VibeWriter

VibeWriter in Turn-based Battle Mode. Human-on-Machine writing battle! Ready…🤯

Motivation

The success of GitHub Copilot in “completion” mode stems from its quiet brilliance: it helps you work faster without getting in the way. As developers writing code type, Copilot emanates completions allowing developers to stay in flow, stay in context, and not get hung up with forgettable or terse syntax. It’s a completion engine that helps you write code faster, more accurately, and with less friction. (Ignoring for a moment more extensive capabilities in Copilot Chat mode.)

Most AI writing tools have taken the path of the chatbot paradigm.

Question ➭ Answer.

Question ➭ Answer.

For the prose-based writer, one must stop, prompt, and converse with a bot that exists slightly outside their workflow.

As a recent essay in The New Yorker have shown, this model can feel awkward, artificial, and even creatively disruptive.

In her piece “Can AI Writing Be More Than a Gimmick?”, Vauhini Vara reflects on the limitations of current AI tools for writers. Her early experiments with GPT-3 revealed something profound: the most powerful interactions were not conversations — they were completions. Fragments that supported her, suggested paths forward, or simply nudged her through the blank page.

“Ultimately, GPT-3—which she had believed might “deliver words to any writer who has found herself at a loss for them”—seems to have been most useful to her in its capacity to elicit text, rather than supply it. The regular chatbot dynamic had been inverted: GPT-3 was prompting Vara.”
— The New Yorker

Background: Introducing Vibewriter — the Vibe Mode of Ghostwriter

Ghostwriter is an experimental writing assistant inspired by GitHub Copilot — built for prose-based completion.

Recently, while preparing for a workshop on AI, I was developing some contributing and motivating artifacts that were meant to help participants get a sense of the future of AI.

One of these artifacts was an issue of a ‘newspaper from an AI future’.

I was writing the prose-based text of the articles using VisualStudio Code as a simple text editor. As ideas for articles I had Copilot installed and had been using it routinely for programming tasks. I was quite surprised that it began to emanate text somewhat semantically consistent with the fictional news articles I was writing. It was like having a ghostwriter or muse sitting next to me in the form of a robust text completion engine.

On the way back from the workshop I was thinking about how Copilot had been so useful in this context. I began to wonder if there was a way to create a creative or prose-based writing assistant that would be more like Copilot than the current generation of chatbots, and the years-old crop of AI-based writing applications.

I began to sketch out some ideas for a tool that would be more like a ‘Copilot…But for Writing’ — something that would work alongside of the writer more like a muse, providing what Rick Rubin refers to in his book oft-cited book “The Creative Act” as ‘The Source’: that thing from which ideas are generated.

Can a tool be developed that helps maintain flow state and momentum for writers that does not overwhelm with features and options? A tool that does not feel like a complicated software application, but a source of inspiration that lightly and gently nudges the writer along? Providing flow and fuel without friction? A cure for writers’ block?

I developed a few quick prototypes — one a VS Code plugin.

Another a simple web-based text editor.

A desktop application that uses a RAG-based context pipeline.

I have been experimenting and using it in a variety of contexts to see how it might provide genuine value to the writing process.

I am looking for support and collaboration from partners to continue this development with the ultimate goal to have a metamodern writing assistant for creative writing.

Provides in-line, context-aware completions as you write

Responds to the tone, structure, and rhythm of the draft

Stays in the document, not in a separate chat box

Helps authors push through difficult moments, explore style, or simply find the next sentence

It’s not trying to write for you. It writes with you.

It’s not a chatbot. It’s a completion engine.

It’s not a tool. It’s a partner.

It’s not a distraction. It’s a collaborator.

It’s not a gimmick. It’s a muse.

A New Vision for AI-Enhanced Writing

What would a writing instrument look like in the imminent future—a world where companion intelligence (ranging from basic to premium) becomes as commonplace as wheeled luggage or breakfast cereal?
Rather than creating another passive tool like a typewriter or word processor with its blank page and blinking cursor, we envisioned something different: an active participant in the writing process. Not in the conventional, utilitarian way we see in many current AI writing tools, nor as merely a tool to organize thoughts or interface with source material (the now-common "chat with your PDF" approach).

The Muse Approach

We wanted to explore a world where AI functions more as a muse, a collaborator—a true partner in the creative dance of words and ideas. This exploration aligns with our mission at Near Future Laboratory.

The VibeWriter Project

VibeWriter emerged from a 10-hour Near Future Laboratory Design Fiction Project Sprint. Evolving from our earlier Ghostwriter project, it focuses specifically on action-oriented writing with game-like mechanics that encourage less deliberation and more active idea articulation—similar to a surrealist tablet that promotes stream-of-consciousness writing.

Functional Design Fiction

Our goal was to build something that works—a functional design fiction. This approach represents design fiction as product design or R&D: an Adventure Lab exploring the frontier of possibilities, creating meaningful artifacts that may not fit completely within today's paradigms but function at the edge of what's possible.
So I wondered to myself: Could I quickly create a writing tool to get into this. Somethign that was a genuinely functional artifact, not just a conceptual prop—imbued with AI that serves as a collaborator, partner, muse, and companion?

Inspiration: Vibecoding and Flow State

Vibecoding appears to be emerging as a concept, and while immersed in coding with GitHub Copilot and various assistants, I've been considering how the writing experience could become more like dancing with a muse (or what Rick Rubin calls "The Source") and less like trudging through a swamp of fragmented ideas.
Similar to how Vibecoding seems based on intuition, feeling, and rhythm, I've been exploring how to make writing more of a "vibe move" with gamified elements.

The Evolving Concept

While developing Ghostwriter, I imagined incorporating a "curious" mechanic—perhaps a countdown timer reminiscent of 1980s game shows, where you must respond before time expires. This raised interesting questions: What constitutes a "response"? Completing a sentence? Writing 100 words? And what happens if one doesn't respond adequately?
The home-built AI component of Ghostwriter was enjoyable to create, code, and train. As development progressed, the idea of adding this time-pressure feature remained in the back of my mind—a "shot clock" (inspired by a recent Clippers game) for writing.

Want to get in on the beta test? Join the Patreon!