This podcast touches on AI.
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podcast → touch → AI
My fiancé works at Anthropic.
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fiancé → work → Anthropic
Last week on the Platformer podcast, Replit's Amjad Masad predicted that apps are about to enter a long twilight.
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apps → predict → twilight
Instead of installing individual pieces of software, he said, we’re much likelier to outsource work to agents powered by artificial intelligence.
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we → instal → intelligence
And so for the fifth episode of our miniseries about productivity in the AI era, I wanted to talk to someone working to realize that vision.
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I → want → vision
My Hard fork co-host Kevin Roose and I are in the process of standing up a new company, and it has given me a fresh influx of tasks to coordinate: hiring employees, finding office space, organizing formation documents, and much more.
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it → stand → documents
For the most part, these tasks and documents are hiding somewhere in long email threads.
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tasks → hide → threads
Many small businesses today organize work like this using a tool like Notion: a blank page that you can fill with boxes and tables and databases.
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you → organize → boxes
And I did create a Notion workspace for us, outsourcing as much of the process as I could to the tool’s embedded agents.
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I → create → agents
It worked well enough, though I can’t say the process sparked much joy.
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process → work → joy
Staring at our new workspace, I had the sinking feeling that I had given myself a giant new project to maintain.
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I → star → project
For these reasons, I was interested to read about Town.
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I → read → Town
Unlike most of the tools we’ve featured so far, this one is brand-new: the company only came out of stealth in June, having raised $55 million from Andreessen Horowitz.
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company → feature → Horowitz
Its core offering may sound familiar — it offers a digital assistant, called a Townie, that plugs into your calendar and email and can brief you on your day, your meetings, and take limited action on your behalf.
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that → sound → behalf
But I was struck by Town’s onboarding process, which quickly builds a dossier about who you are, the work you do, and the coworkers you interact with the most.
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you → strike → dossier
From there, it builds a wiki that includes your personal profile, communication style, work patterns and other preferences.
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that → build → profile
Within minutes, Town understood that I am launching a new company; that some of our top priorities include finding studio space, securing a network deal, and preparing for our launch episode.
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some → understand → episode
Practically speaking, the wiki contains information that Town’s assistant can read to inform its briefings and other work.
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assistant → speak → briefings
But browsing the wiki, I saw the spark of something more interesting — a self-organizing company.
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I → browse → something
What if, instead of building and maintaining a Notion workspace, an agent built and maintained the equivalent for you based on data you share from your email, your meeting notes, and your Slack?
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you → build → email
When I got on a call with Town’s co-founder and CEO, I learned that the company soon plans to take a run at that possibility.
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company → get → possibility
Jean-Denis Greze — his actual title at the company is “mayor” — started the company after about seven years serving as chief technology officer at Plaid.
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title → start → Plaid
Before that he ran engineering at Dropbox, and before that he spent exactly one year practicing law.
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he → run → law
(He would later say that his worst day as an engineer would beat his best day as a lawyer.)
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day → say → lawyer
Town's core bet — which, at least for the moment, I could take or leave — is on its assistant, which it calls a townie.
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it → take → which
When you create an account, your assistant gets a name, a personality, and an animal avatar; mine is a cheerful finch named Rufus.
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mine → create → name
Town isn’t cheap: most people pay $49 to $59 a month.
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people → pay → 59
When Greze worried that the many mothers using the product wouldn't pay, one told him it saved her more time than the $75 manicure she buys herself every month, and that it was "worth $600 a year for me to not have to do those things."
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me → worry → things
Greze called that product-market fit.
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Greze → call → that
"I live downstream of capitalism," he told me.
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he → live → me
"I build the best product that I can, and then people pay or don't pay."
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people → build → product
The most newsworthy thing Greze told me is that a team version of Town's self-writing wiki is "coming out very soon" — a company knowledge base that assembles itself from what everyone's townies already know.
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townies → tell → what
This feels quite challenging, from a privacy perspective: pool everyone's private files too carelessly and the AI might put "people's salaries in a spreadsheet by mistake," he said.
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he → feel → mistake
"Then you've got big egg on face."
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you → get → face
Over the next five years, though, he predicts that we will come to trust specially trained models to enforce company privacy policies on their own — and that small, high-trust companies will embrace unified company knowledge bases long before the enterprise does.
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enterprise → predict → bases
Greze talks about all this in strikingly intimate terms.
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Greze → talk → terms
"I think AI is the closest thing to life that we've ever created," he told me, describing townies as beings you nurture rather than tools you configure.
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you → think → beings
But he paired that with firm limits: he rejects AI agents as independent economic actors ("I don't need a universe filled with paper clips — no, thank you"), and when I asked whether Town would ever guilt a canceling customer by showing their townie crying, he called the idea a dark pattern and shut it down: "It's software.
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It → pair → it
It doesn't have human rights."
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It → have → rights
The intimacy has policy implications, too.
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intimacy → have → implications
…and 273 more, not listed.
