People are using ToneClone wrong (and I love it)
Unexpected use cases, an AI productivity trap I fell into, and 6 months free for early subscribers.
Howdy!
You signed up for this newsletter at some point, which means you're either curious about what I'm building, interested in AI tools, or accidentally clicked the wrong link. Either way, welcome. This is the first one, so let me tell you what to expect.
I'm Jon. I run Crouton Creations, a small AI product lab. The short version: I've been building startups for almost two decades (TechStars '07, a couple exits, stints at Walmart Labs and Automattic), and now I'm testing a thesis that AI has changed the economics of building software so dramatically that a small team can ship things that used to require a whole company. Crouton Creations is me testing that out, one product at a time.
This newsletter is where I'll share what I'm building, what I'm learning, and what I'm finding interesting in the AI space. No fluff, no thought leadership posturing. Just real updates from someone actually shipping stuff.
What's happening with ToneClone
Our first product, ToneClone, launched as an AI writing assistant that learns how you write. The pitch is simple: you give it samples of your writing, it learns your voice, and then it helps you write faster without sounding like ChatGPT.
But here's the honest update - we're finding that people are using it in ways we didn't fully anticipate, and we're leaning into that.
Two use cases we're exploring deeper:
Voice dictation/transcription. One of our most engaged users wanted our “rewrite/cleanup” feature in a place I didn’t initially expect. They use ToneClone as a dictation tool. Talk into it, and it cleans up your rambling into something that sounds like you actually wrote it. Your writing style, punctuation, and emoji choices. Your voice, just tidied up. We're building this out further because honestly, it might be the killer use case. I built our first version and it’s already converted me and I replaced my SuperWhisper usage with ToneClone Ramble. I’d love to hear what you think of it.
Sales email personalization. Cold emails are a numbers game, but the ones that actually work sound like a human wrote them, and ideally a specific human. We're exploring how ToneClone can help sales teams write personalized outreach that doesn't read like it was generated by the same prompt everyone else is using. Early results are promising. If this is something that might be interesting to you, shoot me a reply with your thoughts.
The core product is still there, but we're figuring out where the pull is strongest. That's just how early-stage building works, and I'd rather be honest about it than pretend we had a master plan all along.
Promptcrastination: the AI productivity trap nobody talks about
I wrote a blog post recently about something I've been calling "promptcrastination". Basically its the tendency to work on whatever is easy to do with AI instead of what actually matters.
It's seductive. You can spin up a landing page in 20 minutes now. You can generate a content calendar, redesign your docs, build a prototype of something that was never on your roadmap. And it all feels productive because stuff is getting made. But if you're not careful, AI becomes the world's most sophisticated procrastination tool.
I've caught myself doing it. Probably more than I'd like to admit.
What I'm checking out
A few things on my radar lately:
RoboRev - Runs AI reviews in the background after each commit. A cool concept I’m trying to optimize in my workflow.
OpenClaw - Rough product, but lots of cool ideas and a great ecosystem of tools. Author is now going to OpenAI to work on a personal assistant product for them.
Cerebras - I switched to this for our dictation tool. I’d heard it was fast inference, but wow!
Opus 4.6, GPT-5.3-Codex, and GLM 5 - It’s been an exciting round of new models and I’m still digging into them. So far, very impressed and using all of them regularly.
A thank you (with a discount code)
You're reading the first newsletter, which means you're early. I appreciate that more than the usual "thanks for subscribing" line can convey, so let me back it up with something real. I’ve marked all the current subscribers and I’ll give you discounts or free access to all of our Crouton Creations.
For starters, use code NEWSLETTER6 to get 6 months of ToneClone free. You'll be one of the first people using it, and honestly, your feedback at this stage is worth more to me than the revenue.
Next time
I've gotten a few requests to break down my actual AI workflow - what tools I use, how I use them, and how a one-person product lab actually operates day to day. That's coming in the next issue.
Until then, don’t be a stranger. If you have questions, replies go straight to my inbox. I read everything.
Thanks again for your interest and reading this far!
–
Jon Fox