How all the parts of BuildOS fit together — explained for a product and business audience, without diving into implementation details.
The Big Picture
BuildOS is a multi-component system. Three distinct interfaces serve three distinct audiences, all backed by a shared data platform and a set of AI agents that run continuously in the background.
Desktop browser
iPhone & Android
Schedule engine
Single source of truth
Scheduled & event-driven
Agent coordination
Tribunal reasoning
Site-specific
Push to field app
Three Interface Tiers
Tier 1 — Web Dashboard (Desktop)
The primary interface for Tom, Sarah, and Mike. A browser-based application that provides the full management experience: portfolio financials, project schedules and Gantt charts, the pre-construction pipeline Kanban, procurement tracking, fleet allocation, HR records, and the notification feed. This is a dark-themed, data-dense application designed for power users who are managing multiple projects simultaneously.
Tier 2 — Mobile App (Field)
The interface for Carlos and field crews. A native mobile app (iPhone and Android) designed for outdoor use on construction sites. It shows the day's assigned tasks, allows progress reporting with photos and a percent-complete slider, handles GPS-tagged crew check-ins, and supports daily field log notes. Crucially, it is offline-first: everything a field worker needs for the day is pre-loaded, and any updates made without connectivity are stored locally and synced automatically the moment coverage is restored.
Tier 3 — Background Agents (Autonomous)
The four AI agents operate entirely without a user interface — they run on a schedule (or in response to events) and write their outputs to the notification feed, send SMS messages, or queue actions for human approval. Users never "use" the agents directly; they experience them through the results that appear in their feed and on their phones. See AI Agents for full detail.
How Data Flows Through the System
A single field action — Carlos marking a task complete — illustrates how information moves through the platform:
Multi-Tenancy — One Platform, Many GC Firms
BuildOS is a multi-tenant platform. Each general contractor firm is a fully isolated organization. One firm's projects, financials, employees, and data are completely invisible to any other firm on the platform. All data is scoped to an organization — there is no sharing between tenants.
Within an organization, users are assigned roles (owner, admin, superintendent, field_worker) that determine what they can see and do. A superintendent at Firm A sees only Firm A's projects. See Roles & Permissions for the full breakdown.
The Job Queue — How Background Work Gets Done
Many of the most powerful things BuildOS does happen in the background, without a user triggering them. The platform uses a job queue — a scheduling system for background tasks — to orchestrate this work. Think of it as the engine room: all the scheduled and automatic tasks are queued up and executed reliably, even if the server was briefly unavailable.
| Job | When It Runs | What It Does |
|---|---|---|
| Daily Briefing | Every day, 6 AM UTC | Generates the AI morning briefing for each superintendent |
| Procurement Check | Every day, 5 AM UTC | Checks all material lead times and updates status / creates alerts |
| Sub Liaison Scan | Every day, 12 PM UTC | Identifies upcoming tasks needing sub confirmation and sends SMS |
| Corporate Rollup | Every day, 4 AM UTC | Aggregates all project budgets to the org-level dashboard |
| Certification Alerts | Every Monday, 7 AM UTC | Checks for expiring employee certifications and creates alerts |
| Maintenance Reminders | Every Monday, 8 AM UTC | Surfaces equipment due for service |
| Delay Cascade | Triggered by delay reports | Recalculates the schedule when a sub reports a delay via SMS |
| Permit Transition | Triggered by permit approval | Creates the project and initializes the CPM schedule atomically |
| Hydrate Project | Triggered on project create | Populates the project's full task list from the WBS template |
| Field Notification Retry | Triggered by push failure | Retries failed push notifications with exponential backoff |
Identity & Security
BuildOS does not manage its own usernames and passwords. Authentication is handled by FB-Brain, an identity platform that issues secure login tokens (JWTs). When a user logs in, FB-Brain verifies their identity and provides BuildOS with a signed token that contains the user's role and organization. BuildOS trusts this token — it never handles passwords directly.
This means single sign-on is built in. If a firm already uses FB-Brain for other tools, the same login works for BuildOS. Role assignments are managed by the organization owner through the platform.
The AI agents use a separate, more restricted authentication channel (a signed webhook mechanism) so they cannot be impersonated. All communication between components is authenticated.
Data Integrity Guarantees
BuildOS is designed around a "no silent failures" principle. Several technical decisions exist specifically to prevent data corruption or subtle errors: