Charley Miller ✌️

As side projects go, this one feels special because its about supporting the local arts community. And now the cat is out of the bag: MaybeItsFate just got referenced in Thesis Driven (the best investor newsletter in the PropCo space). Thank you Brad Hargreaves for digging in.

@jaymesdec Hey Jaymes, would love to chat with you on this. I’ll send you a DM!

Over the past few months I've been building an agentic teacher's assistant that handles a significant amount of my day-to-day tasks. This tool connects to my school's learning management system and acts as a chatbot loaded with 83 atomic tools and skills: planning and posting lessons, assignments, assessments, rubrics. It can create, read, and update any content on Canvas, Google Docs, or Slides. It can grade student work and provide feedback that is more helpful and comprehensive than what I can consistently produce by myself. I have a pedagogical council of AI advisors that help me plan lessons, projects, and assessments. The council is made up of three voices patterned after Seymour Papert, John Dewey, and Maria Montessori. Papert pushes me toward constructionism and learning by making. Dewey keeps me honest about experience and inquiry. Montessori watches for student agency and the prepared environment. I give them a draft lesson, and the council reads it, argues with it, and hands back a revised version. It knows Franklin's core philosophy and organizes learning around nine Transdisciplinary Competencies: skills that cut across every subject and define what it means to be a Franklin graduate. The Serendipity Generator skill looks across all my colleagues' curricula and identifies transdisciplinary project opportunities aligned to student interests. All of this happens in one chat. No copying or pasting. Once I approve a draft, I push it to Canvas. It cannot publish and that's a design choice. I want a final check before anything becomes viewable by students. Student names and identifiers are replaced with anonymous IDs before anything hits the model. Because I built this as an AI Agent with small tools plus access to our LMS, it can combine them to express emergent capabilities it was not designed for. When one of our science teachers unexpectedly had to leave mid-year, I generated a transition report for administration and the substitute: where each class was, what had been taught, what hadn't, and how each student was doing. When the grade level deans needed a daily report on students who got D's or F's, I spun it up with a few prompts and a Slack bot that now automates it. Department Leads used to spend hours each week checking every Canvas page for compliance with Franklin guidelines. I asked my tool to automate it. Now they get a Google Doc each Friday flagging any issues. To see how a student is doing on their nine Transdisciplinary Competencies, I can pull every assignment and assessment they've ever done and curate a portfolio that demonstrates those skills. I love building with AI and for AI Agents. In January, I started with a few small tools that could accomplish specific tasks. I linked them together and learned about Agent Native Architecture. Thanks, @danshipper and @every! I realized that I was growing software rather than building it. I am planting seeds and wondering: what will this become?

Reminds me of notes I wrote on a piece of paper when I got serious about starting maybeitsfate.com in 2023, way before I truly appreciated the velocity of AI innovation Well explained @lessin

Don’t EVER let your printer know you’ve waited until the last minute and you’re in a hurry, because it can sense fear.

I think it is deeply concerning that the group of people building the technology that is supposed to reshape humanity don't actually care about what it means to be human.

I've read 8,000 Y Combinator applications. You would think the reviewers are thinking through a standard set of questions. Is it a good idea? Is it a large market? Is it an experienced team? Do they have traction? During my time as a reviewer, we went back and tested which questions actually predicted success. The process was look at the best performing companies and then ask whether the application question would disqualify any of the biggest outcomes. If so, eliminate that question. Is it a good idea? Well, Airbnb was a bad idea. Air bed and breakfast. Nobody thought it would work. Is it a large market? Airbnb, Coinbase, Microsoft, Apple, Nvidia all started in tiny markets. Experienced team? John and Patrick Collison had no experience in fintech when they built Stripe. Brian Chesky had never built a company. Brian Armstrong was just a product manager. Do they have traction? We learned to invest in slope, not Y intercept. The initial traction doesn't tell you anything about the angle of ascent. Sooooooooooooo...none of these standard questions worked. The best question that predicted success was determination. Who is the most determined? Even if they're not the smartest. Even if the market hasn't developed yet. Even if their initial product is wrong. It outpeformed by a mile. And didn't disqualify the winners. AND was evaluatable. It was so predictive that YC took that one question and found five different ways to ask it.

@ystrickler Er reinventing

@ystrickler Feels like you’re reinvesting the for-profit co-op (the LCA). What am I missing?

2025.charts

This essay is about so much more than the movie and the best thing I’ve read in awhile about this moment we’re in collectively. defector.com/one-battle-aft…

Remember, kids, there are only three AI futures: Universal love, everyone dies or +0.3% RGDP growth for 10 years.

Maybe It’s Fate turned 1 year old since the doors opened, and 3 years since ideas formed into the original white paper. Proud to note the co-op is thriving and the model of a for-profit community-owned creative community space is working!

A video essay sharing nine creative lessons from my life and career 1. To me or to the mean 2. You are your audience 3. Small is more meaningful than big 4. Practices and cathedrals 5. Worldbuilding is creative resilience 6. Self-acceptance and the inner ring 7. Breaks spark breakthroughs 8. In groups we become stronger 9. Stars and constellations

To a certain extent I feel bad for people like Blake. There are so many Jews here like Brad Lander, more of us than you'll find anywhere else on earth, and we lead good, safe, peaceful lives. We're celebrating right now. We don't spend our days in bunkers. x.com/blakeflayton/s…

I get the excitement for being freed from the chains of email, but dunking on a personal “congrats” note to avoid a sincere reply makes me want go hand write a letter.

“Mastery is the best goal because the rich can’t buy it, the impatient can’t rush it, the privileged can’t inherit it, and nobody can steal it. You can only earn it through hard work. Mastery is the ultimate status.” —David Sivers

Curious @benkohlmann and @2112Power about your support for the GOP with news of the GOP abandoning the CHIPS Act? Still all in?

Even if it takes 50 years, this would be great progress.

3️⃣ The Death of DAOs The failings of DAOs and how to improve collective decision-making from @connormcmk @connor/the-death-of-daos" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">coda.io/@connor/the-de…

@archetypevc @connormcmk @connormcmk I really enjoyed this and found it provocative. Would love to both playtest this in the context of a DAO, but also think through a rudimentary version for a co-op’s governance. DM me sometime if you’re game to talk that through.

archetype friday fives: + Archetype Invests in Essential + Aori, Game Theory, and DeFi + The Death of DAOs + MEV-SBC '24 Livestream + Zora x Uniswap