How a writer builds tools with AI but never lets it touch his prose

Craig Mod talks with Dan Shipper for Every’s YouTube channel about rebuilding his entire software stack with AI models such as Anthropic’s Claude, while drawing a hard line at using the technology to write.

Mod, known for the newsletters Roden and Ridgeline and books including Kissa by Kissa, used to pay around $67,000 a year for Campaign Monitor, commercial newsletter software he says overcharged him by counting duplicate email addresses across lists. After rebuilding the tool himself with AI assistance and switching to Amazon’s email infrastructure, his annual cost is now close to $150. He calls this shift a coming “golden age of tool building,” where individuals can create software precisely suited to their needs instead of settling for products from incumbents that, in his words, “haven’t done anything in a decade.”

Mod has applied the same approach elsewhere. He rebuilt the personal finance software Quicken for his own use, created a private, ephemeral social network for his paying members called The Good Place, where posts disappear after a week, and built an archive system that automatically preserves his pop-up newsletters.

Research assistant, not co-writer

Despite his enthusiasm for AI-assisted coding, Mod insists AI never touches his actual writing. He uses it only as a research assistant: gathering sources, filling in factual placeholders, or checking cultural sensitivity when writing about difficult subjects. “I don’t ever want it touching the writing,” he says, arguing that sitting with the difficulty of composing sentences is the point of being a writer.

To protect that distinction, Mod keeps strict boundaries between himself and networked technology. He never brings his phone into his bedroom and avoids all internet use until well after lunch. For writing, he uses a laptop stripped of internet access beyond basic file syncing. “As soon as I touch my phone, I feel the chemical shift,” he says, describing how quickly digital distraction disrupts deep focus.

Skepticism about AI consciousness

Mod is also critical of tendencies to anthropomorphize AI systems, calling ideas like people “dating” chatbots psychologically harmful. He argues human connection and sleep remain the strongest predictors of wellbeing, and that AI systems, however capable, are not a substitute for either.

On the future of writing itself, Mod expects the publishing industry to keep losing influence, pushing writers to build their own audiences. He hopes the wave of AI-built tools, including software for newsletters and community platforms, will give more writers the infrastructure to sustain independent careers, even as he insists the writing itself must remain untouched by the machines that now run everything else in his professional life.

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