This is not something I ever expected to talk about publicly.
While I was at OpenAI , I spent a long time working independently on a personal project I called Dots.
The idea was simple: an AI agent shouldn’t disappear when you close the chat.
I wanted to give an agent a persistent identity of its own , something you could introduce into a conversation or workflow and then walk away from.
It could receive new messages, understand what the conversation was waiting on, continue the task as things changed, and bring you back in only when it actually needed you.
Email was where I started. The agent had its own address. You could CC it into a thread like another person and leave. Dots would stay there, follow the conversation, wait for replies and keep the work moving.
But the larger idea was never really email.
It was persistence.
An agent that could remain present across conversations and tools instead of requiring you to continuously come back and prompt it.
I had been working on Dots for a long time, and because I was employed at OpenAI, I was extremely careful about ownership.
I disclosed the project to OpenAI . I explained what Dots was, what I was building and that it was my personal work. It was specifically documented as such under a written IP agreement.
After I left, nobody contacted me about Dots.
Nobody asked to license it. Nobody asked whether I was still developing it. Nobody told me OpenAI was working on something with the same name.
Then I watched today’s presentation.
Dots.
Same name.
And as the presentation continued .... persistent agents, work continuing while you’re away, maintaining context as things change, communication across tools . I genuinely didn’t know what to think.
To be clear, I don’t know how OpenAI’s Dots was developed. I’m not going to make accusations about things I can’t prove, and there may be an explanation I haven’t heard.
But OpenAI knew about my project. They knew what it was called. They knew what I was trying to build.
So seeing Dots appear on that screen was surreal.
I know what I built.
I know when I built it.
I know what I called it.
And I know what our agreement said.
I would have appreciated a phone call.
