Ask Baulit

Ask Baulit is a natural language query system that lets you ask questions about your projects in plain English. Instead of navigating through filters, tabs, and reports, you type a question and get an answer drawn directly from your project data.

How It Works

When you submit a question, Baulit uses a two-step process to find your answer.

Client-side classification. Your question is analyzed to determine which data domain it falls into (tasks, budget, schedule, vendors, or daily logs). This classification happens locally in your browser before anything is sent to the AI.

Structured query and AI response. Based on the classification, Baulit pulls the relevant data from your project and sends it to Anthropic along with your question. The AI interprets the data and returns a human-readable answer.

No LLM-generated SQL. Baulit never lets the AI write or execute database queries. The data retrieval is handled by structured, pre-built queries. The AI only interprets and summarizes the results. This keeps your data safe from injection attacks or malformed queries.

Five Query Domains

Ask Baulit understands questions across five areas of your project. Here are example questions for each domain.

Tasks

Questions about task status, assignments, progress, and blockers.

"How many tasks are blocked right now?"
"What tasks are assigned to Martinez Electric?"
"Which phase has the most incomplete tasks?"
"What percentage of framing tasks are done?"

Budget

Questions about costs, spending, cost categories, and budget health.

"How much have we spent on electrical so far?"
"What is the total budget variance?"
"Which cost category is most over budget?"
"How much of the contingency has been used?"

Schedule

Questions about timelines, critical path, dates, and delays.

"When is the projected completion date?"
"Which tasks are on the critical path?"
"How many days of float does plumbing have?"
"Are we ahead or behind schedule?"

Vendors

Questions about subcontractors, contacts, and assignments.

"Which vendors have pending tasks?"
"How many tasks has ABC Plumbing completed?"
"Who is assigned to the roofing phase?"

Daily Logs

Questions about recorded site activity and log history.

"What happened on site last Tuesday?"
"How many weather delay days have we had?"
"Summarize last week's daily logs."

Disambiguation

If you manage multiple projects and your question is ambiguous, Ask Baulit will ask you to clarify which project you mean. For example, if you ask "How many tasks are blocked?" and you have three active projects, the AI will present a list of your projects and ask you to choose one.

If you are viewing a specific project when you ask the question, Baulit automatically scopes the query to that project without asking.

Confidence and Accuracy

Ask Baulit answers are based entirely on the data in your Baulit account. The AI does not search the internet or invent information. If the data needed to answer your question does not exist in your project, the AI will tell you that rather than guessing.

Important: The AI drafts, the builder decides. Ask Baulit is a convenience tool for quickly surfacing project data. Always verify critical numbers by checking the source data in the relevant tab (Tasks, Budget, Gantt, etc.) before making decisions based on AI answers.

What Ask Baulit Cannot Do

Ask Baulit is designed for data retrieval and summarization, not for predictions or advice. It cannot:

Make predictions. It will not forecast future costs, predict delays, or estimate completion probabilities beyond what the CPM schedule already calculates.
Give legal advice. It will not interpret contract language, advise on liability, or recommend legal actions.
Give financial advice. It will not recommend whether to approve a change order or suggest how to allocate contingency funds.
Modify your data. Ask Baulit is read-only. It can tell you what your data says, but it cannot change task statuses, update budgets, or create new records.

V2 Pipeline Improvements

The current Ask Baulit implementation handles single-domain questions well. The V2 pipeline, currently in development, adds cross-domain queries (for example, combining budget and schedule data in one answer), multi-project aggregation, and improved follow-up question handling so you can have a more conversational interaction with your data.

Tips for Better Questions

You will get the best results from Ask Baulit by being specific about what you want to know.

Include the project name if you have multiple projects: "How many tasks are blocked on the Oak Street Renovation?"
Reference specific phases or vendors when possible: "What is the budget status for the Foundation phase?"
Ask one question at a time. Compound questions sometimes produce less focused answers.
Use construction terminology naturally. Ask Baulit understands terms like "critical path," "float," "change order," and "punch list."

Tip: After Ask Baulit gives you an answer, click any referenced data points to navigate directly to the relevant task, budget item, or log entry. Answers are designed to link back to the source data wherever possible.