Lessons from an AI builder: why I created a tool that doesn't write for you
I spent two years fighting AI.
Not the technology. The outputs. The drafts. The endless rewriting.
I wrote with ChatGPT. I wrote with Claude. I wrote with every tool that promised to make me faster.
And every time, I spent hours making the output sound like me.
The AI did the easy part. I did the hard part. Every single time.
Something was broken.
Where it started
Like everyone, I jumped on the AI writing bandwagon in 2024. The promise was irresistible. Give it a brief, get a draft, polish it up, publish. Simple.
It wasn't simple.
I set up projects. I gave context. I generated drafts. And then I spent hours rewriting them.
Removing em-dashes. The LLMs use them like they're getting paid per dash.
Cutting nonsensical sentences. They looked correct. They said nothing.
Humanizing generic prose. It sounded like a committee of robots.
Fact-checking hallucinations. I couldn't trust anything.
Every article. Every time.
The breaking point
I was writing a series of opinion pieces. Personal reflections. Articles where my voice was the whole point.
I used Claude. I got a draft. I spent four hours rewriting it. Four hours to make it sound like me.
That's when I realized. The tool wasn't helping. It was adding work.
I was doing the hardest part—making it sound human—after the AI had done the easy part. The productivity gains were illusory. The AI generated faster. I finished slower.
Something had to change.
The insight
I realized I was using the wrong tool for the wrong job.
Full-draft AI works for some things. Information articles. News roundups. Content where the voice doesn't matter. For that, ChatGPT and Claude are fine.
But for articles where my voice matters, where my perspective is the whole point, the full-draft approach is broken.
I didn't need a tool that wrote for me. I needed a tool that wrote with me.
Nothing existed. So I built it.
What I built
Levee is the tool I needed.
It doesn't generate full drafts. It extracts my voice from a sample. Then it suggests words, sentences, or paragraphs as I pause.
In my voice.
No generic prose to rewrite. No hallucinations to fact-check. No hours of humanizing.
I write the first sentence. I pause. Gray text appears. It's the next sentence. It sounds like me. I press Tab to accept. Or I keep typing.
I'm in control. I'm the author. The AI is an assistant.
The lessons
I learned a lot building this.
Speed without voice is worthless. What's the point of generating 10,000 words if you have to rewrite 9,000 of them? Speed is table stakes. Voice is the differentiator.
Flow matters more than output. The disruption of full-draft AI costs more than it saves. Breaking flow is expensive. Keeping flow is valuable.
The writer is the asset. The best tools make writers better. They don't replace them. They preserve voice. They respect the craft.
Control is everything. Writers don't want to be told what to say. They want help saying what they already think. The tool that offers control wins.
Why I built Levee
I built Levee for the articles that matter most. The ones where my voice is the whole point. The opinion pieces. The personal reflections. The content that defines my perspective.
I built it for consultants writing proposals. For founders writing investor updates. For researchers writing papers. For anyone who cares about voice and control.
I built it because the existing tools were built for speed, not craft. For volume, not voice. For the tool, not the writer.
That felt wrong. So I fixed it.
The result
Levee is the writing assistant I always wanted.
It helps me write faster. It keeps me in flow. It preserves my voice. It makes me better.
No generic prose to rewrite. No hallucinations to fact-check. No hours of humanizing.
Just my voice, faster.
That's the point.
Try Levee free at levee.theleverage.tech—no card required. Experience the writing assistant I built for writers like us.