AI should help us talk to people, not fill their inboxes

I personally hate it when someone only reaches out because they want to sell me something. I prefer people who want to help, and happen to have a product or service that can do that.

That's an awkward thing to explain when you're building a tool for outreach. At first glance, ReacherX can look like another product for sending lots of AI messages. I don't want people to see it that way.

The part I want help with

Finding the right people is hard. I want help searching, reading about someone, and figuring out whether we have a reason to talk. That's useful work for an agent.

But I still want a say in the conversation. I don't want to send a message just because the software has written one. The person receiving it has their own work to do, and probably already gets plenty of messages they didn't ask for.

To me, getting this balance right is one of the most important problems in this space. More messages aren't much of an achievement if nobody wants to read them.

Why there are different ways to write

I'm a developer and designer, and I take a lot of inspiration from Cursor. It can help with a whole task, but it can also help with the line you're working on.

I wanted both in ReacherX. There are plans when you want help thinking through how to approach someone. There's autocomplete when you want to keep writing yourself. And you can record your own voice or show something you've made.

These choices matter to me. Anyone should be able to use the product without being pushed into one way of talking to everyone.

I'm still working on it

ReacherX is a beta. I don't think I've figured all of this out yet.

If you've used it, I'd like to know where the help felt useful and where it got in your way. That's the kind of feedback that can change what I build next.