Spiral: Building an AI Ghostwriter You Can Actually Use

In this episode of the AI and I podcast, host Dan Shipper interviews Danny Aziz, the general manager of Spiral, an AI writing partner. Danny discusses the problems with most AI writing tools, which he characterizes as slow and generic, requiring extensive prompt engineering. He explains how he rebuilt Spiral to address these issues, focusing on creating an AI writing partner with "taste." Danny details Spiral's features, including its interview mode, which asks users questions to understand their writing goals, and its multi-agent system, which separates the interviewer and writer models to avoid context rot. He also shares insights into the development process, the importance of intentionality in AI-assisted writing, and the challenges of building a product that evolves with rapidly changing AI models.