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 — and only when you ask for it. 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.
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, 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.