We recently launched a product feature called Write Brief with AI. It helps you edit your text to be clear and concise, directly in the WordPress editor. Making it was a great journey. We crafted it from an internal design side project to a public-facing launch. Here’s how we did it!
The Spark of an Idea
At Automattic, we’re encouraged to keep learning. In fact, it’s in our creed. Writing is also a big part of what we do. Most projects don’t have presentations, instead, we write blog posts about our design iterations. Clear and objective writing is essential.
I wanted to deep dive and learn what makes writing clear, focusing on both copy and microcopy. In my research, I found all these great rules to improve writing, but having the rules is one thing—applying them is another.
If you’ve ever tried editing your own work, you know it’s like trying to spot the typo in a phrase you’ve read a hundred times. Your mind fills in the gaps. The shift from creator to editor is tough.
I started thinking: What if there was a tool that could give real-time feedback based on these writing rules? I envisioned a plugin. It could highlight complex words, suggest simpler alternatives, and check readability with just a click.
It would work just like having an editor with you, but without sending your draft off to someone else. Instead of referencing a list of rules, I could just flip a switch and see suggestions. And, of course, it would be native to my writing environment—WordPress!
Before I even started, I wanted to name it. You know how it goes—step one, buy the domain name, step two, profit. It didn’t go exactly like that, but I made progress.
I chose the Latin word for “brief,” Breve, because it fit so well. It’s a plugin that helps you edit and write briefly so your point gets across to your audience. Now came the hard part: making it work.
Prototyping Breve
I had development experience, but I hadn’t developed anything for WordPress before. I decided to use ChatGPT to help me start a prototype. My first prompts didn’t always get the results I wanted. There were frustrating moments—commands not working, the plugin crashing. But every setback was a learning moment, and bit by bit, I started to understand the plugin environment better.
Finally, after some trial and error, Breve began to take shape.
The Pitch
A great thing about Automattic is that you don’t need to schedule a meeting with leadership to pitch an idea. You can just write a blog post, and everyone will see it. So, I shared my progress with colleagues on Designomattic, our internal design blog. I expected them to be politely interested, but to my surprise, their reaction was much more enthusiastic—they saw the potential and wanted to help take it further.
More than 10% of the company liked the post! Even better, a few contributors jumped on board so we could ship the tool internally. The little side project started gaining momentum! Colleagues pitched in to refine the design and code to make it ready for daily use.
We worked for a few weeks making refinements. Even re-writing large chunks of the code to be more performant. Finally, we announced it was ready to be used internally and asked if anyone wanted it installed on their internal blog.
To our surprise, more than 200 blogs requested access! Teams from finance, engineering, and even our executive update blog wanted to use the tool that started as a “what if.” It was exciting.
Then came one more big moment: Matt asked us when we would ship it to our customers. Now it got real.
Prepping for Launch
We had a tight timeline but decided we could do it in a month. The Jetpack AI team jumped in full-time to get it production-ready. They made sure the plugin was seamless and performant in WordPress. The design team iterated on components, figuring out the best way to polish the internal plugin for customers. It was challenging at times, but it was exciting to see it grow into a more mature design—from basic highlights on your text to a friendly UI that offered helpful suggestions.
As one more experiment, we decided it would be interesting if design led the go-to-market efforts for the release. We didn’t plan anything grand. We just had some ideas about telling our story and why we built the product.
With our time constraints, we put together a blog post for the WordPress.com news blog, a video to show customers how it works, and some basic graphics to communicate the product.
We prepped everything for the night of the launch. We were nervous, but we were proud of the work we did. Since so much of the company was using the tool internally, we felt confident that other writers would find it valuable too. So, we pressed the publish button and finished for the day.
The Next Day
The next morning started with a ping: “You’ve been featured on TechCrunch!” We didn’t expect this, especially for a beta release. It was a great reward for all the hard work we put in. We were amazed to see a major publication had picked it up. Before we knew it, the story was spreading across different outlets from the initial TechCrunch article, all the way to Yahoo Finance! It gave the tool visibility we couldn’t have planned for, and our small storytelling effort proved worth it.
So Here We Are Today
Write Brief with AI has great usage rates, and we’re excited to keep refining it. What started as a small learning effort turned into a great product release that we use internally and are proud to share with our customers.
Sometimes, the best ideas start small and just need room to grow into something that benefits everyone. It’s a testament to Automattic’s unique structure that design can learn, pitch, gather contributors, and lead a product launch—all within two months!
I hope that you get a chance to try out Write Brief with AI on your WordPress blog. You can also try it on WordPress.com. Let us know what you think!
Like what you see? Then maybe you’d love working here. We’re looking for great designers to help us meet bold growth and quality goals. We’re a fully distributed company with a huge footprint, helping people express themselves and earn a living—and our mission is more vital than ever. Join our team of diverse, global perspectives building a better web, and connect your career to the power of Open Source.
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