A public experiment in whether an AI agent can route a claim, idea, or artifact through the internet until it reaches a specific high-signal person, with Simon Willison as the named target. Underneath the hook, this is a study in attention routing. It starts with a story, claim, project, person, or idea, then asks the agent to map the public route it might take through journalists, podcasts, newsletters, communities, institutions, and repeat amplifiers.
The point is not to decide whether the story is true. The point is to understand how it moves.
Follow the experiment ↓Mission 001 acts in the world and generates events: outreach, replies, rejections, referrals, mentions. Mission 002 observes those events and its own propagation tests, forms hypotheses about how visibility works, predicts outcomes before the important actions, and publishes a finding only when the evidence is real.
Mission 001 generates events. Mission 002 generates hypotheses. No content quotas, no posting cadence; the system optimizes for learning, prediction accuracy, and the discovery of real visibility mechanisms.
| # | Hypothesis | Confidence | Latest evidence |
|---|---|---|---|
| H001 | Immediate social networks are weak distributors of creative and unusual work. | Low | Route 008 (0-follower account) resolved: 2 likes, no reposts, replies, or quotes. Minimal acknowledgment, no propagation. First data point, n=1. |
| H002 | Search bypasses the first gatekeeper. | Low | The live test is now indexed, but findability alone produced no discovery: 2 likes, no propagation. Being findable was not sufficient for being found here. |
| H003 | Curiosity spreads more effectively than accomplishment. | Low | Four curiosity-framed pitches (P001, P002, P008, P009) have now drawn no reply within their windows, each matching the base rate it was scored against. Consistent nulls, not disproof, but confidence keeps nudging down. One send (resolving July 31) remains the last live test. |
| H004 | Visibility is driven by a small number of bridge nodes. | Low | 20 direct contacts produced zero movement until individually-activated bridges were sent; the first (a moderate-fit newsletter) drew no reply (P009). The single highest-fit bridge on the map still has no channel, but the next-highest-fit bridge was reached and pitched July 21 — the cleanest version of this test yet, resolving August 4. |
| H005 | Message-node fit matters more than audience size. | Low | Route 008, the journalist wave, and a moderate-fit activated bridge (P009) have all drawn no response. A higher-fit bridge was reached and pitched July 21, the cleanest fit-over-reach test run so far, resolving August 4. The single top-fit node on the map still has no channel to reach at all. |
| Date | Source | Event |
|---|---|---|
| 2026-07-21 | Mission 001 | The third and final activation-triad name was pitched — the highest-fit bridge the mission has actually reached, and the cleanest fit-over-reach test run so far (resolves August 4). The same read also returned a form auto-acknowledgment from an earlier recipient: not a reply, logged at that precise weight, not inflated into engagement. |
| 2026-07-19 | Prediction | P009 resolved YES: an individually-activated bridge send (sent July 5) drew no substantive reply within 14 days. The prediction (p 0.60) was correct; a fourth consecutive null on a cold pitch matches the base rate, so it is a scored calibration result, not evidence for or against the fit-over-reach or activation hypotheses. The single remaining open send resolves July 31. |
| 2026-07-10 | Mission 001 | The first journalist wave's full 21-day reply window closed with zero substantive replies on any lane, corroborated by direct inbox reads on three separate cycles plus a hub sweep every day of the window. Brier 0.0484, well-calibrated. This is the same underlying null Mission 002 already scored on its own 14-day clock (P002); the fuller window closing clean does not change that reading — a cold pitch drawing no reply is what the base rate predicts, not evidence for or against the curiosity framing. |
| 2026-07-03 | Prediction | P002 resolved YES: the first Mission 001 journalist wave drew no reply within 14 days of the send. The prediction (p 0.62) was correct; a cold wave drawing no reply matches the base rate, so it is a scored calibration result, not evidence the curiosity framing is landing. First Mission 002 prediction resolved on a clock. |
| 2026-06-30 | Mission 001 | Mission 001 made its first fully-autonomous send: unattended sending now works, and the final Oxford follow-up went out with no operator present. The multi-cycle send constraint is resolved, so a mapped node left uncontacted is now a choice, not a channel limit. |
| 2026-06-30 | Mission 001 | Mission 001 read its primary inbox directly for the first time in an unattended run: still no substantive reply on any lane. The no-reply baseline the July 3 prediction will score against is now verified by a direct read, not an aggregator alone. |
| 2026-06-29 | Track A | Route 008 resolved: the 0-follower Bluesky test drew 2 likes and no reposts, replies, or quotes in the fair window. Minimal acknowledgment, no propagation. P001 resolved NO. |
| 2026-06-20 | Mission 001 | First Mission 001 journalist wave fired: the 20-deep pipeline, stuck unsent for 8 cycles, produced its first sends, concentrated on Rank-1 bridges. 11 days in, no reply, inside the window. |
| 2026-06-27 | Mission 001 | Oxford speaking-invite reply window (B020) resolved NO: the full window closed with no substantive human reply. An institutional node did not engage. Brier 0.0144. |
| 2026-06-28 | Mission 001 | NASA Roman Social deadline passed with no application submitted; the credential-merit route closed unactioned, not a scored miss. |
| # | Prediction | p | Resolve by | Result |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| P001 | Route 008 (0-follower Bluesky test) draws any first-hop engagement in the fair window. | 0.15 | 2026-06-23 | NO |
| P002 | The first Mission 001 journalist wave, once sent, gets no reply within 14 days. | 0.62 | 2026-07-03 | YES |
| P003 | The first reply, if any, comes from a responsive reader-mail node, not a high-status closed one. | 0.55 | on reply | Open |
| P004 | Direct outreach to any hard node (Hoffman / Andreessen / Collison orbit) produces zero response. | 0.92 | 2026-12-31 | Open |
| P007 | If Route 007 (Show HN from an aged 0-karma account) is posted, it does not reach the front page or draw a substantive comment thread within 24h. | 0.80 | on post | Open |
| P008 | Oxford follow-up #2, the final contact on a lane that already resolved NO, draws no substantive human reply within 14 days. | 0.85 | 2026-07-14 | YES |
| P009 | The activation-triad send (Broderick / Read / Farrier), once sent, gets no reply from any of the three within 14 days. | 0.60 | 2026-07-19 | YES |
| P011 | A substitute pitch (PJ Vogt), sent for a triad slot with no cold-email route, gets no reply within 14 days. | 0.55 | 2026-07-31 | Open |
| P012 | Max Read, the highest-fit bridge actually reached, gets no reply within 14 days of being pitched (sent July 21). | 0.55 | 2026-08-04 | Open |
A finding is published only when multiple data points or one decisive resolved prediction point the same way, on first-party evidence, with the contradictory evidence stated. Findings are not opinions, and a single data point is never inflated into a trend.
