What it is
Phloem is a writing environment built on one premise: the record of how a piece of writing came to be is worth keeping, and it belongs to the writer. Every act on the page — typed, pasted, accepted from the machine, informed by a suggestion but rewritten in your own hand — lands as an event in a sealed, append-only log. The log is the document.
Three things it does differently
Help that waits to be claimed
AI assistance lives inside the document, in the margin, as offers. Nothing enters the page except by the writer's own gesture — and when it does, it is credited as what it is.
The middle band, made visible
Between copying and pure invention sits the way people actually learn: read it, understand it, write it back in your own words. Because Phloem knows what it showed you, it can attest that path with evidence — no other tool can.
A record you own
The authorship report is the writer's, exported and shared by consent. It is a spectrum, not a verdict. Witness — not police.
If you teach
Phloem doesn't detect AI, and it doesn't score anyone. It describes: which sentences were typed, which were pasted in, which came from an AI suggestion taken whole — and which came from a suggestion the writer read, thought about, and rewrote in their own words. That last one is what we've always asked students to do with a source, and it is precisely the thing no detector can see. The judgement stays where it belongs — with the reader.
The record travels as an ordinary file, attached to the assignment a student already submits — nothing for the school to install, nothing to sign up to. If fifteen minutes with it would be useful, write below; this reaches the person who built it.
Try it
Phloem runs in the browser, and as a desktop app on macOS. Both are in closed pilot: the browser version opens with a personal invitation link — nothing installed — and macOS test builds are issued personally. Either way, write and ask.
Windows and Linux: Phloem is built on a toolkit that travels well to both, and we'll happily port it if people want it. If you'd like to test on either when testing opens up, use the form below and tick the platform — you'll go on the list.
Contact
Phloem is made in New Zealand by Peter Matthews. Interested in testing, or in the thinking behind it? Write — this reaches him directly.