I built ProofYouWereFirst because AI made me realize something uncomfortable: we've optimized for output, but erased the trail of origin.
The Moment It Clicked
I was using ChatGPT to draft an essay. Within seconds, I had polished paragraphs that would've taken me hours. It felt like magic—until I realized I couldn't prove I wrote it.
Not because it was generated, but because there was no timeline. No drafts. No iterations. Just a final product that appeared instantly.
If I couldn't prove my own creative process, how could anyone else?
The Problem With Frictionless Creation
AI tools remove the messy middle—the drafts, the revisions, the hours of iteration. But that mess is what made work yours. Without it, everything looks the same.
This isn't a problem with AI. It's a problem with how we think about authorship.
Continuity as the Solution
I realized the answer wasn't to slow down or avoid AI. It was to make the creative timeline visible.
Timestamping doesn't prove you didn't use AI—it proves you showed up. It anchors your work to a moment in time, creating a trail of evidence that says: "I was here. I made this. This is the sequence."
That's why I built ProofYouWereFirst. Not to fight AI, but to restore the one thing it can't fake: time.