Why I Built Clear

I've been working in tech for around 15 years, with the last five fully remote. As our team grew and we switched to English as the default language, my Slack messages got longer and harder to process, even for me.

I was writing the way I speak in person. Long paragraphs, multiple ideas at once, lots of filler. In reality, a few sentences were usually enough. More than once, it felt easier to jump on a call just to explain what I had already written.

When custom GPTs launched, I built one to shorten my messages. It worked surprisingly well, but I was not getting better myself. I was leaning on it, and sometimes it missed nuance or made me sound robotic.

So I started to tweak it. I added simple communication principles like BLUF. I made it adapt to my style: lowercase, no emojis, keep abbreviations. What helped most, though, was adding coaching tips. Instead of just rewriting the message, it explains what I could do better next time.

That is when it stopped being just a tool and started actually helping me grow.

I turned it into a Slack bot because it seemes like something other remote teams might find useful. It is simple technically, but it solves a real, everyday problem, especially for non-native English speakers.

I would love to hear what you think, and I am happy to answer any questions about how it works or why I made certain decisions.