Claude Docs
Did Anthropic clone Margin Muse? My wife suggested that they might have stolen the idea from me, as if I were the inventor of margin comments! (I’m happy to take credit.)
This was inevitable. Wherever AI and writing co-exist, it’s bound to sprout a social annotation layer. Similar to how Google built Claude inside of gDocs, Anthropic built gDocs inside of Claude. Claude always had “documents” but last week they made them editable and collaborative. Both editors and AIs can now leave and implement comments.
The gut reaction is, welp, there goes my startup, but that’s an old-school way of thinking. I’m not competing with anyone, I’m building a tool for myself. Similar to how gDocs is for the median user, so are Claude docs.
It will never iterate faster than me, especially if I use and build my own tools daily.
It will also never care to adopt my genre-specific pattern language.
Even if my tool never grows past 100 users, my real target is my own creative output. Do I evolve through my tool? If not, it’s not worth the money anyway.
Of course making five-, six-, or seven- figures of revenue would be a welcome bonus, but my essay software is one of several revenue paths. I already folded the app under Essay Club. Or maybe the software becomes a free viral funnel into the Club?