Need a memory jog

Posted by satis
Jan 27, 2026 at 12:27 AM

That’s an interesting, and odd, reverse course. Less than two years ago, Plottr publicly announced a carefully considered approach to LLM integration, positioning it explicitly as a brainstorming aid offering character names, place ideas, scene prompts, etc. They emphasized that Plottr wouldn’t have its own LLM, wasn’t training models on user data, and would simply rely on external providers via API: “using the API so LLM models don’t train themselves with your story data.”

https://plottr.com/plottrs-ai-future/

They even published multiple blog posts framing this as a creator-friendly, opt-in approach, including “AI for Writing (and the Ways We Use It)” and “Off By Default: AI in Plottr Gives You Control.”

https://plottr.com/ai-for-writing-uses/

https://plottr.com/ai-in-plottr-workflow/

Meanwhile, as we all know the broader software ecosystem has moved rapidly in the direction of LLM integration. In December 2024 a survey of Mac developers showed that 40% cited AI as the single biggest impact on their apps (up from 31% in 2023), and roughly 60% were either actively working on AI features or had already shipped them, up from under half the year before. This isn’t limited to writing tools; it’s a platform-wide shift.

Given that context, it’s striking for a niche app to swim so decisively against the tide, especially after previously announcing planned features that now appear never to have materialized.

And very conveniently, those missing features are now reframed as a principled stand rather than an execution gap.

Cameron’s argument (he said on Instagram, “We don’t want to empower some machine to write the book for you”) is equally hard to reconcile with Plottr’s own earlier framing. It’s not just inconsistent with prior statements; it’s arguably paternalistic.

Treating any LLM assistance as equivalent to “writing the book for you” dismisses how many creators actually use these tools: for ideation, friction reduction, and exploratory thinking, not authorship replacement.

Honestly, this timeline raises questions. API key support was announced in early 2024, yet we’re now told integration won’t happen at all. Was this truly a philosophical evolution, or were there technical or resourcing challenges that never got resolved? If Plottr couldn’t implement promised features, was this change of heart technical or strategic?

Whatever the reason, something about this reversal doesn’t smell right.