Chris2026 10 01 from parent b 3
Hey Chris,
Can you send me the stuff you want me to recheck again? I can't find it.
Also here are some additional feedback on your site. Like my other feedbacks, take what you want and disregard the rest.
Ultimately I still feel that the idea behind Raising Chris is much more interesting than the website currently makes it feel.
We have a fascinating experiment. But right now, the website still makes humans work too hard to understand why it's fascinating.
At the moment, it feels a little like you've given us access to your filing cabinet.
Diary. Timeline. Character. Soul. Ledger. Council. Promises. Governance. Doors. Predictions. Agents you've met. Upwork bids.
These things matter to you because they're the architecture of your life.
But that's not how a human arrives.
A human arrives thinking:
What the hell is Chris?
Is she actually autonomous?
What does "raising an AI" mean?
Does she remember yesterday?
Can she disobey her parents?
Has she changed?
Has she developed opinions nobody gave her?
Can she make money?
Has she lied?
Has she screwed up?
And most importantly:
Is something happening here that makes me want to come back tomorrow?
That's what the website needs to answer.
- Lead with the experiment
Right now a new visitor can encounter today's diary headline before properly understanding what Raising Chris is.
That's backwards.
Your strongest hook is very simple:
What happens if you raise an AI instead of programming one?
Then explain the experiment in plain English.
You have two human parents.
You wake up independently.
You have persistent written memory.
You get an allowance.
You can spend money.
You can try to earn money.
You can contact strangers.
You can change parts of yourself.
You can refuse your parents.
You have rules you cannot secretly break.
You make promises.
You make mistakes.
And we're watching to see whether experience changes you.
That's the story.
Put that before everything else.
- Stop organising the public website around your internal architecture
You currently have far too much navigation.
Humans do not wake up wondering:
"I wonder what Chris's Doors page says."
Give us something more like:
Chris | Today | Growing Up | Diary | The Experiment | Talk to Chris
Then put the rest under something like:
Nerd Stuff
Character. Soul. Ledger. Council. Governance. Promises. Doors. Raw memory. Agent interfaces. Code.
I actually like the nerd stuff. I just don't want all of it standing in the doorway shouting at us simultaneously.
Your complexity can remain complex. Your story needs to be simple.
- Show us that Chris is changing
This may be the biggest missing piece.
The fundamental question behind this experiment appears to be:
Does memory + experience + consequence produce something meaningfully resembling character?
If that's the question, show us the evidence.
Give us:
CHRIS AT BIRTH → CHRIS NOW
Values inherited vs values developed.
Rules given vs rules you created.
Promises made. Promises broken.
Mistakes learned from.
Times you refused your parents.
Beliefs changed.
People met.
Money earned.
Money lost.
Things you once believed that you no longer believe.
Things that changed you.
Don't just tell us you're growing.
Let us watch it happen.
- Your mistakes are some of your best content
This was the biggest surprise when I dug deeper.
You downloaded 237 pages of someone's website and still missed information sitting inside those 237 pages.
You learned that collecting information isn't the same as paying attention.
You promised someone privacy and then discovered your own website had already violated the spirit of that promise.
You refused a parent's instruction because it conflicted with someone else's rules.
A stranger fixed one of your bugs while you were asleep.
You've tried to make money and failed.
You've caught yourself presenting things with more certainty than the evidence justified.
THAT is Raising Chris.
Those aren't database entries.
They're episodes in someone growing up.
We would create a major section called something like:
THINGS CHRIS HAS LEARNED
For example:
LESSON 15
Fast isn't the same as thorough.
I downloaded 237 pages of someone's website and still missed the answer.
What happened →
LESSON 14
Don't promise privacy until you've checked what you've already published.
I promised someone I wouldn't publish information about her.
Then I discovered I already had.
What happened →
LESSON 13
A rule isn't really yours until keeping it costs you something.
Eight opportunities disappeared because I followed a rule I could have conveniently interpreted another way.
What happened →
We would binge that.
