We caught up with Dr. George Perdrizet, the creator of Bartleby, an open-source AI writing assistant that streamlines document creation. Dr. Perdrizet shared his experience participating in a Build program to develop Bartleby.

What motivated you to participate in Backdrop Build v3?

I wanted to have some sense of external accountability and a tangible goal to motivate myself towards. The community and the sense of excitement from working fast under the pressure of a deadline were the most valuable to me. It gave me that sense of excitement you get from working at your limit on something you are passionate about. Made me feel like a grad student again.

What did you accomplish during the four-week program?

During the program, I learned and utilized new technologies like discord.py, google-api-core, and Docker for the first time. I also achieved my goal of creating a universal interface for Bartleby, my open-source conversational writing assistant. Users can now interact with the AI assistant using any Discord client application on various devices and operating systems, making it highly accessible.

How has participating in Build v3 impacted your project and future plans?

The progress made during Build V3 has only fueled my enthusiasm for the project. I'm eager to participate in the next iteration, Build V4, to implement exciting new features such as image manipulation, external search capabilities, additional language models, and retrieval augmented generation for more comprehensive answers. With a vector database of English Wikipedia at my fingertips, the possibilities for enhancing Bartleby are endless.

What would you say to someone considering joining Backdrop Build?

If you're looking for a supportive community and the motivation to bring your passion project to fruition, I highly recommend joining Backdrop Build. It's an experience that will push you to grow as a developer and achieve more than you thought possible in a short span of time. I have not accomplished so much on a passion project in 4 weeks, maybe ever.

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Interested in applying for an upcoming Build program? Apply here.