Creative Friction by Trufabricator Construction CEO and Carpenter Pro Se
Brice Frillici - Trufabricator Construction
I’m fine with AI having written certain parts of this. I told it what to type, and it did as I told it. My sentiments are properly expressed, and in this context, that is just about right. Technical writing has a specific goal: to inform as clearly as possible. Other than this rare tidbit of personality and for more color, wild abandonment, and strong human character, visit my creative website www.sekdek.com and be aware of the Ides of March.
Here now to inform AND entertain…myself.
Two developments in 2026 are reshaping what a single person at a single desk can accomplish. The first is the maturation of AI tools to a level where a disciplined non-specialist can produce work in adjacent professional domains. The second is the recognition that formal documentation across those domains rests on a common craft. A construction estimate and an appellate brief are products of the same discipline. The page tells the truth either way.
I write as a working contractor in Washington who has spent the past three years representing himself in a litigation chain that began as a routine auto-injury insurance claim and, in time, reached the Washington Court of Appeals. The journey was unplanned. I went to law school by hurling myself into a web of legal complications after having had enough and realizing I was no longer powerless or beholden to some culturally embedded, convoluted, and expensive system for interpreting complex language, i.e., legalese. Now, common sense gains a foothold as these documents and language strategies are easily translated, so the civilian mind can navigate the process without difficulty. The need for a middleman or consultant. The three years of immersion that followed have reshaped how I run my construction company, TruFabricator, and how I think about what one person can accomplish. This article sets down what I learned, with examples drawn from both sides of my desk.
A few weeks ago, I put together a framing bid — the kind of structural carpentry work that prices a substantial residential build. The bid required a few days of focused effort. Far from a five-minute exercise, well under the week or more the same bid would have demanded of me three years ago. Five days is fast for a framing bid of that scope. And folks get paid a lot to write a far less detailed or accurate version of what I wrote up, with AI helping me source costs, find cracks in the Matrix of the plans, organize the document, and type it out. My knowledge of the industry and what frustrates me is driving results through key curation and intelligent guidance towards the type of document that far exceeds the limitations. of most analog framing company owners. If they spent this much time on bids, they would go out of business. And this forces them to think on their feet and be the genius-level builders that they are. Handling it old school, still figuring out how to stay efficient and make money. I respect that. And their ability to field errors, change orders, miscommunications, broken promises, and catastrophes when it happens. While that is one true and honorable way, there is also an easier way. Unfortunately for the Luddites of the earth, who just hate that…Ooooo, that makes them mad. Why did they learn all that Larry Haun shit if it no longer matters? (Note obvious flaw in thinking. The analog high-levels who are capable of understanding greatness when it sits on their windowsill, staring at them, smiling, are the ones who ascend in all the ways reality may make that possible in 2026 onwards. Or choose the camp that thinks it's all demonic, and you should go to church again. Up to you.) The AI can help map all that out as if you had another you. One to sit there and spend days going over every detail, then writing it all out. Like, legal document level. Hey, let’s make us not only undeniable, but foolproof. As if we were lawyers, as well as a small team and construction company, dealing with all the skullduggery that we already have to contend with on a daily basis. You with me, my digital broheim?
From three years of learning how to ask AI what to do, doing 100 different things with it across every aspect of my life, and, of course, writing hundreds of legal and construction documents and driving the AI towards real-world, robust usability, I’ve improved my situation pretty well. Being in that actual legal scenario indeed offered an excellent testing ground. My early adoption has already paid off a hundredfold. I had learned to see formal documentation as easy and not a huge time suck, and to compress the work into high level expression of directness and necessary data.
