dAIvid
The coach behind StoryTeller and StoryMaster.
Have you ever read a book on craft and wished you could sit down with the author? Now you can. After I wrote STOP WRITING!, I built dAIvid — an AI version of me, trained on my methodology, my questions, and my instincts — so you can work through your story with the coach. Working with dAIvid is as close as you can get to sitting across from me.
Look at the name again. I put the AI right in the middle of it, in capital letters, because you should never have to wonder when you're working with one. A writer deserves to know who's in the room. The AI announces itself before it says a word.
This isn't an AI that's going to rewrite your ideas as soon as you look away from the computer. It's also not a sycophantic supporter parroting what you want to hear. Instead, it does what I do in a coaching session — ask hard questions, challenge your structure, expose areas to improve upon, and push you to sharpen your craft. The way a great coach pushes a great athlete.
What a session sounds like
Writer: My second act keeps sagging. I've rewritten it four times and it still drags.
dAIvid: Then let's leave the scenes alone for a minute. By the middle of the story, what has she figured out that she didn't know at the start?
Writer: …Nothing, really. She's the same. She just keeps arguing with her father.
dAIvid: There's the drag. It isn't a scene problem — she isn't changing, so every scene lands the same way. What would she have to realize to stop fighting him?
Writer: Huh. That she's turning into him.
dAIvid: Now you've got a second act. You're not rewriting the same argument four times — you're building toward that. Where it lands is your call.
An illustration of the coaching — not a recording.
dAIvid works on the story with you — he never writes the draft. Not a line of the prose, the dialogue, or the script anyone will read. He doesn't even see Final Draft or Scrivener. This is the work before the writing: your voice, your choices. The pen stays in your hand.
Built to align with WGA rules — my read, not a certification.
The Questions You Should Be Asking
Didn't AI companies steal from writers?
Many of them took copyrighted work without paying for it, and I won't defend that. Anthropic was sued for training on pirated books and settled with authors for $1.5 billion. That was a company being held to account. But while others reach for legal gymnastics, they paid. That's why I built on them: they built their model on an actual constitution — a written code of ethical conduct — and they run the company as a public benefit corporation under an independent trust. That aligns with my values.
And on this platform, the answer goes one step further: I do not train models on your creative content. Your work stays your work — the particulars, in writing.
The full case, including how I weighed the companies against each other: Art in the Age of AI →
What does this cost the planet?
This application is text-based, not image or video generation. Fifty exchanges with the coach draw about 12–50 Wh of electricity and 37–150 mL of water — the electricity a 10-watt desk lamp burns in five hours, and about a second of your daily shower.
The numbers, sourced and charted: The Real Cost →
Is the method just AI in a trench coat?
I coached writers for a decade before this software existed, and the book was written before dAIvid was anything. The software is the delivery, not the source — which is why every tier works without coaching, and the book works without a screen.
The whole lineage: The Human Behind It →
Why I Put My Name on It
When a writer tells me they would never use artificial intelligence, I respect the stance. That's why I offer an AI-free version of the software — and of course, there's always the book and workbook. I share the worries. You just read three of my answers. But I have gone to great lengths to be part of the solution, not the problem — because this era is not going away, and artists will have to figure out how to coexist with it. Someone has to show the ethical way through. I would rather it be someone who loves writers. So I put my name on it.
If you were a boxer with a big fight coming, you would hire a coach. You would train before you stepped into the ring. That is what this software is — the work before the ring, the development before the draft. It isn't cheating unless coaching is cheating. I find that thrilling. I'm challenging myself in ways I didn't know I needed by harnessing this technology as a coach, and I will become a better writer in my lifetime because of it.
And I didn't stop at the name. I wrote a constitution: The Artistic Constitution, principles for how this technology serves the artist, never the other way around. dAIvid is bound by every line of it. Read it. Hold me to it.
The best way to judge a coach is a session.
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