Ask Charlotte: the post-mortem.
Charlotte was going to be the AI assistant every poker player texts. She ended up as mine.
The idea
An assistant you just text. She runs on OpenClaw, over text, Telegram or the web. The poker personality did four things:
- Table Scout: tell her "tell me when 5/10 gets 6 on the list at Aria" and she texts you when it does.
- A WSOP database: every buy-in and cash, so she knows real profit and loss.
- A Triton database: all their hands, back to 2018.
- A session tracker: "Starting Bellagio 5/10. In for 1500." She does the rest.
The hands I played
- March 2026: launched. The first 50 Founding Members got 3 months for $99, to help cover my API costs.
- April: the poker personality went live, with an 8-day free trial, then $99 a month.
- Mid-April: a second angle, Charlotte for Game Runners. She watches every big streamed game (who's playing, what they're losing, where they show up next) for anyone who runs a game, with her own dedicated phone line.
The numbers
Straight from Stripe:
- 10 people started a subscription, between April and July 2026.
- 6 of the 10 canceled inside the 8-day free trial.
- The longest stayed about three months.
- All 10 were gone by July 22.
- Revenue: $594. That's six $99 charges: one Founding Member and five monthly payments.
The biggest bill I can tie to her alone is her phone line: $850 to Loop Message from March to August. The servers and AI bills are shared with my other projects in Rounders to Founders, Inc., so they're not split out here.
Why it's in the muck
People tried her and didn't stay. The one person who used her every single day was me.
So I stopped selling her. Charlotte is now my personal assistant: she helps me run Table 1 and the rest of my life. "It's basically a customized GrokBot." As a product she folded. As a tool she's the best thing I built this year.
Could it still work?
Maybe, for someone who goes deep on one job instead of ten. I spread her across alerts, databases, trackers and a whole second audience. Pick one and nail it.
If you'd pay for one of those, tell me which one in the comments.
— Art