A year in, the clearest thing I can say is this: the technology was never the hard part. Keeping the author at the center of a process that wants, by default, to pull them out of it. That is the work.
Every writing tool makes an implicit argument about who is in charge. Most of them, left alone, drift toward the model. The blank page fills itself a little too eagerly; the suggestion arrives before the thought does. We spent year one building friction back in at exactly the right places: the moments where a human should pause, decide, and own the choice.
Three principles that survived contact
Voice is trained, never borrowed. Contribution is visible, never hidden. And disclosure is a feature, not a confession. Everything else we tried, changed, or threw away. These three held.
What surprised me most was how much authors wanted the record, not to defend against suspicion, but to understand their own process. The disclosure file became a mirror. Writers could see, for the first time, exactly where the assistant helped and where they had carried the weight themselves. Almost always, it was more of the latter than they expected.