AI Should Be an Assistant, Not Your Replacement

Kanby is built by a woman with a big dream:

the dream of never again having to work with horrible task management software.

From the Founder

I’m Kim Cottrell, a software developer who has made things on the web for over a decade.

Over the course of my career (and rather, life), I’ve dreamed of a productivity tool that would:

• Actually help me become more productive (and not by increasing my workload!)

• Make overwhelming goals feel manageable instead of anxiety-inducing

• Let me work in a way that feels natural and individualized, rather than forcing me to follow the latest productivity trend or micromanager-approved workflow

Too often, task management feels like it was made by people who have never had to use it.

This Started with a Frustration

When LLM’s got popular after ChatGPT, I was convinced the big players in the task management space would shift more towards a user-friendly process - simpler workflows, lower costs, better automations, and tools that genuinely removed busywork.

That is not what happened.

Instead, much of the industry shifted its focus from helping people solve problems to promising that AI could replace the people solving them.

The technology isn’t there yet. You know it. I know it. But too many cannot resist the siren song of Jensen Huang in his leather jacket claiming otherwise as Nvidia remains the only profitable player in the AI space.

If that $500,000 engineer did not consume at least $250,000 worth of tokens, I am going to be deeply alarmed

• Jensen Huang

People seriously view this as good advice. Somehow.

AI is remarkably useful in the right situations, but it still struggles with context, judgment, and consistency. These systems can serve as a powerful assistant - but it should not be a replacement for human expertise.

The shift in many companies to AI has created an adversarial relationship between Software-as-a-Service tooling and the people using them. Humans are being pushed out of the loop, consequences be damned.

I wanted to build something that can help the human builders out there, not replace them.

Built Different

Whenever I’m deciding how to build something in Kanby, I keep coming back to the same handful of questions:

• Does this actually help someone?
• Is it reducing complexity or adding it?
• Is it making work feel calmer, clearer, and more enjoyable?

These principles aren’t marketing slogans. They’re the lens through which I try to make every product decision.

• I may have bills to pay, but so does everyone else. The free tier should feel like a “Costco hot dog meal” level of value.

• Wherever AI is added, it should genuinely help users accomplish their goals

• Kanby shouldn’t require a certification to be able to be understood by the end user

Follow along on the journey

These are incredibly early stages of the product - there’s a lot more to come.

In the newsletter, blog, and social media, I will be detailing this adventure. I’ll be going over new product features, the wins, the lessons learned, and the technical details of Kanby.

If you want to support me, please consider:

• signing up (it’s free and we do not sell your data!)
• donating to help fund the project’s development
• following Kanby on social media
• signing up for the newsletter