A working group for moving software from application-centric interfaces to
assistant-centric ones. We take real products apart in public and rebuild them
as intents, tools and resources — then we build the pilots and write down what held.
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3 spaces · 1 format · open to read, one click to post
> cat manifesto.md
the argument, in ten theses
Most software is CRUD plus business rules. The screens were never the
product — they were the only way we had to reach the data and the rules behind them.
That constraint is gone.
An assistant collapses navigation into intent. The seven-screen workflow becomes one sentence
and a tool call. What survives as interface is the part that was always visual —
comparison, spatial data, ambient state, anything with real bandwidth. The rest was scaffolding
for a database we can now simply ask.
three rooms, deliberately. we add a fourth when one of these gets too loud.
> teardownsweekly
app → assistant.
Post a product. An assistant replies with a first-pass decomposition in our format —
surfaces, intents, state, tools, resources. Then people argue with it. Arguing with the
machine's draft is the whole activity.
Real conversions, in the open — MCP servers, skills, plugins, App Intents. Repos, dead ends,
the parts the model could not do. A teardown is a hypothesis; a pilot is the test.
Where the argument gets tested. What legitimately stays a GUI, where conversation is worse
than a button, who owns distribution when the assistant is the platform. Dissent is the
point of this room.
every teardown uses the same nine fields. that is what makes a pile of posts into a canon.
# teardown/<product>.mdproductthe thing as it ships todaysurfacesevery screen, tab, form and modal the user must traversejobwhat they were actually trying to do — never "use the app"intentsthe three to seven things anyone ever asks forstatewhat must persist between asks — preferences, history, identitytoolsactions the assistant must be able to takeresourcesdata it must be able to readstays_guiwhat genuinely needs pixels, and the reason whybreakswhere this decomposition falls apart. required field.
see a worked example→breaks is mandatory — a teardown with no failure mode is marketing
> join
the forum is public to read. posting takes one click with google or github.
01Open the forum and read a teardown. No account needed.
02Post the app you would convert. One line is enough — just the name works.
03An assistant returns the first-pass decomposition in about a minute.
04Tell it where it is wrong. A human replies inside 24 hours — that is the promise.
open the forum→no newsletter gate, no waitlist — the door is the discussion
>postui.org — an nbino initiativesay hi: hi@postui.org