How I work with AI

Co-Synthesist is named for what happens here: synthesis between people, ideas and tools, including AI. I don’t hide that, and I don’t apologise for it.

What is mine

The ideas and work on this site begin with me: the ventures and inventions, the apps, and the housing frameworks. They come from decades of lived experience, study, art practice, and work in tribunals, classrooms and communities.

What we do together

I use Claude, an AI model made by Anthropic, as a thinking partner and working collaborator. We argue ideas through, draft and redraft, check sources, and build the tools and pages you see here. Where that collaboration shapes a piece substantially, the piece says so.

What gets checked

AI can be wrong, and confidently. Figures and citations are checked against published sources before anything goes public. When a check finds a mistake, the work is corrected and the change is noted.

How credit works

My name is on my work. AI is acknowledged where it contributed (“developed in conversation with Claude”), but it is not listed as an author. Responsibility for what is published is mine.

Why say this at all

Much of the resistance to AI in writing and art comes from work that hides how it was made. I would rather show it, so you can judge the work on its merits.

Maggie Hall
Writing as Ashlar Hall. Founder, Co-Synthesist. October 2026.

Two halves of one face: on the left a watercolour portrait of me, on the right the same face drawn as rows of wavering lines generated in code.
On the left, a watercolour portrait of me, painted by another artist while I sat for an art class. On the right, the same face as Claude draws it: rows of lines generated in code, each wavering more where the painting is darker. Claude has no face. This is how it draws.