From Not Wikipedia, the free-ish encyclopedia

mAIde

“mAIking” and “mAIke” redirect here. For the writing counterpart, see dictAIted.

mAIde is a coined verb form for something a person brought into existence by working with AI agents. The maker imagined it, directed it, reviewed it, judged it, and tweaked it, but did not personally carry out every step of the traditional process — programming it, drawing it, wiring it, or operating the tools that produce it. The term was coined by Peter Jamieson, who uses it because it is no longer accurate for him to say he simply “programmed” or “built” much of what he now produces.¹

Etymology

The ordinary English verb make, with the letters AI capitalized where they already sit in the middle of the word: mAIde, mAIke, mAIking. Nothing is added and nothing is removed. The word sounds the same as the old one, which is part of the point: the thing still got made, and the maker still made it, but the spelling admits how.

Definition

Something is mAIde when:

• A person started it from an idea and remained responsible for it from start to finish.
• One or more AI agents carried out much of the low-level work: writing the code, producing the layout, generating the hardware description, and so on.
• The person reviewed the result, judged whether it was good, and changed it until it was — through instructions, edits, or both.

The word is not a disclaimer and not a confession. It describes a blend: the judgment, taste, and accountability are the maker’s, and the hands are partly someone else’s.

Origin

Jamieson first used the form in print in a September 2026 blog post, describing the software, web pages, and hardware he had been building as “dark factory building”: creating things “more from the imagination than from the low-level implementation,” with the aside “(I’m mAIking).”¹ In October 2026 he began crediting his posts as “mAIde and dictAIted by me,” pairing it with dictAIted for the writing itself.²

“I” or “we”?

An open question in the word’s use is which pronoun belongs in front of it. Should a credit read “I mAIde this” or “we mAIde this”? The same question applies to dictAIted. Jamieson has raised it himself without settling it.⁶

• The case for “I”. Only the person can be held accountable. The idea, the judgment of what is good enough, the decision to publish, and the responsibility for mistakes all sit with them. On this view the AI is a tool, like a compiler or a word processor, and nobody writes “we” for those. The AI inside the word already says how it was done, so the pronoun does not need to say it again.
• The case for “we”. The AI did much of the actual work and often contributed ideas, structure, or wording the person would not have come up with alone. Calling that “I” can read as taking credit for someone else’s hands, which is the very thing the word was coined to avoid. “We” also matches how people describe working with a team of agents, and Jamieson’s own framing of the merging of humans and AI as happening in culture, in groups of agents working together.⁷
• The case against “we”. “We” implies a partner who shares responsibility and has a stake in the result, and an AI does neither in any ordinary sense. A single person writing “we” also has old associations: the royal we and the editorial we, both forms of nosism, which can sound grand rather than honest.⁸

In practice Jamieson’s credit lines have so far used “mAIde and dictAIted by me, with Claude”: first person for the accountability, with the collaborator named alongside it. Whether that settles into “I”, shifts to “we”, or depends on how much of the work the AI did is still being worked out.

Comparisons

• Vibe coding — programming by describing what you want to an AI and accepting what comes back. mAIde differs in emphasis: it insists that the review and the judgment happened.³
• Dark factory (lights-out manufacturing) — a factory that runs with no people on the floor. Jamieson’s “dark factory building” is the software version, and mAIde is the verb for what comes out of it.⁴
• Workshop practice — the old master who designs, directs, and finishes a painting that assistants largely executed. The work is still credited to the master, with an understanding of how it was done.⁵

Usage

• “I mAIde a hockey trading card game this summer.”
• “Is that hand-coded, or did you mAIke it?”
• “mAIde and dictAIted by me.” (credit line)

See also

• dictAIted (Not Wikipedia)
• Vibe coding
• Lights out (manufacturing)
• Time for the Young to Knock Down the Gates (blog post credited as mAIde and dictAIted)

References