I built an AI that watches me. I know how that sounds.

I talk to my phone now. Out loud. In the car, on a walk, standing in my kitchen at 6am like a man leaving himself a voicemail. The neighbors have questions. I have answers — they’re just in a vault.

Here’s what I’m building, stated plainly so you can decide how worried to be about me: a mirror that’s been paying attention the whole time. You talk to it a couple of minutes a day — whatever’s rattling around in your head — and it quietly files it away. Over time it reads your own life back to you: where you are, the pattern that’s forming, the thing you keep avoiding.

That last part is my favorite, mostly because it’s the most irritating. I built a thing whose entire job is to notice what I’m dodging — which means I built a machine to nag me, with citations. I asked for this. I wrote the code. There is no one to be mad at but the architect, and the architect is me.

The reason it works isn’t clever AI. The AI is the same one everyone has; I did not invent a brain in my kitchen. The trick is that most AI knows everything about the world and nothing about you. Ask ChatGPT who you are and it cheerfully starts from zero every single time, like a brilliant goldfish. Mine starts from zero once. Then it remembers. Day one, it’s a party trick. Six months in, it knows which Tuesdays go sideways before I do.

Two things I decided this week, both faintly unhinged:

One. I’m not building this for “tech people.” I’m starting with ten friends from completely different lives. If it only works for people like me, it’s not a product — it’s a diary with extra steps.

Two. I’m giving away 51% of it. The majority goes to people who’ll never use the thing. I’m aware that announcing this while the product has — let me check — zero users is a bold order of operations. But that’s the whole point: it’s meant to change your life and somebody else’s, and the somebody else gets the bigger half.

Now the honest status, because honesty is the entire brand: it’s early. The core has to work for one person before it goes to ten, and I’m not there yet. There is a bug. The bug has a name. We are not currently on speaking terms.

So I’m not selling you anything today. No waitlist, no countdown, no “limited spots.” I’m building it in the open — the wins, the bug we don’t discuss at parties, all of it.

But I’m building it quietly, and on purpose. You won’t find my name on this. I’m not in it for the credit, and I don’t want applause for a thing that doesn’t work yet. When the product is genuinely worth your time and your money — that’s when you’ll find out who I am. Not before. Let the work introduce me.

Until then, two things are true. I’m not building this for “users.” I’m building it for you — and I want it to be good for you. Actually good. Not the kind of good measured in how long you stare at a screen. And I’ll show up. Every day. Some days that’s a real leap. Most days it’s an inch. But every day, I’ll be here, moving it forward.

If watching someone quietly build the thing that talks back — an inch at a time — sounds like a decent way to spend a few months: stick around.