I’m JA Westenberg.

I founded SELF.

I write about AI + culture, tech & philosophy.

My goal: to think in public about artificial intelligence and what it means to be a human in the machine age.

What you’ll find:

• Clarity and mental models

• Psychology, philosophy and history

• Cultural critiques

• Random thoughts + ideas

Email:

• joan@joanwestenberg.com

• joan@thisisstudioself.com

How I AI (Disclosure)

Updated: 20 August 2026

I use Cursor for most coding tasks, and I’ve started experimenting with Grok Bot as the harness for my business. I use Codex and Grok to manage my knowledge base and wiki in Obsidian. I’ve started trialing VidIQ for YouTube as of this month. Cursor is also my go-to tool for formatting ebooks and maintaining versioning for knowledge work using Github and the new Cursor Origins codebase beta. I use Omarchy as my operating system, and increasingly an OS-level harness.

How I Write with AI

I write some posts with zero AI-assistance, and some with Spiral by Every and Codex. Either way, I start by developing the outlines and arguments by hand, deciding what I want to say and how the ideas should fit together. If I’m using AI, I’ll start with Spiral to turn those outlines and arguments into prose; an agent can write a chunk of the initial paragraphs, depending on the piece and the length of my initial input. I edit every paragraph by hand, revising the language, emphasis, and meaning. I then run the edited draft through Codex to identify structural weaknesses, gaps in the argument, and opportunities to improve the piece. I decide which suggestions to accept and make the final revisions myself. The ideas and overall direction are mine, while AI plays a substantial role in drafting the prose and helping me strengthen its structure and arguments.