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overview
Inspired by the feeling of a well-edited magazine, following curiosity without knowing where it leads. Built solo to learn what it means to design for generative output.
Competitive Landscape
AI interfaces I learned from
Few frameworks exist yet for this kind of interface, but a few products solved pieces of it.
Perplexity
Shows sources, which makes answers verifiable. But it's built for answering questions, not exploring.
NotebookLM
Showed that generative AI doesn't have to be chat. But it's limited to documents you upload.
Claude / ChatGPT
Works well when you know what to ask. Less useful when you're just curious.
Curiosity Engine
Borrows from all three: visible sources, a format other than chat, and suggestions for where to go next.
Prompt Engineering
Problems from early sessions, and how I fixed them.
The early copy was safe, so it said nothing
Headlines were vague. Body copy qualified everything before getting to the point. I fixed this with one prompt test: does this sentence sound like something a person would actually say out loud? Every card now leads with the punchline.
Wrong
"Sleep is essential for memory consolidation, and researchers continue to explore the complex mechanisms involved in how the brain processes information during rest cycles."
Right
"Your brain chemically paralyzes your whole body every night so you don't act out your dreams."
The engine would confidently pick the wrong meaning of an ambiguous topic.
Type "Mercury" and you might get the planet, the god, or Freddie, and whichever it picked, it would commit. I fixed this by adding a pre-flight pass that catches ambiguous prompts and asks one short follow-up before generating. Now the app asks what you meant instead of guessing.
Highlighting a concept often led somewhere adjacent
Highlight "developmental trauma" and the next card might pivot to a person or event instead of defining the concept. I rewrote the branch prompt to treat the highlight as the subject itself, so the next card explains the thing you tapped. Reading now follows the user's curiosity instead of redirecting it.
Prompt Architecture
Creating a prompt framework that hooks
Every element is designed to open something, not close it. The headline draws the reader in, the body gives you a range of things to pull on, and the chips point somewhere you haven't been yet.
Interaction Design
Interactions for a generative interface - beyond chat
When content is generated, interaction has to dissolve into behavior people already have. The reader curates by paying attention, not by navigating.
Refresh button
Shuffle topics
Reflection