I'm Building Something
Introducing Asaura AI
Happy New Year, team!
I need to tell you about what I’ve been working on for the past four months. It’s called Asaura AI, and while it’s separate from the data science content you signed up for here at The Data Letter, there’s a story behind it that some of you might find interesting.
It’s an AI productivity tool, but not the kind you’re probably thinking of. For years, I’ve been tracking productivity patterns through research and conversations with people who struggle with executive dysfunction, and I kept seeing the same barrier show up. People get stuck before they even start. The gap between “I should do laundry” and “put the darks in the washer” stops them cold. That planning step, the one that breaks vague intentions into concrete actions, exhausts their working memory before they’ve even begun.
This is called task initiation failure, and it’s common in adults with executive dysfunction. After years of observing this pattern, I realized the core issue is the cognitive load of decomposition itself. So I’m building an AI tool that automates that decomposition. Give it a vague goal, and it returns a concrete first step you can actually do. No planning paralysis, no working memory overload.
That’s Asaura AI. It launches in beta this April, and I’m documenting the entire build publicly for the next hundred days.
Which brings me to why I’m telling you this. I’ve started a separate Substack called Asaura, where I’ll be sharing the technical decisions, user research, pivots, and behind-the-scenes reality of building an AI productivity tool as a data scientist tackling a problem I care deeply about. It sits at the intersection of AI, productivity, behavioral science, and mental health, topics that don’t typically show up in The Data Letter.
And that’s intentional. The Data Letter isn’t changing. You’ll still get the same ML explainers, data engineering deep dives, and analytics content you subscribed to. Occasionally, there might be overlap, like when I write about what it’s like to be a data scientist building an AI product. The two Substacks serve different purposes.
If the idea of following a technical founder journey into AI-powered productivity tools sounds interesting, you can subscribe to the Asaura Substack. If you want to follow the company’s progress, we’re on LinkedIn at the Asaura AI page. And if you want to stay connected with me personally as I navigate both worlds, you can follow me on LinkedIn. The Asaura AI beta will be out at the end of this quarter. Sign up at the Asaura AI website to be notified when it’s released.
I’m still Hodman, still writing about machine learning and data infrastructure, still here for the technical conversations. But I’m also building something I care deeply about, and I’m doing it in public because the process itself (watching someone apply AI to a real, personal problem) might be valuable to others.
Next up here at The Data Letter on Wednesday: I’m going to show you how to build a DIY Data Catalog.
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What an exciting journey you have started. I do think there is demand for such a product, if I understand it correctly.
Wow, really excited to see you build this in public Hodman, especially knowing how excellent and considered all of your other work is.