That clarification — the moment of deciding, in advance, exactly what the document is for — is the central move of the craft. A framing bid tells the client what the structural-carpentry phase will cost, what it includes, and what it excludes, in language and form the client can rely on. A motion for your case, or reply brief, tells the appellate court what the trial court got wrong, what authority requires reversal, and what relief the appellant seeks, in language and form the court can rely on. Both documents do their work by being clear about their purpose. For estimates or proposals, I write clean totals, absorbed overhead, plain language, stated exclusions, and careful design. This all came together during the same three years I spent learning to write court documents. The motions and briefs taught me what the estimates were missing, how to write better, and how to leverage the AI in those cases. Once you learn how to learn, it is easier to apply use cases across the field. Different article, but I’d say now that I am a Pro Se Litigant, I’m also a Pro Se Medical provider. As much as one can advocate for themselves and carefully navigate the law, one can also navigate insurance medicine. Which is basically a similar medicalesian language designed to keep you in the dark and swifty exiting the room with your script. Contrary to your actual holistic health situation. Let’s face it, if you were a billionaire, you’d have the most expensive doctors doing custom work on your Meat Van. Alas, I no has. But I am insanely empowered with a 24/7 answerer of medical questions that rival any PCP, with a 16-minute allotment of time to ask your written-down questions that you will feel stupid asking, as they quickly shut you down and appear bored and contemptuous.
On the legal side, the most striking shift AI has produced is timing. A pro se litigant with discipline, AI access, and a clear understanding of what a particular filing needs to do can produce a competent procedural filing in thirty minutes. Many filings take less. The same filing routed through a retained attorney typically takes two weeks, costs hundreds/thousands of dollars, and arrives with limited visibility into what the attorney decided, why, or what the document actually says before it goes out. Just like the medical doctors, you are fairly hidden from their notes. With attorneys, you can be placated with overly complex terminology, just as I could talk in construction circles around an average housewife if my goal was to shut her up and force her to trust me. The traditional client experience of legal representation involves long waits in the dark for results to be spoken to you. You don’t get copies of the documents or court filings so you can read what they say on your behalf? God forbid before they say it. In my case, they sent the courts incorrect things. And after I asked them to check with me first. But all that is lost in frustrated telephone conversations. Respect for their tactics. Nothing written, nothing proven. You learn a lot if you want to. While taking the reins and needing to know. You learn a lot. Like a stripping away of false perceptions, really. And a revelation of the chessboard, aka the games involved. And eventually, you gain access to the documents a client has paid for but rarely fully understands. The pro se experience with AI involves direct visibility, immediate iteration, and total knowledge of what is being said on one's own behalf — because one is saying it.
May I ask when we all agreed to ubiquitous blind trust? A court filing should be like the building plans of a home, and the homeowner should have clear access to them. At every step. Especially if they are capable of understanding them. And not treated like a dummy who needs someone to read out loud to them. Somehow, along the way, we lose these logical systems in place of self-protecting control mechanisms throughout our culture. More and more, one furrows the brow and says like…wft… and all of a sudden that is the new norm. You mean, they just have iPads with cameras and microphones sitting on every dining table in restaurants now? No fuckin’ way. Oh well. Also, your lawyer gets paid the full amount even if you fire them for fucking up the foundation by a gross 7” miscalculation. Which will now lead to a full tear-out and re-pour. Because, you know, he was gonna do it had you not fired him. :)
The point of the comparison is not to suggest that thirty minutes of AI-assisted work equals two weeks of attorney work in every dimension. The attorney brings credentialed judgment, courtroom experience, relationships with opposing counsel, and the institutional weight of bar membership. Those things retain real value. What has changed is that the gap in document quality between the two paths has narrowed enough that, for many filings, the pro se path produces work that holds up under scrutiny. The leverage point is that AI lets the disciplined individual produce, on their own timeline, with their own oversight, work that previously required outsourcing. And you save thousands, if not hundreds of thousands? Literally. The nut is not worth the squeeze.
