Back to HN Launch HN: Drafted (YC P26) – Models for residential architectureby PrimalNick | 27 points | 27 comments | 2026-06-15 11:47:21 Central Open on Hacker News PostI'm Nick, founder of Drafted (https://www.drafted.ai).
We're training models that generate residential
architecture from structured design constraints.Product
demo:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8QkJ7jNU9y4Residential
architecture is still one of the most expensive, slow,
and inaccessible creative processes in the world.
Designing a custom home typically costs $10,000-$50,000
or more, takes months, and requires making major
decisions before most people can even visualize the
outcome. As a result, the vast majority of homes are
built without direct architectural involvement.Our goal
is to teach computers how the built environment works so
anyone can imagine, explore, and eventually create
physical spaces tailored to them.Today, users can design
homes using simple inputs such as: - Square footage
targets - Footprint shapes - Lot boundaries - Room
placement preferences - Spatial relationships and
constraints.Our models generate complete floor plans and
matching exterior elevations in seconds. Users can
explore designs in both 2D and 3D, iterate instantly,
furnish interiors, experiment with materials, and export
CAD, PDF, and other files for the rest of the
pre-construction process.One of our newest capabilities
allows users to draw any footprint shape and generate a
complete home layout inside it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZJhBm7-OHI.Over the
past month, more than 120,000 people have used Drafted,
generating over 325,000 home designs.If you're building
a home, developing property, working in architecture,
construction, or AI, we'd love to hear your feedback! Commentsw10-1
As others have mentioned, building custom homes is the
last place I'd use AI.But if you're considering a pivot,
interior design would be a great direction!Given the space
and furniture I have or could buy, what are my
alternatives for flow and light and usability? What if
energy or allergens are an issue?This could engage users
and has natural add-on's for buying things that would help
monetize with price discrimination. End-users could be
happy to explore, but you might have more features for
designers.You could fine-tune based on all the
home-decorating videos and materials, add MCP for physical
models (layout/positioning, environment), and use video
models for ingesting current and visualizing results.
| whymsicalburito
This is interesting and cool for entertainment, but it's
extremely hard to picture using this as a replacement for
an architect.We're building an ADU right now and the
floorplan design was a very small part of what our
architect did. So much more of the value came from the
relationships he has with the structural and geotechnical
engineers we used as well as the relationship with our
city building department.This really strikes me as a
product in search of a problem.Maybe a homeowner could use
this for initial planning before finding an architect to
use, but at that point you're competing with pencil and
paper.
| > pbreit
How much structural and geotechnical detail does an
ADU need?
| ____tom____
There is probably more money in this as entertainment than
architecture. And less liability.How many of us have made
house plans at some point?
| summermusic
I just looked at the very first one featured on your
website ("Sprawling Dark 5 Bed")[1]:- A car parked in the
garage perpendicular to the door and the other
differently-sized car- A bedroom missing a closet-
Attached bathrooms with multiple sinks- An office with a
weird entrance from a dead space from the garage- External
doors that open the wrong way (against fire code in most
places)- Closet doors opening inward- Both doors of the
top-left bathroom opens into the sinks (why two sinks?)-
The top-left bathroom has a weird dead space between the
shower and bathtub (why both?)- the random little floating
feature in the middle of the open floorplan space doesn't
make any structural or aesthetic sense- The two bedrooms
in the lower left with the weird bump-out for the windows
that make no sense- The window placement for many windows
don't make sense and don't even line up with the 3D view
of the house- The hallway on the left that turns and goes
to nowhere for no reason- The additional random
inaccessible dead spaces next to the bottom right
bathroomIt took me just a few minutes to see this. I hope
nobody ever builds a home based on these plans.[1]
https://cdn.drafted.ai/thumb/drafts/23025/generations/9472
9/...Edited for formatting, to add a few points I missed,
and to add a link to the image
| > PrimalNick
I appreciate the feedback. They aren't perfect. The
renders are just aethetic images that often rewrite
the plan, the base plan that you can download doesn't
include these. We are working on adding the generation
for these objects directly into the base generation to
fix these issues. They currently just serve as a way
to get more context quickly so people can understand
the floor plan better.If you're someone looking for a
schematic design level tool that can allow you to
explore design for free then this will allow you to
develop ideas and figure out a starting point to work
off of.We will continue to improve the model and build
out more tooling for guiding it.
| > > pbreit
I try to avoid hating but that's pretty rough.
| > tadfisher
Also they only support single-story homes but that
image includes a staircase
| > stonogo
This is a lot of
fun.https://cdn.drafted.ai/thumb/drafts/27019/generati
ons/98723/...- off-bathroom conference room!-
side-by-side toilets- garage inaccessible except via
bathroomit's engrossing!Also most (but not all!) of
the designs seem to omit laundry facilities. I wonder
whether there's a pattern there.
| > > PrimalNick
We had a bug with our furnishing generations that
is now fixed, we are working on backfilling all of
the old renders that had the issue. Hopefully this
fixes most of the room rewriting that's happening.
| realty_geek
Is there something similar to this which lets you
visualize floor plans from listed homes when you are house
hunting?
| nibab
im currently building a home. one of the biggest issues is
FAR which is very much driven by local laws. are you
intending on addressing that at some point ?looks great
btw. congrats
| > PrimalNick
Thank you! After we get through building out the basic
design tooling, we plan to get more into designing a
specific plot of land and will look at adding zoning
related contraints.
| cgillett
This is fun! I hadn't thought about how much possibility
space there was in home layouts until now. Some layouts
make a lot more sense than others.I've thrown some weird
setups at it like a high bedroom:bathroom ratio and it's
doing a great job at distributing bathroom access between
the bedrooms, and arranging the bedrooms around shared
spaces.Thanks for sharing.
| > PrimalNick
Thank you for trying it out :)There's an insanely big
probability space and everyone has very unique
desires/preferences when designing.I'm really excited
to see what people come up with.
| twostorytower
ADU's are extremely popular in California. Are you going
to add support for designing ADU/garage conversions?
| > PrimalNick
Right now we are focused on single-family ground-up
design. There are people using it for ADUs, but it's
not trained to do that well.We plan to make the model
better for ADU's after we get through multi-story
houses :)
| roamerz
Going to give it a try! Would love to see an option for an
engineering stamp for brace walls, hold downs, etc.
| > PrimalNick
Let me know how it goes!Engineering would be awesome!
We want to get to training the model on structural
constraints. We will start with basic foundation
drawing, but will get deeper as we have the bandwidth
to do it.
| glerk
This is really cool!First thing that came to mind is that
I would use this for a sim city style video game
| > PrimalNick
We've had people design a house in the software and
then recreate it in the sims. We also added .GLB file
types because game designers were wanting to put
houses in their video games.
| J7jKW2AAsgXhWm
Do you support 2 story homes?
| > amir_karbasi
Doesn't look like it. From their FAQ: "Drafted is
focused on single-level floor plans today. Multi-story
homes, second floors, and basements are in progress
and expected to become available soon."I'd love to see
a two storey use case in the future! I have a few
designs for a small plot of land in Toronto (2500 sqft
lot) and would love to try and make alterations based
on my zoning constraints.
| > > PrimalNick
Yeah - we are working on adding multi-story in the
next 2 months.I'd love to have you try it :DZoning
constraints will likely be another few months
beyond multi-story.
| svemyh
Great product from a great team!
|
|