Why I Built Sullix: A Letter to Contractors

To the contractors who build our homes, keep projects moving, and carry the responsibility when something goes wrong: this is for you.

I want us to build our communities and keep more of the money we earn. Sullix is my first practical effort to push back against an extractive economic arrangement, with an AI agent that we improve together.

My name is Henok Ghebrechristos. Henok is pronounced He-nock or Enock. I am the founder of Sullix. I have spent 15 years in IT, and I earned my PhD in Computer Science, with a focus on deep learning and computer vision, at the University of Colorado Denver. My work has taken me through applied AI, software systems, and technical leadership.

That is my background. It is not a substitute for yours. You know what it takes to deliver a job, manage a crew, and stand behind the result. I bring a different set of tools, and I want to put them to work alongside you.

§Why I started

I built Sullix because I am fed up with an economic arrangement that rewards people so disproportionately.

I do not object to people doing well. I object to how easily the people doing essential work can end up carrying the most risk while having the least say in how the rewards are shared. I do not believe a person's distance from the actual work should determine how much of its value they get to keep.

By extractive, I mean taking a disproportionate share from the people doing the work without delivering comparable value in return.

I am starting with the part I know how to build: technology that has to earn its place in your working day.

§You should not need a second workday

If you run a contracting business, the work does not necessarily end when you leave the site. There are estimates to finish, changes to document, schedules to reconcile, and customers waiting for an update.

That work matters. Clear scope protects the relationship. A written change helps everyone understand what was agreed. Good records make it easier to resolve questions without turning them into arguments.

But doing all of it should not consume every evening you have.

This is where I want my experience to be useful: helping you turn scattered information into something you can review, act on, and communicate. Less time piecing the story together. More room for the work that requires your judgment, and for the people waiting for you at home.

§What I am building with Faro

Sullix is the platform. Faro is the construction AI agent inside it.

Faro can help prepare estimate drafts, organize project information, and draft schedules and updates for your review. You can see the Faro workflows here.

§What does "AI agent" mean?

An AI agent combines an AI model with tools, such as searching records or preparing a document. Given a goal, it can choose steps, use those tools, and check the results instead of only returning a single answer. What it can actually do depends on its connections, permissions, and safeguards.

Imagine a delivery is delayed. An agent connected to the right project records could check the schedule, identify work that may be affected, and prepare a customer update for your review. That is an example of how agents can help, not a claim that every connection or action is available in Faro today.

The important questions are practical: What information did it use? What is it assuming? What will change if I approve? Can I stop it? A useful agent should make those answers clear.

I am not asking you to hand your business over to a chatbot. An AI model does not know your jobsite simply because it can write a confident answer. It can miss context and get things wrong. Quantities, prices, commitments, and site conditions still need your judgment and verification.

My responsibility is to make the technology useful and clear about its limits. Your experience is not an obstacle to automate away. It is what gives the work its meaning.

§The future I want us to shape

The future I want is one where a small contracting business can get capable administrative support without needing the resources of a large company. AI agents could help make that possible as their reliability and connections improve. That is a possibility to work toward, not a guaranteed outcome or a release date.

Faro should evolve with us. That means listening to feedback you choose to share, testing changes against the work you actually do, and deliberately improving the product together. Your experience should shape its workflows, its limits, and what we build next.

This is not a finished vision I am handing down to you. It is a commitment to keep building with you.

§We build our communities. We should keep more of our money.

I want Sullix to earn its place in your business through usefulness.

I want to build it with you, not just sell it to you. Your experience should help shape what we build, what we fix, and what we leave out.

Paying for a useful tool is fair. That tool should help you protect your time, reduce avoidable work, and keep more of what you earn after the real costs of running your business. That is the standard I want us to judge Sullix by.

I want more of that money to stay with your families, your crews, and the local businesses you work with. Building stronger communities should include strengthening the livelihoods of the people who build them.

My financial goal is simple: I want to pay my bills honestly by doing useful work. I want to make a living I can stand behind, building something with you that is worth what you pay for it.

I will not pretend that software alone can repair an unfair economy. It cannot. This is a first step, and I believe in it enough to put my work into it. We will have to earn its success through the value it brings to your lives.

§Let us start with one real job

If you are a general contractor, let us build this together. Bring your experience; I will bring mine.

Bring the parts of the job that keep following you home: the unfinished estimate, the unclear handoff, the update you keep putting off because the information is scattered everywhere. Tell us where the product helps and where it gets in your way.

Take a look at the contractor pilot. Judge Sullix by whether it is useful in your work, not by the size of my claims about AI.

We do not have to agree on every explanation for how we got here to agree that the people building our communities deserve respect, a fair opportunity, and time to live in them.

Let us build something useful together. Let us start healing our community through the way we work, the way we treat one another, and the things we choose to build.

Henok Ghebrechristos, PhD

Founder of Sullix

You can find my professional background on LinkedIn.