execute on your machine, inside your CAD environment. Execution is deterministic — the same inputs and host state produce the same outputs every time. This reproducibility is enforced by the integrity verification built into every automation.
There is no cloud execution path. CRAFT does not send your project files, model data, or execution results to external servers unless you explicitly configured egress and acknowledged it through the Gate.
Deterministic Outputs
Given the same task description, software version, and CAD environment, CRAFT produces the same plan, dependency set, and content hash. Every time.
Local Data Stays Local
By default, network egress, host-context egress, and telemetry are all disabled. Your model data, file paths, and environment details remain on your machine unless you explicitly opt in per operation.
Promote to Your Team's Library
When an automation proves its value, you can promote it from a personal draft to your team's shared library. Promotion is not automatic — it goes through governed review to ensure quality, prevent duplicates, and maintain library health.
Governed Review
Approvers review promoted automations before they reach the shared library. This prevents untested or redundant tools from proliferating.
Duplicate Detection
CRAFT detects near-duplicate automations and warns before publishing. Your library stays clean instead of accumulating 50 variations of the same task.
Version & Deprecate
Every published version is immutable and tracked. Outdated automations can be deprecated with clear migration paths for users.
Publishing requires Gate approval. Before an automation is published to the registry, it passes through the same Preview/Validate Gate. Publishing is available on Pro, Studio, and Enterprise plans with team registry access.
The Artifact Registry
Published automations and components are stored in the server-side registry as signed, immutable artifacts. The registry is a passive store — it serves artifacts for download and verifies signatures, but does not execute, interpret, or transform them.
Content-Addressed
Each artifact has a unique content hash that serves as its identity. Any modification invalidates the hash.
Cryptographically Signed
Every artifact is signed with a managed key lifecycle. The client verifies signatures locally before import.
Immutable
Once published, an artifact version cannot be overwritten. Updates require a new SemVer version.
Try the Full Lifecycle
From describing a task to running it in your CAD host — request early access and walk through it yourself.