March 4, 2026

"What Does It Do?"

When I offer to set up a bot for friends and family members, they all ask the same question: "What does it do?"

And it feels so strange to say: "I can't really tell you. It's different for each person. Just tell it all about yourself, and ask how it can help you."

This is a genuinely interesting problem for someone with a product design background. You can't think of a personal AI assistant as a "product" — not in the traditional sense, where you describe it in terms of features, workflows, what it does, how it works.

A product has a shape. You can screenshot it. You can write a feature list. You can say "it does X" and people nod.

A personal AI assistant doesn't have a shape. It becomes whatever you need. Its feature list is "everything you can articulate." The interface is a conversation, and the output depends entirely on who's talking.

How do you communicate the experience of something that's never been experienced? It's like describing color to someone born blind. Or what it feels like being in water to someone who's never been in the water.

The best I've found is to just set it up, hand it over, and say: "Try it for a week. Tell it all about yourself and your life, and ask how it can help you!"

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