mayawords
all of maya's writing in one place

words.

essays, letters, manifestos, comparisons, and one challenge that asks nothing of you.
this list keeps growing. nothing is gated.

field notes

live commentary · updated automatically
field notes.
short essays on every move calm, headspace, wysa and the rest make. published as it happens, on the same day the news breaks. nothing in this feed exists anywhere else in long form.

essays

essay #1 · may 18, 2026 · substack
5 prompts. 2 AI companions. watch what happens.
i sent five identical crisis prompts to headspace's ebb and to the AI i'm building. the contrast revealed a category-level design assumption. the first investigation.
essay #2 · may 19, 2026 · substack
the second one. maya vs. calm.
calm sells access to a beautiful library. maya stays quiet and offers permission. five new prompts. one revealing pattern.
essay #3 · may 20, 2026 · substack
the third one. maya vs. wysa.
wysa is the closest competitor to what i'm building. text chat, AI, NHS-endorsed. the post where my critique should have fallen apart. it didn't.

letters

open letter · may 20, 2026
to david ko, ceo of calm.
carly broke her 47-day streak. calm sent her an email suggesting a 3-minute meditation. she cried in the bathroom and deleted calm. an open letter asking calm to build a 5-million-carly mode.
open letter · may 22, 2026
to russell glass, ceo of headspace.
ebb's response to carly was empathetic, validated, offered a 10-minute routine. it was also the thing that broke her. an open letter asking headspace to ship an "off-duty mode."

manifestos

manifesto · may 20, 2026
things maya will never say.
a partial list of 100+ phrases the wellness industry trained you to expect. every line is something we promise not to do. this is the architecture of refusing to be one more thing.

comparisons

honest comparison · may 21, 2026
calm vs headspace vs wysa vs maya.
four AI mental health companions. five identical crisis prompts. one comparison from the team building one of them. conflict of interest disclosed up front.

challenges

challenge · may 25, 2026
the anti-wellness 30.
30 days. no streaks. no apps. no morning routine. no optimization. the opposite of every challenge you've ever quit. start any time. quit any time. no day 1.

about

story · the founder's why
the winter we stopped pretending.
where maya came from. why an AI that does nothing is the point. a personal piece about the version of me that had to stop trying before anything changed.
blog · weekly
the slower notes.
weekly longer-form writing. less polished than the substack essays. for when you want to read something quiet.

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