You've had this phone call.

Hopecraft is a tool a homeowner uses before they ring anybody. They type their address, get their actual house in 3D, and sketch what they're thinking onto it at real scale. What comes out is a brief you can price from.

The point, for you: it does the tyre-kicking before your phone rings.

A brief, not a paragraph.

A shortened brief, sketched from what the tool produces for a real house. The real one forwards over WhatsApp — no app, no login, nothing to install at either end.

The extension's band is Homebuilding & Renovating's 2026 figure, and the all-in line adds VAT, design and engineer fees (from £0, as that guide's own example puts them inside its band), the planning fee and a 10–15% contingency, each with its source. It says building control and a kitchen may be extra. It is labelled as not a quote — yours is the number that counts. It sets an expectation before you arrive, so the figure in your quote confirms something rather than shocking someone.

Where the tool can't source a figure honestly it says so rather than inventing one. A patio or a pond line reads "no reliable estimate" for exactly that reason.

The brief now opens with "Who quotes what" — the work itemised by the trade that prices it, external and internal split. If you're full-service, every package is yours to quote; if you're not, you only see your own trade's half, and the panels go to a solar installer. Doors and rooflights arrive as specification (three-panel bifolds, two rooflights), the finishes as the homeowner's stated preferences — Staffordshire blue clay, buff brick — never as guesses about the existing house. And where the plot line matters to your quote, you'll see whose line it is: Land Registry's outline where it can be used, "adjusted by the homeowner" when they've dragged the boundary to their actual fence, an estimate when there is neither — never passed off as a legal boundary.

The inside arrives the same way. A room measured in three numbers gives the paint in litres and the paper in rolls; a kitchen or bathroom counts its unit runs, worktop, splashback, sanitaryware and tiling from what the homeowner placed on the plan at standard sizes — quantities, never a price — and names what they didn't place (wall units, where the water and gas come in) as not stated, so the fitter asks instead of guessing.

It goes to you alone.

Not to a list. The lead platforms sell the same enquiry to three to six trades and charge for it whether it was real or not. Here a brief goes to one builder, and the homeowner has already seen the size, the cost range and the planning flags before it reaches you.

It arrives as a PDF on WhatsApp or email — no login, no app, no portal to check. When briefs start coming through us, each will go to one trade, and we'll do the chasing: relaying questions, nudging the homeowner, closing the loop. You quote.

Or bring it to your own customer.

Joining as a trade is self-service at hopecraft.onrender.com/supplier — sign up, tick the services you offer, and use the tool the same minute. Briefs start after a quick setup call; the tool doesn't wait for it.

You don't have to wait for one. Open it on a tablet at the kitchen table and scope the job together — move the extension, change the size, watch the cost band move with it. Agree what you're actually building before you price it.

And if a customer is hesitant, send them a tour instead of a pitch. Two hand-held routes are in the tool's tour list — a semi in Leamington Spa for the kitchen extension and a detached house in Southam for solar — and two more open from their links only: a terrace in Stratford for the loft dormer and the example survey house for the garden. Each is five to ten steps with one green button. Pick the house most like theirs.

"It'll put next door's garden in the dark."

You've heard it, usually late, usually from a neighbour rather than your customer. The tool works out the real position of the sun for that postcode and shows the shadow across the day and the year.

Having that on paper early is worth more to you than to anyone. It's a conversation with the neighbour in week one instead of an objection in week six — or a job that quietly dies before it starts.

It's a conversation-starter, not a Right to Light assessment. Flat ground, no trees or fences, and no idea where next door's windows are — though the building heights themselves are now Ordnance Survey measurements, not estimates. Anything contentious still needs a surveyor.

What we're actually asking.

This is a small pilot in Warwickshire. No brief has been sent to anyone yet — you'd be among the first — so nobody's pretending there's a queue of work waiting.

You'd be vetted the old-fashioned way — a conversation, checked insurance and references — because the whole thing falls apart if a homeowner gets sent to someone who doesn't turn up.

And the honest limits