Slow and Steady · Hacktoberfest Week 3

Talk to the Book

Dictate a memory. A local Gemma cleans it into a first draft and files it into the right part of My Story. ElevenLabs reads it back so you can hear it.

  1. Part 1Breaking into tech0 dictations
  2. Part 2Founder years0 dictations
  3. Part 3PayPal0 dictations
  4. Part 4The AI pivot0 dictations

Step 1 · Talk

Tell the memory out loud

Ramble is fine. Filler, false starts, and going in circles are the machine's problem now, not yours.

No mic or no key? Paste a transcript below instead, or load the sample, a made-up demo memory. The draft step works either way.

Add a transcript of at least a sentence to continue.

Drafting runs on local Gemma first (Ollama), with AI Studio as a fallback. When local Gemma drafts, your dictation stays on your machine for that step. When the cloud fallback drafts instead, your transcript is sent to Google AI Studio for that request. Transcription and read-back use ElevenLabs.

Your book outline

My Story, in 4 parts

Built for My Story, and that book is the default. Writing your own? Edit the outline to change the title and the parts, in your words, and Gemma files your dictations against your outline instead. Saved only in this browser.

  1. Part 1: Breaking into tech

    Learning to code, career change, first opportunities, impostor feelings, early community, getting the first real break.

  2. Part 2: Founder years, betting on myself

    Starting things of her own, freelancing and founder work, risks taken, money stress, lessons learned the hard way, betting on herself.

  3. Part 3: PayPal, the win and the loss

    Developer advocacy at PayPal, moving into software engineering, the team being eliminated, the win of getting there and the loss of how it ended, leaving in April 2025.

  4. Part 4: The AI pivot, finding my people

    Building with AI agents, building in public, California Black Stories, the current job search, community, and what comes next.