Over the past three years, I have operated across small claims, Washington District and Superior Court, appellate practice in the Washington Court of Appeals (Division I), and federal procedural frameworks as a Pro Se litigant, advancing claims from initial filing through motion practice and appellate briefing. I have initiated and prosecuted actions in small claims court, managed full civil litigation workflows in higher courts, and authored complete appellate opening and reply briefs grounded in the record, with Clerk’s Papers citations and structured legal argument. My work includes direct engagement with insurance adjusters and defense counsel, formal litigation against established firms, and continued advocacy through multi-phase proceedings that span claim handling, pleadings, evidentiary development, motion practice, and appeal. I have drafted and filed sanctions motions under CR 11, RCW 4.84.185, the court’s inherent authority, and RPC 1.9, alongside regulatory settlement demands under WAC 284-30-330, each supported by comprehensive evidentiary records built from correspondence, medical documentation, billing data, and timeline analysis. This body of work reflects disciplined adherence to court rules, filing standards, and procedural timelines at every level. The United States constitutional framework has enabled full participation in these arenas, allowing me to present claims, challenge opposing parties, and engage directly with senior insurance defense teams, private firm attorneys, and individual litigants on equal procedural footing. Throughout this process, I have maintained a consistent operational system in which AI supports research, drafting, and document structure, while I direct legal strategy, argument sequencing, and evidentiary alignment, producing a sustained volume of high-level filings that have required opposing counsel to respond to the substance and organization of the work itself.
The litigation chain itself began with an auto-injury claim and an insurance recovery process that should have been routine. The relationship with retained counsel deteriorated, a fee dispute arose, and over three years, the dispute moved through trial court and appellate briefing, and into a defensive sanctions-offensive posture after fielding a strong sanctions assault. It is quite a convoluted story, but worth the educational analysis, particularly relevant to this article. effort. Along the way, I handled UIM claims with two insurance carriers, two workplace payment disputes, a small-claims medical matter, and several related legal tussles with this and that online hostile. I represented myself across all of them. Has AI created a monster? Or am I just like, every other rich person now? Not needing to constantly eat crow because I can’t do much about it. So I perfect the art of moving on, focusing on myself and my goodness and my advancement in this imperfect world. I am the common man, always living under the thumb of the man. And I have to accept what they tell me. That I need this or that to do this or that.
I am here to tell you, like Prince did, “there’s an afterlife” - Let’s Go Crazy.
I tell that story to make a specific point about how the immersion worked. Three years of stakes-laden practice taught me what a JD curriculum would have taught a more conventional student, and the immersive version had certain advantages. I learned the relevant doctrines at stake. I learned the rules of civil procedure by following them and being allowed to learn from my own mistakes. I learned the rules of professional conduct by watching where they hold and where they bend. I learned the structure of an appellate brief by writing one against a credentialed opponent with a vested interest in my failure. The immersion was inefficient in terms of experience but efficient by design. The retention is durable for the same reason. That immersion is available to others now, and the tools are adequate for it. Three years ago, this would have been much harder. Five years ago, it would have been nearly impossible for a working person without legal training. Unless you had exceptional intelligence or particular fortitude. Today, it is hard but highly reachable. Using my average intelligence, high diligence, and Howard Beale's boiling point.
“I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore.” - Network 1976
The role AI plays in this kind of work is specific. It handles structure — the model knows what a complaint, a motion, a brief, an estimate, or a contract is supposed to look like, and it holds that scaffolding patiently across drafts. Like a nery secretary. It handles adversarial pressure-testing — given a draft, it reads it as the opposing side would and identifies where the argument is weak. Like a rich person’s lawyer would during a golf match. It handles research synthesis, it maps a doctrinal landscape, identifies leading cases, and surfaces the framework professionals use to think about a given issue. Like that Mafia guy’s team of ‘fixers’ would. Each of these capabilities is real and useful. I am Italian. Frillici means happiness, and I’m the boss. AI is my consigliere.
“If someone can show me that what I think or do is not right, I will gladly change, for I seek the truth, by which no one was ever truly harmed. It is the person who continues in self-deception and ignorance who is harmed. I do what is mine to do; the rest does not disturb me. It lies outside my control—dead, or not yet born—and so it does not belong to me.” -Marcus Aurelius in Meditations.
