Why we built XIYUE

There is a version of creative work that nobody shows you.

It isn’t the writing, or the shooting, or the recording. It’s the hour after: exporting the same video in four aspect ratios, rewriting the same caption for three platforms, re-cutting a clip because the first ten seconds were slow, hunting through a folder for the version you actually liked.

That hour is the tax on making things. It scales with output, it never gets more interesting, and it is almost never the reason anyone started.

What we’re building

XIYUE is a set of AI tools for the people who pay that tax. Not a platform, not a workspace, not a suite with a learning curve. Tools that do one job and get out of the way.

The test we apply to every feature is simple: does it remove work, or does it add a place to put work? If it’s the second one, it doesn’t ship.

What we’re not building

We’re not building something that writes for you, in the sense of taking the writing away. The judgement — what to say, what to cut, what’s worth publishing — stays with you. That’s the part that can’t be automated without making the output worthless.

What we automate is the part you’d happily never do again.

Where we are

Early. The tools are being built in the open, the pricing is deliberately small, and the free tier exists so you can find out whether any of this is useful before spending anything.

If something here sounds like a problem you have, we’d like to hear about it — especially the parts we’ve got wrong.