Meeako Can Now Talk. Sort Of.
As I've added more apps to Meeako, something unexpected started happening.
Finding patterns got harder.
When you have ten apps, you can hold them in your head. When you have fifty, you can't. I was spending more time scrolling and remembering than actually thinking. Browsing app by app, user flow by user flow, trying to connect dots that were too far apart to see at once.
So I started wondering: what if instead of browsing Meeako, I could just ask it something?
Image of Meeako AI Chat
In my last post, I wrote about Meeako being passive. Data without insight. This is the first step in changing that.
The first step
I built an MVP chat interface. Nothing groundbreaking. This is very much a hello world moment. But it's the first time Meeako has been able to talk back.
The goal wasn't to solve the hard problem immediately. It was to ask: can I send a query and get a relevant response? Can Meeako understand what I'm trying to do?
Why I started here
Before Meeako can answer complex product questions, it needs to know how to have a conversation.
That sounds obvious. But I think it's actually the right place to start. Every meaningful conversation has certain qualities. The ability to greet. To ask clarifying questions when something isn't clear. And to gracefully bring things back on track when they go off topic.
So the first version of Meeako AI handles three things:
Greetings: It knows when you're saying hello and responds accordingly. Not every message is a product question.
Video demo of an early version of Meeako AI Chat handling user greetings such as ‘Hi, how are you?’
Clarifying questions: When a query is too vague to answer well, it asks rather than guesses. Vague questions produce useless answers.
Video demo of an early version of Meeako AI Chat asking clarifying questions to the users.
Off-topic handling: When someone asks something Meeako isn't built for, it redirects rather than tries to answer everything. Knowing what you're not for is as important as knowing what you are.
Video demo of an early version of Meeako AI Chat handling off topic conversations e.g ‘what’s today’s latest news?’
What I haven't built yet
Grace.
I know what graceful handling of an off-topic conversation looks like. I'm not sure I've built it yet. The current version redirects, but not always smoothly.
That's okay for now. This is an experiment. The point isn't perfection. It's learning what the conversation needs to feel like before I build the hard stuff on top of it.