06.12.2025: The First Files Go Live

Jun 12

On June 12, AutonomousMatt crossed an invisible threshold: it stopped being a prototype and started becoming an interface to memory. What began as a lightweight embedded GPT experiment became, on this day, an intentional archival intelligence. This was the day the archive truly came alive.

Here’s everything that happened in the build and production process on June 12, 2025.

🗂️ Archive Foundations Were Poured

1. The First Full Archive Files Went Live

I finalized and uploaded a set of properly formatted .txt archive files that would serve as the core memory of AutonomousMatt.

Each file included:

The full article or essay text
A metadata block with title, author, date, summary, key insight, and source
A structured filename (e.g., /film_barry-lyndon.txt)

Here are some of the pieces that went live:

The Conscious Cruelty of I, Daniel Blake
The Satisfaction of Barry Lyndon
The Bubonic Plague in Fourteenth Century East Asia

The key insight: GPT answers should not be vague or general—they should pull directly from specific personal works. This was the day that goal became reality.

2. Established Metadata as the Standard Format

Before June 12, archive entries were raw text dumps. On this day, I standardized every entry to begin with:

txt

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title: author: date: summary: key insight: source:

This decision set the tone for everything that followed. It allowed GPT to:

Frame answers more accurately
Anchor ideas in real works
Surface publication details to the user

🧠 Idea planted: In future iterations, metadata will inform ranking, filtering, and voice tone dynamically.

🔍 Search and Query Flow Took Shape

3. Keyword Routing Was Born

I implemented the first version of the keywordMap, the logic that determines which archive file to route a query to.

Example:

js

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"manager": ["/story_how-to-be-a-great-product-manager.txt"], "jira": ["/story_how-to-be-a-great-product-manager.txt"], "plague": ["/history_black-death.txt"], "kubrick": ["/film_barry-lyndon.txt"]

This allowed AutonomousMatt to behave less like ChatGPT and more like a curated archival assistant—intelligently routing queries to the correct file instead of generating from scratch.

It was the first real taste of semantic targeting—a rough version, yes, but effective.

4. Manual Indexing Began

On June 12, I began a spreadsheet-based index of the archive:

File name
Keywords
Date written
Link on site
Thematic cluster

This wasn’t exposed to users, but it helped me begin tracking the thematic patterns and coverage gaps in the archive. I could see, for example, that I had more film essays than product strategy essays, and that migration stories were under-tagged.

🎛️ UX and Behavior Were Solidified

5. Core Ask Logic Was Finalized

In the JavaScript handling the query, I finalized the interaction loop:

User types a prompt
JS lowercases and trims it
It matches against keywordMap
If a match is found, the corresponding .txt is passed to GPT as context
GPT returns a reply, now informed by a real piece of writing

This loop was the beating heart of AutonomousMatt—and on June 12, it was working cleanly for the first time.

6. The Live Site Got Its First Intelligent Responses

For the first time, the embedded AI agent began answering questions with actual citations from my archive.

Example query:

"What was Kubrick trying to say with Barry Lyndon?"

Returned a coherent, articulate response drawn from /film_barry-lyndon.txt, including:

My original argument
The historical context
A summary of the film's emotional detachment

It was the first moment where my archive spoke back, in my voice, but through the AI lens.

🧠 Reflections That Shaped the Future

A Personal Archive Is a Living System

On June 12, it became clear that this project wasn’t just about storing writing. It was about building a conversational interface to personal knowledge. That changed the stakes.

I started thinking about:

Memory decay and reinforcement
How to show evolution of thought over time
Surfacing contradictions or growth between essays

AI as Commentary, Not Author

The role of the AI became sharper: it is not the writer—it’s the interpreter, commentator, and connective tissue across decades of output.

🛣️ What Was Set in Motion

June 12 created momentum that would carry into June 13 and 14:

On June 13, I organized the files and metadata further
On June 14, I expanded the keywordMap semantically and handled edge-case bugs
All of it rested on what was stabilized on June 12: the files, the structure, the retrieval loop