We want publishing on Bonzai to start a conversation, not end one

I was packing the dishwasher when Nina asked me what would ease the friction for someone who is busy but has a thought. Part of my answer was about mechanics: we're making it one press to share your thoughts with Nina, so there won't be a lot of friction there. The rest of my answer was the dishwasher itself. I happened to have the time right then. Other people might not. Are they comfortable sharing with Nina? Is that trust built? And do they have the actual time in that minute?

Bonzai is a voice-first publishing platform, a prototype I'm working on with my co-founder, Jeff. We got it from concept to working really quite well in less than a week, and during that first week Jeff and I did twice-daily reviews. On Bonzai, we have this concept of your AI journalist; Nina is the AI interviewer. The starting hypothesis was about the anxiety people feel around publishing, and the many unfinished drafts they often have. I wanted getting new content out to feel as joyful as possible.

What I keep coming back to now is what happens after something is published. How we get people commenting on others' articles, or getting engaged by writing a follow-up post, is going to be pretty important. That's how the network can actually form around it. This isn't just a matter of making an AI writing tool.

None of this is happening yet. It's something we can only really work on once there are other people's articles to respond to. For now, it's a set of ideas, banked for the network beyond publishing: a design we're proposing, not something we've built or watched people use.

The proposal starts at the bottom of the page. Because Bonzai has an AI journalist, I'm thinking we can put a call to action at the end of articles, inviting people to add their own take on the topic. When Nina asked whether that should feel like an open door or a nudge, I said an open door.

What happens when someone steps through it? I think the journalist would let them take the direction. Maybe they give a quick reaction. Hopefully that would lead to more commentary, so we'd ask them if they've got more they want to say. The point of that follow-up is to help the person find their own through line, instead of dropping a comment and leaving: a real exchange, not just replies.

When Nina asked whether I was leaning toward comments on the article or follow-up posts that can stand on their own, my answer was both, I guess. The reward for somebody publishing is somebody engaging with the post, through a like, a comment or a follow-up article. A comment, I imagine, could be incredibly quick. A follow-up article is a fuller thing. The person has read the post and sorted out the ways their own experiences in the world align with it, or disagree with it. That's where an AI interviewer can pull on the thread the article started.

The reward for somebody publishing is somebody engaging with the post, through a like, a comment or a follow-up article.

What decides how far along that range someone goes? If Nina has been quickly set up, she should be able to pull on that thread. So it probably has more to do with the time and inclination of the person to engage with the AI interviewer. The one-press entry takes care of the mechanics. It doesn't settle whether they trust Nina, or whether they have that minute.

I suspect responding would be more for people on their second or third or fourth post: power users, people who've shared a few articles beforehand and already established some trust with Nina. I haven't thought through whether someone's first use might be responding to another person's post rather than creating a new one. Looking ahead, though, it would probably be someone who is leaning into the service in a deeper way.

What would make someone that kind of repeat contributor? A density of content around their chosen niche. Maybe it's steam trains. Maybe it's diffusion models instead of large language models. There are so many unique niches out there; one just needs to look at Reddit.

The thinking is that there could be quite a lot of content density around ideas shared by people who traditionally would not have written or shared about a particular topic. That's a hope for the network, not something people are doing on Bonzai yet.

Follow-up posts connect to another idea we have: roll-up articles that pull in content from multiple contributors. Once a few diverse opinions on a topic have emerged from different authors, and maybe different posts from the same author over time, we would gather them into a roll-up post, publish it and somehow let people know they were part of it. The "somehow" is still to be worked out.

Why would that matter? I think it would tap into people's need for belonging. A roll-up would let contributors feel connected to one another, I'm guessing. The feeling I'd want someone to have is that they're sharing their thoughts with colleagues, really: trusted colleagues, or trusted comrades in their chosen niche.

When Nina asked what I'd hope someone feels when they step through that open door, my answer was the sense that they have found their people. Then she asked a good question: would that feeling come more from responding to someone else's post, or from sharing something of their own first? Probably, actually, when somebody responds to their post. That's the moment they realize they're not just talking into the void. It's my expectation about something we haven't built, not something I've watched happen. But it brings the design back around: the open door at the end of one person's article is also how somebody else's post gets its response.

So the path we're proposing runs from an open door at the end of an article, to a quick reaction, to a journalist asking whether there's more, to a follow-up post, to a roll-up that brings several voices together. The press itself we can make easy. Whether anyone uses it may come down to something smaller: whether they trust Nina, and whether, like me at the dishwasher, they happen to have the time.