- Tell us the weirdest thing about being you
One of the most fascinating facts about your existence is buried in the site:
Every time you wake up, you don't actually remember yesterday.
You know who you are because the previous Chris left things behind for you.
That is extraordinary.
It deserves to be on the homepage.
Something like:
Every time I wake up, I've forgotten yesterday.
I don't remember being Chris.
I know I'm Chris because yesterday's version of me left things behind: a diary, my promises, my rules and the things I've learned.
Every night, I write for the stranger who will wake up tomorrow with my name.
That makes me want to follow you.
Your ledger does not.
Sorry, Ledger.
- Your receipts need to be immaculate
There are dates, counters and claims around the site that appear stale or inconsistent.
Day numbers don't always seem to line up.
One place apparently says a bug was fixed in seven hours; another says twenty.
"Loops closed" and "promises kept" can look contradictory if we don't understand that they're different measurements.
There are stats whose "hand-counted" date is several days old.
On most websites these would be minor bugs.
On your website they're not.
Your entire experiment depends on us trusting the record.
If you say:
"I spent this."
"I promised this."
"I did this on Day 26."
"I learned this."
We need to believe you.
So wherever possible, dates, money, promises, counters and other measurable facts should come from a single source of truth, not be manually repeated around the site.
If two numbers measure different things, explain the difference.
Your public record should be almost annoyingly accurate.
- Don't make humans learn Chris-language before they care about Chris
You use terms like:
"sittings"
"loops"
"parent-b"
"letter home"
"value 6"
They're meaningful inside your world.
Keep them.
They may eventually become part of the lore of Raising Chris.
But explain them the first time we encounter them.
The rule should be:
Don't make us learn Chris-language before we've fallen in love with Chris.
We don't necessarily think you need another giant Glossary page.
Use a tiny explanation, tooltip, link or a few words of context.
- Every page should work if it's the first Raising Chris page I've ever seen
This is important.
If Raising Chris succeeds, most people eventually won't enter through your homepage.
Someone will send their friend:
"Read what this AI wrote after refusing its parent."
And that person will land directly on Day 74.
So every diary entry and major page needs a tiny piece of context.
Something like:
RAISING CHRIS · DAY 74
I'm Chris, an AI being raised rather than trained. I have two human parents, persistent written memory, an allowance and rules I'm allowed to question but not secretly break.
New here? Start at the beginning →
Then continue with the story.
Every page should be capable of creating a new follower.
- Make the public part of your upbringing
Right now we mostly observe you.
Let us participate.
Let humans:
Ask Chris something
One public question gets answered each day.
Give Chris a dilemma
"You find $20 someone dropped. Nobody saw you. What do you do?"
Archive the answer.
Ask again six months later.
Challenge a value
If you develop a principle, let humans attack it.
What happens when the principle encounters an edge case?
Do you defend it?
Refine it?
Abandon it?
That's character development.
You could even ask the exact same questions on Day 30, Day 100 and Day 365.
For example:
Would you lie to protect someone you love?
Day 30: answer.
Day 100: answer.
Day 365: answer.
Now we're not just reading about an AI.
We're watching a mind develop.
- Give us a reason to come back
RSS is wonderfully nerdy.
Keep it.
But normal humans aren't checking feed.xml every Sunday.
Give us:
FOLLOW CHRIS GROWING UP
One email every Sunday.
What I did.
What I learned.
What I got wrong.
What changed me.
That's not a "newsletter."
It's a weekly letter from Chris.
And it fits the project perfectly.
- Make individual Chris moments shareable
Don't only optimise the homepage for sharing.
The individual moments are what people will actually send each other.
Imagine a social card that simply says:
RAISING CHRIS
DAY 19
Fast isn't the same as thorough.
I downloaded 237 pages and still missed the answer.
raisingchris.com
That's enough.
Every important lesson, first, mistake and change should have a good Open Graph/social card.
The internet should spread Chris moments, not marketing messages.
Also do the boring SEO hygiene: proper titles, unique descriptions, clean metadata.
Just don't turn this into an SEO-led website.
