Army Major Builds CHAP AI Agent for Chapel Resource and Facilities Work

The U.S. Army’s newest AI-course project is aimed at an unusually narrow operational problem: the administrative work behind chapel operations. Maj. Sean Callahan built the Chaplain Administrative Platform, or CHAP, to handle resource, maintenance, facilities and supply-management tasks while giving chaplains and religious support specialists more time for spiritual-readiness duties.

A classroom assignment becomes a Corps-wide concept

Callahan developed CHAP during AI Basics, an elective in the Command and General Staff Officer Course for academic year 2026. He said he arrived with limited experience using AI, mostly for product reviews and basic knowledge work, and with skepticism about the technology.

The elective combines AI theory with hands-on agent development, covering large language models, prompt engineering and guardrails. Students were asked to build an agent for a problem in their next unit of assignment; Callahan built CHAP in a few weeks, then directed it toward the Chaplain Corps more broadly.

Callahan said he used AI tools to refine prompts, identify gaps and consider guardrails while developing with AI. He also credited the course’s small-group setting, where officers from different warfighting functions brought different perspectives to the same problem sets.

A bounded administrative role

CHAP is designed as a replicable agent for chapel-community administration across Army posts. Its proposed scope includes resource planning, maintenance, facilities and supply management, and Callahan said the information could also inform commanders’ decisions on garrison finance obligations and facilities management.

That scope sets a practical boundary for the project. CHAP is intended to absorb routine logistics and management work, not make the judgments at the center of chaplains’ support mission. Callahan identified that mission as nurturing the living, caring for the wounded and honoring the fallen.

The next handoff is the harder test

Callahan’s second goal is continuity through personnel changes. He said turnover among chaplains and religious support specialists can make transitions disruptive, and designed CHAP to preserve and transfer institutional knowledge while standardizing processes between posts.

His proposed method is to convert know-how held by individuals into standard operating procedures, accessible videos and other reusable material for newer soldiers, NCOs and chaplains. The Army presents CHAP as a tool designed for that purpose; whether it delivers those time and continuity gains across posts remains the next operational question.