alt.hn

5/20/2025 at 3:35:29 PM

Launch HN: Opusense (YC X25) – AI assistant for construction inspectors on site

by rcody

5/20/2025 at 6:37:41 PM

Constructive (ha) tone intended: How do you address the liability risk to your business?

What happens if your product is involved in a fatal or very expensive construction incident or situation?

What happens if your product is involved in a PE going to jail?

One conventional startup possibility is that the startup shuts down, and its people move on to new startups and other employment. But I'm wondering whether that's different for startups that involve regulated safety-critical work.

by neilv

5/20/2025 at 6:49:01 PM

This is a great question. We make it clear to clients that they're responsible for reviewing the report prior to it being sent out, as it ultimately carries their professional stamp. While Opusense streamlines the workflow and facilitates report writing, the final liability rests with them and so a thorough review prior to signing is essential.

What we’re really doing is shifting the process from spending an hour (or several, depending on the department) writing a report, to just a few minutes reviewing a completed draft.

by rcody

5/20/2025 at 7:05:11 PM

It'll be interesting to see how different fields (outside tech) respond to taking responsibility for checking AI-generated artifacts, and signing off.

In some domains, people will just rubber-stamp, but I would guess that some roles within civil engineering, aerospace engineering, etc., would remain very serious about their signoff responsibility, for at least a generation.

by neilv

5/20/2025 at 4:46:37 PM

My brain is having a hard time not "unscrambling" the product name to 'opensuse' :)

by GuinansEyebrows

5/20/2025 at 7:59:31 PM

lol this is exactly what I came here to say. To be fair, it is probably not a brand that's top of mind for "construction inspectors" so probably won't cause much confusion within their intended audience.

by jdwithit

5/20/2025 at 5:09:23 PM

I am an engineer at an AEC firm you would probably recognize. I think there are a few competing products in this space. Owners don’t care how you do CEI or have their own absurd rituals pioneered in the 60s or 80s. DOTs are the worst offenders and their project delivery practices are largely 80+ years old.

My unsolicited advice is I would expect Owner-side administrators (IT people) to direct sales decisions, and they don’t care about users or working products. I have only ever met one CTO in the AEC space who even considered end user benefit. Unfortunately, this means your product quality and utility is not actually important as evidenced by the whole Bentley product line, but integration with existing products is. Nobody seems to make big money in tech for white-collar AEC unless Bentley or Autodesk buy your IP. Then they will crudely bolt it onto their garbage software and their missionaries embedded in large companies disguised as technologists and CAD managers will sell it.

My opinion is con-tech is totally broken for very complicated reasons with the private market (commercial architecture) being the only small voice of sanity since they compete on price sometimes.

by dughnut

5/20/2025 at 6:19:54 PM

I appreciate your perspective, and while I agree that owners often drive sales decisions, I have to disagree on the idea that they don't care how inspections are performed.

In our experience, owners do care because inspection practices directly affect the quality, consistency, and timeliness of the final reports delivered to their clients. These reports significantly influence client satisfaction and future business decisions.

We’ve spoken with end clients who receive these inspection reports, and they consistently tell us that the quality of the documentation plays a major role in their choice of consulting partner. So while integration with existing systems is critical, we also believe strongly that the usability and quality of the product matter, because they shape the company’s external image.

by michaelbacani

5/20/2025 at 8:44:15 PM

If it doesn't work out, in the construction industry, please contact me so we can discuss a possible industry/niche pivot. There is potential in a space I work in for a product like this.

by dpass89

5/21/2025 at 4:49:36 PM

What industry do you work in?

by rcody

5/20/2025 at 11:58:52 PM

> On-site, users type or dictate short notes (e.g. “rebar exposed east end of slab”), and the tool turns them into full sentences, paragraphs, tables, or photo captions in a report template that matches the firm’s format. You can work offline, and it syncs automatically when back online.

Why isn't the short note good enough? What value is the LLM contributing? Is it all stylistic filler?

by ori_b

5/21/2025 at 4:26:49 AM

Great question! With inspection reports there is typical commentary/phrasing that inspectors use in each of the reports. Since companies give us access to their historical reports we can fill in their report with this typical commentary by drawing context from their short notes.

Additionally, with applications such as environmental assessments, standards may need to be referenced. So the LLM may draw from those standards to fill in the report as well.

by michaelbacani

5/20/2025 at 6:21:27 PM

> You’d walk around a site all day taking short notes (maybe, often you'd rely on memory) and snapping photos, then go to three more sites before finally making it back to the office and try to remember everything you wanted to write. Sometimes you’d fill in gaps from memory [...]

How are the gaps getting filled in by AI?

by neilv

5/20/2025 at 6:28:42 PM

What I meant was that they often don’t take notes in the moment because they don’t have a designated place to do so, and they’d end up having to sit down and write everything up later anyway. But with Opusense, they can quickly jot down short notes (voice or written) directly in the app, and there’s no need to write anything afterward.

by rcody

5/20/2025 at 6:57:45 PM

Thanks, I'm having a little trouble understanding the gap between quick notes and the AI-generated full report.

I worked on safety reporting in another domain, and in that domain, I can't immediately think of how AI could fill in the gaps from notes safely. Every detail of observation, interpretation, and suggestion mattered.

Maybe what you're doing with the construction domain reports is different, or you have found the right line for what you do and don't do?

For example, are you only generating boilerplate parts that fabricate zero observation information? Say, if the note is "rebar exposed, south wall", then that becomes a sentence without anything added, and the rest of the paragraph is copied verbatim from professional standards about what this means?

Or maybe there is potential for the AI to do harm (e.g., an LLM component hallucinates a typical description of exposed rebar, that adds or subtracts some important fact), but you trust the engineer to read closely and catch that every time before they stamp (rather than "rubber-stamp").

by neilv

5/21/2025 at 6:37:52 AM

That's a valid concern especially when considering safety reports. Since we have access to a company’s historical reports, we’re able to draw from their previous language and structure when generating full length content, but its not exactly boiler plate (unless the users request it that way). If you hit generate on a report multiple times it will output slightly differently in wording, but it doesn't extrapolate on the content.

Though it is still the users responsibility to review the output.

by rcody

5/21/2025 at 3:07:59 PM

Congratulations on the launch.

This is very cool and clearly needed as I found out recently as well.

Btw: would love to chat and learn more what you do

by BrandiATMuhkuh

5/21/2025 at 3:50:30 PM

Please feel free to book a demo through our website or reach out to us directly on LinkedIn!

by rcody

5/20/2025 at 4:00:45 PM

congrats on launch! reminds me of trunk.tools https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0kBWyziFlc and i'm not too deep in this industry but maybe talking to them might help.

by swyx

5/20/2025 at 4:34:30 PM

Yes definitely relevant, thanks for the share!

by rcody

5/20/2025 at 7:34:21 PM

[dead]

by dkd903