why i built shortr

i've been working in tech for around 15 years, and the last five of them 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 how i would speak in person. long paragraphs, multiple ideas at the same time, adding lots of filler words. in reality, a few sentences were usually enough. most times i felt it would be easier (for me) to jump on a call just to explain what i already wrote.

when custom GPTs launched, i built one to shorten my messages. it worked surprisingly well, but i wasn't improving on my own; i was just using it as a crutch. also, it would sometimes miss the nuance or make me sound robotic.

so i started to tweak it. i added simple communication principles like BLUF. i made it adapt to my style: lowercase, don't use emojis, keep abbreviations. the part that helped me the most was adding coaching tips. instead of only rewriting the message, it tells me what i could improve next time.

that's when it stopped being just a tool and started being actually useful in growing.

turned it into a slack bot because it seemed like something other remote teams would find useful. pretty simple technically but solves a real daily problem.

would love to hear what you think! happy to answer any questions about how it works or why i made certain decisions.