Really interesting to see this space developing. I'm building a masonry-specific quantity takeoff tool (vision model extraction into a parametric domain model that spits out bid-ready quantities) and the "data prison" framing resonates hard.

One thing I've learned going deep in a single trade: the distance between "structured JSON from a drawing" and "numbers an estimator will bid with" is enormous. I've been really impressed with Bobyard and SketchDeck especially.

h317's point about the liability-driven re-counting circus is spot on. Each party in the chain needs to own their numbers. Revit could have solved this a long time ago had this not been the case. An API that makes each individual count faster is valuable but it doesn't collapse the chain.

Would love to talk to anyone else building in this space.