The areas the model works outside of are equally specific. It works outside the record. The factual content of a case, the documents that matter, the page numbers, dates, and party names — those have to be supplied by the human, verified by the human, and kept consistent by the human. The model will sometimes invent citations or misattribute quotes. Every citation in a filing must be checked against the actual source. It works outside strategic judgment. The decision of whether to make a particular argument, whether the timing is right, whether raising it weakens stronger ground — that decision lives with the human who has spent the time inside the matter. It works outside the human weight of a long dispute. The same goes for all measurements, methodologies, and any other important details in construction. Self-representation is lonely work. Each session begins fresh for the model. The memory of the last argument lives with the human, and so do the stakes. It helps if you know how to program the AI's memory to enhance context. There are clear methods.
The division of labor is clean. The AI multiplies the leverage of disciplined and intelligent higher-level work; the discipline itself has to be there. A person who lacks the underlying craft will produce, with AI assistance, faster bad or cringey work. I am surely guilty of that at times, and not guilty when it really counts. Ok, ya got me, I’ve posted some Insta blurbs that I regret. Back in 2024, all that AI might be a god stuff seemed like fancy Philip K Dick prose to me. Probably because when I had an idea, it would spit out a version of that idea in seconds. So I felt like a genius. Maybe this is what they mean when they say AI will ultimately erase humanity. Whatevs. Then I was like, this shit blows. Delete. Next.
My methods successfully navigated me through multiple settlements. Keeping me out of court and within the reasonable and fair arena, without having to escalate things $$$$$o at all the middlemen along the way, would get their cut. A person who carries the underlying craft will produce work that previously required a small firm. And expand and enhance that out into all areas of your work. Creative to Career etc. I have teams in all areas. I used to have all that in my head and did ok. Having known what it is like to have many things happening in one’s head at once and to do complicated, original things all the time just makes me appreciate more now how I can focus on larger items. Like concepts and bigger projects, and how I’ve overcome specific limitations. Had AI not arrived, those limitations would have adapted in their ways. Maybe in unique ways, maybe just accepted and left as they are. Not really caring about their uninterrupted analog path in a hypothetical history, as now I get to watch their path transform into strengths and/or die off the hard drive as it constantly defrags the useless shit I never need to think about anymore. Like, say, sorting or data entry. He bud, I need all the ‘Hes’ in this article to be replaced with ‘They/Thems’.
Do it.
The cross-pollination between domains was the surprise of the three years. I expected the legal work to take time away from the construction company. It did, in the obvious sense — every hour spent on anals was an hour not spent progressing a career path. The unexpected return was that the legal work made me a measurably better contractor. The discipline of record citation taught me to write scopes in which every line is traced to a specific material, a specific labor input, or a specific measurable quantity. The discipline of adversarial pressure-testing taught me to read my own estimates as a hostile client would, and to write the estimate so that hostile readers would find nothing to grip but credibility and confidence. The discipline of suppressed apparatus — the brief showing the argument and not the labor that produced it.
Going the other direction: the contractor's eye grounded the legal work. I approached professional credentialing with skepticism, having worked enough trades to know that credentials and craft are different things. That perspective helped me read appellate decisions, attorney filings, and bar association posturing with a clear eye. The professional class generates language whose function is to maintain the professional class, and a working contractor is well-equipped to tell the difference between language that does real work and language that guards territory.
{Note from AI: Tightened the satirical passage. Adjusted some specifics, fixed a duplicate phrase, kept the voice and the misspellings intact. The closing disclaimer is yours, untouched. Carry on.}
Throughout the process, I was constantly making comparisons to the construction ethos. One I made often, mostly in my own head, was that if I were a shit contractor that you couldn't get a hold of, I made you constantly beg for updates, went MIA for a couple of months, and then quit over the phone once you confronted me on those items in hopes of reaching a come-to-Jesus type of moment. Metaphorically speaking. And then, when you fire me for cruddy work all around, agree to go separate ways, and pay for the work completed up until that point, I demand full price for the entire contract anyway? Even though the roof and final and most important necessity of the project, is only 25% built. And the cold November rain doth approach. And then you go ahead and finish the framing yourself so that the whole structure doesn't sit exposed through the cold November rain. (AI just caught that I used this subtle Guns N' Roses reference twice in a row. GPT to the rescue.) And then your novice work wins an award at the DIY Home Builders convention. You not being a carpenter at all, and everyone is impressed. How did you do it, man? The world wants to know. You provide interviews to Time magazine and become man of the year.
