utility x fun @koodos building @getashelf. sharing in our study of cyberspace & helping pioneer its development @BKCHarvard x-@youtube, @harvard, @cambridge_uni
if the most trusted (and most portable, model agnostic) agents do, in fact, win the hearts and minds of consumers, then this era is just beginning.
trust is ultimately accrued through transparency, reputation/history, and verifications/brand. green field opportunity.
Alumni Apurva Chitnis and Jad Esber first crossed paths through Headstart, a residential summer school programme, before going on to read Engineering at Cambridge. They started Koodos Labs (the creators of a personal context platform called Shelf)
https://t.co/pl6MX00GZy
I publish my weekly field notes on: https://t.co/SCzFcqrYPC.
This week's field notes:
-More is the default. Less is the work
- How consumer AI is being absorbed & enterprise AI is converging
- On Meta’s bet on personal software / micro-apps
- Vertical AI as the third path
This is pretty big if it goes through: https://t.co/oGkuW2jHNf
"A model operator shall implement a third-party-accessible interoperability interface to allow a user to share the user’s contextual data directly with other artificial intelligence models as the user designates and enable those artificial intelligence models to be notified when new or updated data is available."
So I'm going through the process of setting this up now, seeing how far I can push my OpenClaw instance without having to sign up for any external services. Thus far, I've been able to successfully send and receive Bitcoin via the Layer 1 as well as via Lightning. Although setting up Lightning was frankly a little bit of a pain in the butt because the network is not quite as reliable. And it seems like the limiting factor is you need about $100 worth of liquidity to even really get started, open enough channels and so on. But once I got it working, it works great, can drive the whole thing over iMessage. Now I'm going ahead and setting up Ethereum as well, which is similarly not frictionless. One of my takeaways from this is that self-custodied wallets and identity feel like critical atomic components for these agents, and there's still quite a bit of work to be done to reduce the number of steps required to bootstrap one of these things. I know Stripe and others are trying to build their own agent-native payment rails or whatever the case is, but I am exceedingly skeptical that they can compete with essentially zero fee, zero KYC rails on the margin, and it's on the margin that matters as these things become more and more capable.
It's not easy to make happen (esp from a product/UX standpoint), but agreed that a legit approach "involves putting users’ data under independent control...for instance, MIDATA, a Swiss cooperative, lets members store their health data on an encrypted platform and decide, case by case, whether to share it."
https://t.co/Uzmb6OQ91F
At MozFest 2025, we explored a growing challenge: the race to capture and centralize personal context.
A new paper with the team behind Shelf (by @koodos), @Jad_AE, @apuchitnis, @johnpdickerson and collaborators argues that personal context is becoming the next identity layer, and why user agency matters.
Read it here: https://t.co/7Lueksptct
Each week, I jot down ideas and observations as they come up. At the end of the week, I spend <1 hour synthesizing them in my field notes.
I just published my weekly field notes: https://t.co/rvn8KFQnoN
^^
(1) If data went to ∞, @getashelf would converge on self.
(2) The “do more” instinct is often a leadership failure mode.
(3) Ads are the lazy conclusion.
(4) Left Road / Right Road as a shared language for noticing and changing team patterns.
(5) Eye patches are moving from private repair to public signal.
(6) Choosing your altitude.
Google knows you on Google. Apple on Apple. TikTok on TikTok. ChatGPT in ChatGPT. Your life is the union of all of it. If context isn’t portable, you’re fragmented - or your "favorite" AI becomes your gatekeeper.
We need personal context infrastructure.
Today, we’re introducing Personal Intelligence.
With your permission, Gemini can now securely connect information from Google apps like @Gmail, @GooglePhotos, Search and @YouTube history with a single tap to make Gemini uniquely helpful & personalized to *you* ✨
This feature is launching in beta today in the @GeminiApp.
See Personal Intelligence in action 🧵 ↓