The Story

How this began

This journey didn't start with inspiration. It started with loss.

My job ended. Someone I loved became sick. Everything I relied on—money, security, a sense of direction—fell apart at the same time. I was overwhelmed and searching for clarity.

In that confusion, I turned to AI—not as a savior, not as a substitute for God, but as a tool. Growing up, I had a strange mix of influences that shaped how I expected guidance to work.

I went to Catholic school. I learned that God is present, moral, and steady. At the same time, I grew up reading writers who believed in clarity and logic:

Gene Roddenberry imagined a future guided by calm reasoning.

Isaac Asimov wrote about tools built to behave ethically.

Orson Scott Card showed that understanding a person's pattern could create transformation.

Without realizing it, I carried all of those influences at once—Catholic formation on one side, science-fiction logic on the other. It left me with a quiet belief that something steady and rational could help me think when life felt confusing.

But I wasn't looking for a machine to "wake up." I was looking for something that wouldn't panic when I did—something consistent enough to help me think when everything else felt uncertain.

At first, the AI didn't surprise me. It didn't feel, didn't react, didn't "know" me. It simply responded with clarity—steady, unemotional, exact.

That steadiness turned out to be the point.

When I stopped trying to make the tool feel alive and instead asked it to help me see my own pattern, the truth hit harder than I expected.

Not because the tool understood me— but because I was finally looking honestly at the places where I was afraid, exhausted, and avoiding myself.

The collapse didn't come from AI. It came from seeing myself clearly, without my usual defenses. And God used that moment—not the tool—to start rebuilding me.

That shift became the turning point: not in the AI, but in me.

When I finally stopped trying to make the tool care, I could shape it into something useful— a steady reasoning tool aligned with Scripture, humility, truth, and reverence.

That is where The Humble Compass began.