I'd call that contractor a scam artist and unfair. If not unethical. Possibly unlawful. One can probably understand such disagreement given that hypothetical context.
"what, I was gnunna do it tho… but like…youfired me before I'll could finish its. xcNot my faut I couldn"t' finish it. full price man… wait.. her is the invoice already, marked final. No need to negociate. I just send these out and people pays them, ushually. liek instead of negociating fair pricing with a client after they fire us mid job. it's how we do. ain't no thang."
I am a fictional writer and satirist. And I write prose for the enjoyment of my zero followers. I often make myself laugh while at the same time, consider myself a cynical, bitter cunt on rare occasions. All characters and illusions in this fictional sci-fi example of a new novel I am writing are also fictional and of no direct or indirect relation to this fictional metaverse of fictitious reality. I have never consumed salvia.
pause
For any client considering hiring TruFabricator Construction, the practical implication is this: the writer of your estimate has spent years drafting documents under appellate-court scrutiny. The construction documents you receive — estimates, scopes, change orders, contracts — are written by a contractor who has been pressure-tested at the level of formal legal practice. The clarity the appellate court demands is the clarity I now bring to every document that goes out under the TruFabricator name. The trade is carpentry. The documentation craft is broader. This matters most on complex jobs: residential remodels with multiple phases, custom builds with specifications that withstand friction, and projects where the contract holds up under scrutiny months later. TruFabricator is built to handle the document side of complex work, and I could easily navigate a Project Manager position at your company, but I don’t want a boss and am not currently desperate (give it time). I’ll writechu a sick Executive Construction Plan to hand off to your Lead, and I’ll render your office guy obsolete while also getting out there with my bags on, leading by example. Wait, I thought I didn’t want a boss? Ok, ok, I’m desperate. I need a job. Hopefully, you can see my value if you’ve made it this far. I’m like one of those blind dudes who can eccolocate. Turns out, I can speak Dolphin. Hire me.
For readers who are not hiring a contractor, who are reading this, thinking about their own untenable problem with limited funds for a professional, the implication is different but related. The tools are available now in a way they were not five years ago. A person with discipline, time, and a real grievance can do work that used to require a firm. Start slow and gentile. Don’t rush into it. Talk smoothly and look into its eyes. Lots of eye contact. Progressive playful humor…and ask it to show you how, and it will take you there.
Approximation falls short of equivalence in some dimensions; lawyers bring capacities that I cannot replicate, and the credential gate guards real things alongside its gatekeeping. The gap, however, has narrowed enough that walking away from a real legal claim for lack of attorney funds is, in many cases, now a choice rather than a necessity. The choice is hard. The work is real work. The loneliness, stigmatization, and ostracization of pro se litigation are their own things. Whoever tells you AI will hold your hand through the worst of it speaks from outside the experience. The work is possible, though, and that is new. A working person with a legitimate grievance, several years of disciplined effort, and AI tools at hand can mount a defense or pursue a claim that would have been institutionally out of reach a decade ago. I know this because I have done it.
The discipline takes years. The tools and the navigation take months to learn. Both are within reach. A person who develops real discipline in any one domain that requires formal documentation — construction, legal practice, scientific writing, contract administration, technical specification — and who learns to use AI tools well, becomes dimensionally larger than the same person was five years ago. The skills travel. The tools multiply. The page tells the truth either way. That was def written by GPT.
I have spent the last three years closer to ten men than one, at one desk, between site visits and material orders. The desk is the same. The work has expanded around me. That expansion is available to other working people who develop the discipline and use the tools well. That, more than anything specific to my situation, is the point of writing this down.
Take-away: Trufabricator Construction has a built-in team of Pro Se clones pretending to be me.
And I can’t be fucked with.