For years, I have wanted something like Jarvis.
Not necessarily the voice, the holograms, or a system running an Iron Man suit—although that would still be so cool, and I still aim for it. What interested me most was having an intelligence that knew what I was working on, kept track of the moving pieces, and could help without needing the whole situation explained again every time.
The ambition came before the job
When AI agents started appearing everywhere, that old idea suddenly felt achievable.
My social feeds filled up with personal assistants, autonomous teams, and operating systems run by agents. Like many others, I was inspired, and probably a little greedy. I wanted the assistant, the agents, and the orchestration all at once.
So I started building my Jarvis as a general personal orchestration system.
The feature list kept growing because almost everything seemed to fit the idea. That was exciting for a while. It also made it difficult to tell what the system was actually for.
A system with no first job
Jarvis did have a center. I wanted it to be focused on decisions and action items.
What did I need to do? What was still undecided? What had already been decided?
Those seemed like sensible things for a personal system to remember. I had chosen the objects before I knew which recurring work they were supposed to support.
I wanted a system for decisions and action items, but I could not answer the practical question: decisions and action items for what? I assumed the context would not matter. It did.
In retrospect, those concepts could have been useful inside the workflows that eventually became August and March. Both deal with work that has a state, unresolved decisions, and clear next actions.
Putting them together inside Jarvis still did not give me a reason to use it for anything repeatedly. The system made sense on paper, but it was not helping me with work I was actually doing. So I left it.
I got further when I started from work already in front of me.
The useful turn was smaller
I wanted to maintain my personal site without turning it into a content machine—if you’re reading this, that’s where you are now. I wanted help developing and reviewing drafts while keeping my own judgment in the loop. I wanted different perspectives during review, control over changes, and the ability to decide what the next version should become.
I also wanted a simple view of the months ahead, so I could see whether I had enough material in progress and where my attention was needed.
That work led to smaller services with actual jobs.
August helps me develop and review notes while keeping unresolved questions visible. March gives me a view of what I may publish and what still needs attention, without deciding that something is ready.
This note is one example. It had a place in the plan while the draft was still being reviewed and revised.
Codex helps me move between these tools and the rest of my work. None of them decides what matters or publishes for me.
The intelligence is not one application
What I have now does not live in one application. August remembers the document and its review state. March remembers the plan. Models can work across both, and I still bring the ideas and make the decisions.
It is a more modest setup than the universal assistant I first imagined. I use it.
Maybe this is how Jarvis starts
I stopped trying to build Jarvis as the first product. I have not stopped wanting it.
Today, I have a few small services that help with work I genuinely care about, and an AI collaboration layer that helps me work across them.
I do not know whether these pieces will eventually become something I would call Jarvis. For now, I am keeping the parts I actually use. That is already more than I could say about the first version.
