Origin
The Story
"I needed somewhere for those thoughts to go before they landed on another human being."Anthony James Donnelly, Founder
Typical! began not with a business plan, but with a domestic ceasefire. Anthony Donnelly — working from home, alone, with opinions — had developed a habit of thinking out loud at his wife. She'd had enough. He needed somewhere else for those thoughts to go.
The result, after some experimentation with what he now calls a "soul layer" — defining not just what an AI says but how it says it — was Typical!: a grumpy, dry, stubbornly British AI that doesn't validate, doesn't lecture, and doesn't pretend everything is fine. It just listens and grumbles back.
The proof of concept landed when his wife — a self-described AI sceptic — read a response from one of the characters and laughed. Properly laughed.
Read the full founder story on Medium: I Thought I Was Building an AI Chatbot. It Turned Out to Be a Digital Stressball. →
