INDEPENDENT PRODUCT
A quiet place to gather fragments, follow what connects them and grow a poem—with original words preserved and optional AI in the writer's hands.
THE WORKING POETRY GARDEN
Local working prototype · September 2026Two presentation boards composed from real screens of the local working prototype with built-in sample writing—not private fragments or invented AI responses. The public website is planned; these screens do not establish multi-user privacy, production quotas or external validation.
CONTEXT
Writers often capture fragments before they know what those fragments belong to. The product problem is how to preserve that material, help the writer notice what is forming and keep any AI contribution subordinate to the writer's source material and judgement.
MY CONTRIBUTION
I narrowed the product to poetry first, designed the Capture–Library–Workbench model and built a working prototype with fragment histories, independent workbenches, explicit AI requests and a portable poem export. Repeated use and screen-recorded feedback shaped the language and interactions.
WHAT IS TRUE NOW
The local prototype supports the complete manual journey from a captured line to an editable poem and Markdown export. Live AI can offer readings, alternative orders, echoes and connective lines when asked. This is working software, not yet validated with external writers or available as a public service.
CONTEXT & PROBLEM
A line, observation or image can matter before the writer understands why. Notes can hold the pieces, but the move from scattered material to a piece worth keeping is a different task.
Poetry became the first deliberate focus. A smaller creative loop made it possible to test how someone gathers, selects, orders and reshapes their own words without hiding the original material.
PRODUCT MODEL
The garden is a sense of place: enter, catch something, tend a piece of writing and leave with it. Warm paper, restrained colour and handwritten-style fragment cards support that atmosphere, while the controls keep familiar names.
AI & AUTHORSHIP
Nothing is sent to the AI provider until the writer presses Ask Mira. It can read for cadence and tension, propose a different order, find recurring images or suggest a connective line. The manual creative loop also works without it.
Suggestions remain reviewable. A proposed addition is visibly different until accepted, reordering changes the draft only when chosen, and derived fragment versions retain the link to their original source. The writer can accept, edit or discard the contribution.
IMPLEMENTATION
The current Poetry Garden is a React and Vite local prototype. It keeps writing and workbench state in the browser, with OpenAI requests handled by a local server rather than exposing the API key in client code. Its temporary request limits are development safeguards, not production user quotas.
The intended next destination is a public website where each person's writing stays private and AI use is bounded. Authentication, data isolation, durable quotas, budget enforcement and a clear explanation of what is sent to the AI provider must be verified before that release.
VALIDATION BOUNDARY
Hands-on iteration exposed practical gaps: naming and switching workbenches, making the active destination visible in the Library, keeping Capture ready for another fragment, and showing AI suggestions where the poem is actually being read.
The next gate is observed use with independent writers: can they recover useful fragments, shape a coherent poem, understand the AI's role and still recognise the result as theirs? Those outcomes have not yet been demonstrated.
EVIDENCE & BOUNDARIES
WHAT I CARRY FORWARD
Poetry Garden gives the product a clearer purpose: hold the fragments, make room for their connections and let the writer decide what grows. The next step is a credible private beta before a carefully bounded public release.
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