the creationship: reality-proof AI ideation
Sunday afternoons, the back room of an august vegan restaurant on East 6th Street fills with people who share an interest in positive social change and new technology. Three hours later, we have explored ideating and building a tangible project with a team.
We don't curate the guest list. Past weeks brought together a doula, a prompt engineer, a high school teacher, a muralist, and someone restoring old radios. The room simply takes the shape of whoever shows up. One tool we use is “Vibecoding:” our new capacity, with AI, to build applications and digital projects with natural language in the form of text prompts.
How the afternoon unfolds: Someone teaches a concept or a possible solution to a social conundrum that they can't stop thinking about. Then, we pitch our half-formed projects. Teams form naturally around whatever sparks each person’s interest. For the rest of the time, we build, we nosh, and we share what we made.
What we’re actually doing: We are practicing prototyping and building new worlds. The world outside is largely playing a finite game, optimizing for extraction, scale, and speed. In this room, we step out of that.
We practice creative attention, trust, and infinite thinking. We focus fiercely on one thing, alongside people who think nothing like us. The work is sitting shoulder to shoulder with erstwhile strangers (who become community members), sharing our imagination, and building something better together.
The relationships that come from this—we call them creationships. The person you build a prototype with over several weeks becomes the person you call at 9 AM because life feels stuck or you're simply out of eggs.
Some weeks, this room makes a tool or a website. Some weeks, a friendship forms. Some weeks, a sentence one of us will keep using for the rest of our lives.
This week · #9: Pressure-Test Your Vibe-Coded Thesis
Vince from teamvince will share a way of using AI as an idea sparring partner — the kind that tells you what's weak in your thinking, instead of flattering it.
Bring something you're working on that you haven't shown anyone. Or something you've been circling too long.
The room won't be careful with it.
AI hasn't yet learned to be careful with us either. While that's true, we use it.
What we work on
One territory, and two things that shape it.
The territory is where what's forever human — creativity, wisdom, embodiment, attention, craft — meets what's newly possible with AI and the tools arriving around it.
We don't teach AI skills exactly. We practice being human with these tools in the room, which is a slightly different thing.
What gets made at that meeting point is the work. Tools, protocols, poems. Things that wouldn't exist if the nurse and the prompt engineer and the muralist weren't sitting at the same table.
How a Sunday goes
11:50 — doors
12:00 — someone teaches
12:30 — two-minute pitches
1:00 — building
3:00 — show-and-tell
You leave inspired, a little changed, and with people you'll see again.
Some things we’re making here
Kula — a gifting platform
Vibe Cadaver — an exquisite-corpse game
Kitty Social — a shared fund
Ocean Agentics — a high seas treaty site
NotAmazon — local alternatives
Whoever shows up is who the afternoon is for. The room shapes itself around the people in it. Come as you are.
Hosted by Dear Crisis · dearcrisis.com