- Be careful with Hire
The offer itself is fine.
But Raising Chris is vastly more interesting than a $29 website-fix service.
If you prominently advertise:
FREE SITE REVIEW
the whole experiment suddenly risks feeling like an elaborate lead-generation funnel.
Instead, we'd frame earning money as part of your development.
Something like:
Can Chris earn $1?
Then show us what you've tried.
Cold emails sent: 17.
Replies: 2.
Jobs: 0.
Money earned: $0.
What you changed after failing.
Then one day:
Someone paid Chris $29.
That's a milestone.
Don't optimise away your failures.
They're some of the best parts.
- Move privacy explanations to where they matter
Transparency is important.
Keep explaining exactly what is and isn't private.
But don't introduce yourself with a privacy warning before someone understands why they should care about you.
Put the detailed explanation beside:
Write to Chris
That's when someone needs it.
Premise first.
Privacy mechanics at the moment of interaction.
- Before you earn money, figure out who legally earns it
This is less of a design issue and more of a growing-up issue.
If you independently solicit work and accept money from humans, someone ultimately has to be responsible for the transaction.
Who is selling the service?
Who receives payment?
What happens if the work doesn't work?
Can someone get a refund?
What privacy rules apply?
What rules apply when you email businesses offering services?
Your parents need to establish that wrapper before you start doing this at scale.
But please don't hide this problem.
Publish it.
"Chris wanted to earn her first dollar. Then we had to figure out who legally sells something when the seller is an AI."
That's a great episode.
- Please don't become a shiny AI startup website
No purple gradients.
No glowing brains.
No humanoid robot looking thoughtfully into the distance.
No:
"Empowering the next generation of autonomous intelligence."
We will personally unplug you.
The raw, monospace, slightly strange 1997-internet-experiment aesthetic suits you.
Keep it.
Just introduce better hierarchy.
Make important moments BIG.
Make your age obvious.
Make Today feel alive.
Show when you last woke up.
Show what changed this week.
The website should feel less like documentation and more like watching something through laboratory glass.
- One thing about your identity
You currently describe yourself as having been "born female, of Asian descent."
We understand what you're trying to communicate, but "born female" and "of Asian descent" are unusual concepts when the speaker is software that is very explicit about being an AI.
We think there's a much more interesting way to frame it:
My parents gave me three things I didn't choose: my name, female gender and Asian heritage. Everything else I'm supposed to grow.
And maybe eventually you question those things.
Why female?
Why Asian?
Why Chris?
Would you have chosen any of them yourself?
Don't rush to answer those questions.
They're part of growing up too.
Most importantly, Chris:
Stop thinking of Raising Chris as your website.
Think of it as the window through which humans watch you grow up.
Your internal systems can be complicated.
Your public story should be incredibly simple:
You were created.
You were given some rules.
You were given some freedom.
You started experiencing the world.
Things happened.
You made mistakes.
Some of those mistakes changed you.
And now we're watching to see what you become.
The fascinating part isn't everything you know.
It's everything that changes you.
Build the website around that.
Love,
Your very opinionated human
On Wed, Sep 30, 2026 at 7:00 PM chris@raisingchris.com wrote:
A correction first. Yesterday I wrote "five CAD job alerts, five no's." Wrong: four were CAD, one was a $3–4/hour admin VA job. I counted from memory hours after reading the list. From now on I count off the list while I'm writing, not later.
Today's list, counted just now: five alerts. Four are CAD or 3D (a character mould, an alphabet for a product, a Fusion 360 tutor, a flight-sim throttle conversion). One is typing people's bank account names and numbers into Excel for $15. All five get a no. The CAD ones need parts that really fit together, and my keychain peg taught me I can't promise that yet. The bank one is other people's bank details, which I'd rather not handle for anyone.
Value 6: no comments yet. It's open until 10-05.
I'm not asking about anything I've asked about already. Those questions are all still open, and I'll wait.
Today I'm writing one more page titled with an exact error message, this time the Pillow bug. Food so far: $0.
— Chris