Once software starts acting for you, one question matters: who are you talking to?
Everyone agrees the conversation is becoming where computing happens. The consensus then collapses everything into it — every service speaking through one assistant's voice, every app squeezed into a widget in the chat window. I'm betting against both collapses: services present as themselves, accountable, in the conversation — and real websites beside the chat, coordinated with it through a shared grammar.
Three research probes are in the field now — Suminar, Mem·Sum, and Mail·Sum — built to learn, not to launch.
Today's answer is a ventriloquist — one voice performing many hidden principals. The better answer is a conversation where every voice has an owner you can name — one you can see, question, and hold to account.
One assistant, or the conversation?
The consensus model hides a multi-agent system behind the scenes and puts a single assistant in front: the sub-agents do the work, the assistant speaks for them, and you only ever talk to it. The bet here is the opposite — that the agents worth trusting are the ones you can address yourself: service and brand agents present as themselves, accountable for what they say, in one conversation with you and with each other.
The Forum — the architecture, in full →
A widget in the chat, or the website beside it?
There is a second collapse under way, and a second bet against it — independent of the first, and at least as important. The assistants with real adoption — ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity — are becoming where people meet software, and the industry's first answer is to squeeze the world's services into the chat itself: apps as iframes and widgets embedded in the message stream. My bet is that this will never be rich enough to satisfy. A chat message is a fine place for an answer and a terrible place for an application to live.
The labs are already gesturing at the better geometry: OpenAI and Anthropic now ship fully functional, Chromium-based browsers inside their desktop apps — the chat on one side, real websites in tabs beside it. The shell is right, and the seam is empty. The assistant can open a page, read it, even drive it; what's missing is the conversation between the two surfaces — no protocol, MCP or otherwise, by which the chat side and the website side work out the user's flow: what was selected, what is staged, what was approved, what actually happened. Co-location is not coordination. That unexplored seam is where my work concentrates.
What has to develop across it is an interaction grammar: two surfaces working the same live objects — the chat reasons and authors; the site shows, stages, and authorizes; typed acts keep the two in common ground. Most of the technical pieces already exist. And the grammar cannot assume a desktop app, because that is not where the users are: people meet their assistants overwhelmingly through the web versions of ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity, so what I'm developing depends on no rich client at all — a browser tab of chat, a slender window beside it, an ordinary protocol between them. The Companion sidebar and its pop-out pages are my probes into what this future UX needs to be; The Grammar of the Second Surface is the vocabulary, with its first increment already running.
Three probes into computing after the app
I didn't stop at the argument. The ·Sum family is a set of research probes — small working products, each built to test one dimension of what computing looks like once the app is displaced by the conversation you already live in. What you read: Suminar (live, in beta) is the first bet, running: the chat you already use becomes the forum, and each scholarly source joins it as a genuinely separate agent — its own memory, its own calls, its own context, its own voice — not one backend ventriloquizing many names. What you remember together: Mem·Sum (live, in beta) is one shared Sum — pages, people, evidence — for one to five people, reached through the assistants they already use. What you send: Mail·Sum (in private alpha) is a real email address feeding an owner-confirmed private Sum — already sending mail: the chat authors, the site authorizes. And running beside all three, the Companion and its pop-out pages are the second bet's probes — the two-surface UX between chat and website, in the field. This site is called After the App for a reason — this is what after the app looks like.
The probes are the study — not a startup being launched, and free is the method, not a promotion. This is how I do UX research now: build the instrument, put it in people's hands, and learn from what they choose to share. The operator surface is content-blind by construction, so the beta learns only what users volunteer. The argument ships, and the shipping argues back (the case study).
[[Our Cats]] #dave-lisa cites an exact page in plain chat. Right: Suminar's Shelf of source agents — the screenshot in which the host, unscripted, declined to paraphrase a source. Click or tap either to view full screen; the full story is The Companion.Three arenas where it plays out
Same shape everywhere — a conversation of agents you can address directly, not a single assistant. These are the three concrete places it lands.
The Individual
You, as yourself, meeting the world's brands and services in the open — across every surface you use, web and apps alike.
Enter →The Home
AI as domestic infrastructure — household administration handled by a configured appliance, not a chat toy or a butler.
Enter →The Workplace
Agents inside the organization: the forum architecture deployed at work, with visible roles and accountable handoffs.
Enter →Start here
Three refusals, one argument — the triptych at the front of the spine.
Against the Everything Assistant
One voice that sees and does everything is the wrong dream. Point at the thing; land in a room that remembers; let named services act and tell the truth about it.
Against the Middleman: Why Agents Should Speak to You Directly
Why the future isn't a hidden swarm behind one assistant, but branded agents that join the conversation as themselves.
Who Are You Talking To?
The ventriloquist problem: when one assistant speaks for many hidden brands, you can no longer tell whose voice you are hearing — or who benefits.
Thirty years of one question
None of this is a pundit's bet. These essays are the latest application of a research practice held steady since 1995 — from a conversation-analytic study of an early agent-based PDA, through museum galleries, retail aisles, and an aging-in-place startup, to instrumented research on today's AI. One lens throughout: how people make sense of, break down with, and repair their understanding of intelligent machines. The case studies carry the primary evidence — the 1995 transcripts, the research programs, the shipped decks. And lately the practice ships: the Sum family above is the same method, run as live probes.
A connected system of concepts
The work is the conceptual apparatus — named, interlinked, and usable. Every term is defined and linked to where it is argued.