Case study
How IR Architects gave every person on the team an assistant
We learned how the firm runs, put the right AI tools to work for the owners, and now every person on the team has an assistant.
IR Architects · Ignacio Rodriguez, Founder and Principal Architect
Live on ClaudeArchitecture and interiors
- 3 hrsfor a builder bid comparison that used to take two to three days
- 3scheduled Claude skills working for the founders
- 4teams audited before we built anything
IR Architects designs luxury custom homes across Southern California, and the Los Angeles studio is moving into construction. Like most principal-led firms, a few people carry a lot of it.
Lauren Rodriguez, the firm's CFO, runs the admin side and project coordination. "I handle a lot of the administrative side of everything and project coordination, so it is heavy," she said. Every week she went back through her notes from the Friday project manager meeting, worked out the follow-ups, and tracked down what had been missed. By her count, that alone was several hours of work.
Learn the firm first
Lauren had already looked at other companies. "There's a lot of platforms out there, but they were pretty limited in what they could actually provide and it was still very dependent on the data entry and me managing it still," she said.
So we started by learning how the firm works. We audited the design, project management, interiors and operations teams, presented an AI readiness report on August 5, and walked the founders through a roadmap on August 10.
They're able to really unpack our business, understand it, and then integrate AI tools that will work for us.
Ignacio Rodriguez, Founder and Principal Architect Claude for the founders first
On August 18 we set up Claude for the two founders and the operations lead. From there we:
- Connected Claude to email, calendar and Slack, with prompt-injection guardrails.
- Deployed three scheduled Claude skills: a Daily Founder Brief, an Email Follow-Up Tracker, and a Meeting Notes and Commitment Catcher.
- Rebuilt the project manager tracking sheet around an open-task tracker with clear status rules.
Weekly working sessions ran alongside the builds, and a shared Slack channel handled questions in between.
The commitment catchers and the task trackers that I have that come in, they actually free up so much brain space, because I as a business owner wake up with a 2am panic of, what did I forget to tell everybody yesterday?
Lauren Rodriguez, CFO Three days of bids in three hours
For the firm's clients, Lauren pulls builder bids that arrive in every format into one comparison they can review at a high level. With the tools we set up, that work now takes about three hours, including formatting it to come from the firm with every disclaimer it needs.
Normally that takes me at least two days, if not more... from three days to three hours. Huge.
Lauren Rodriguez, CFO The whole team next
In October we started rolling the tools out to the project manager team: follow-up nudges, a shared project dashboard built as a Claude artifact, and inbox triage.
Every member on our team has an assistant now that catches everything.
Ignacio Rodriguez, Founder and Principal Architect Lauren's advice to other firms
I think it's less scary than it sounds, if you have the right team. If you are trying to build alone, it is very much more challenging.
Lauren Rodriguez, CFO Her other piece of advice: set your standards and procedures first, then bring AI in on top of them.
IR Architects is a principal-led luxury residential architecture and interiors studio in Los Angeles. Zero To Agent is an AI consulting firm and Claude partner that takes companies from zero AI to fully agentic operations.
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