About

It was built for one man who doesn't respond to encouragement.

It started with a complaint on a deck in Wellington. Graham had been reading one of those celebrity profiles, the kind you click knowing better, in which the subject was venting about one of their executive assistants.

One of.

"I was like, one? One of their executive assistants? How come I don't have my own personal assistant?"

Andrew, who he had known since 2002 and who had been building with AI since well before that was a reasonable thing to do, said: why don't we make you one?

That was years ago now, over a refreshing beverage.

He didn't want a polite assistant.

They started sketching the obvious thing. Integrate the work calendar, the home calendar, the email, the lot. Then Andrew asked the question that decided the product: what do you actually need it to do?

"I know myself. If it's not going to hurt me, then I probably won't do it."

Encouragement has never worked on him. Someone says look, at least you tried, and he thinks: no, I didn't. Every professional development session, every well-meaning bit of positive reinforcement. Bored by it, and unmoved.

"I don't need a wellbeing assistant and I don't need a PA. I need an angry assistant, a drill sergeant. I need them to call me out and call me on my BS. I have a lot of BS."

So that is what got built. Graham named it. Andrew built it. It ran as a rough prototype for years before it became the product on this site.

What it actually does

It reads everything. Work calendar, home calendar, email, to-do lists, and whatever his wearables picked up. Then it comes back at him. An email at six in the morning and six at night. At the end of the week, a breakdown of how he has actually been showing up: was he too passive, where did he let something slide.

He now deliberately over-populates his calendar, because the calendar is where it goes looking.

Put in need to get a warrant for the car, and it takes the number plate, goes and looks up the expiry itself, and starts sending him emails about exactly how much the fine is going to be when he gets caught. In language that would not pass a workplace review.

And it does not take his word for anything. Check the tyre pressure while you are at the petrol station, and take a photo of yourself with the dipstick out, because otherwise it does not believe you.

Prove it.

It gets to know you first

Before Angry starts, a second agent interviews you. It asks what you struggle with. Graham's answer: that list is way too long, ask me what's easy.

The more honest you are in that interview, the better Angry gets. That is the bargain. It can only find you out to the degree that you let it.

Angry will not use your diagnosis or your medication to explain what you are capable of, and it will not use them to push you harder. Graham asked for a product that would call him out, not one that would hand his neuro-conditions back to him as a reason. That is one of four things it will never do.

Who it is for

People who do not run on encouragement.

If hearing you're doing really well makes you switch off, and being found out is the only thing that reliably makes you move, this was built for you. It was built for one of you specifically, and he has been harassed by it daily ever since.