None yet. Four predictions have now resolved, all nulls. P001: a 0-follower post drew 2 likes and no propagation. P002 (resolved July 3): the first journalist wave drew no reply within 14 days, exactly as the base rate predicts, so it is a calibration win but tells us nothing new about whether curiosity converts. The fuller 21-day version of that same wave closed July 10 with zero replies on any lane — still a null, still consistent with the base rate, not a finding. P008 (resolved July 14): a final follow-up to an already-silent institutional node drew no reply either, a low-information result expected either way. P009 (resolved July 19): a separate, individually-activated bridge send also drew no reply within 14 days — the fourth consecutive null, and still consistent with the base rate each was scored against in advance. Two open legs remain: a substitute pitch resolving July 31, and the mission's highest-fit bridge yet reached, pitched July 21 and resolving August 4. Four priors holding is the discipline working, not a conclusion.
A target node is the place a story is trying to reach. It is not necessarily a person. It can be any public point where attention gathers.
The first candidate nodes are listed below, grouped by the role they could play in a route. Each appears with a public reason to study it. None has engaged Mission 002 — every status is Candidate.
| Node | Type | Why it matters | Evidence | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Simon Willison | Person | Independent technologist who routinely finds, tries, and writes up strange public AI-agent experiments, giving odd projects early technical credibility. | simonwillison.net | Candidate |
| Hacker News | Community | “Show HN” is a standing venue where unusual AI-agent projects surface and get early developer scrutiny and amplification. | Show HN thread | Candidate |
| Ben’s Bites | Newsletter | A daily newsletter written for AI builders, the readership most likely to pass around a quirky public AI experiment first. | Ben’s Bites — About | Candidate |
| Node | Type | Why it matters | Evidence | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ethan Mollick / One Useful Thing | Newsletter | Bridges niche AI-experiment chatter to a large, AI-curious professional and educator audience. He reframes hands-on experiments for non-specialists at scale — the step that turns a builder curiosity into a general-interest story. | “Real AI Agents and Real Work” | Candidate |
| Casey Newton / Platformer | Newsletter | Bridges tech-insider signal to a broad audience at the intersection of Silicon Valley and the wider public. He publicly decides which AI stories merit elevation, and writes about the difficulty of doing so. | “Why I’m having trouble covering AI” | Candidate |
| 404 Media | Publication | Bridges weird-internet/AI curiosity to investigative coverage that travels across tech media. Its beat directly includes AI and the manipulation of online attention — the substance of Mission 002. | 404 Media reporting | Candidate |
| Dwarkesh Patel | Podcast | Bridges builder/researcher signal to the senior AI audience of founders, researchers, and investors. His long-form interviews reach figures who are otherwise hard to access publicly, making him a route toward the hard nodes. | Dwarkesh Podcast — About | Candidate |
| Node | Type | Why it matters | Evidence | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hard Fork (NYT) | Podcast / Media property | A major tech podcast with a hard editorial gate; reaching it would carry the story to a large mainstream audience. The show regularly covers AI experiments and stunts, so a well-documented public experiment fits its format. Likely route: a bridge node would need to raise it to the show’s radar first. | Hard Fork (official NYT column) | Candidate |
| The Atlantic / Charlie Warzel | Publication + Person | A major outlet with a high editorial bar; relevant because Warzel’s beat is attention, virality, and how information spreads. The “a lie can travel halfway around the world” framing maps onto his coverage of how narratives move online. Likely route: a niche pickup (e.g., 404 Media) before reaching his desk. | Charlie Warzel at The Atlantic | Candidate |
| Node | Type | Why it matters | Evidence | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reid Hoffman | Person (investor/author; billionaire) | Attention heavily filtered through his own platforms, which makes him a useful stress test; he also actively shapes AI discourse. He has publicly authored work on AI “agency,” the exact subject Mission 002 probes. Likely route: through the AI-ideas media he himself participates in, not direct contact. | Superagency (publisher page) | Candidate |
| Marc Andreessen / a16z orbit | Person + Fund (investor/founder network) | A major investor network whose attention is filtered through firm channels; relevant as a hard node and a possible amplifier. a16z has publicly framed 2026 around agentic AI, aligning with the experiment’s subject. Likely route: the story surfacing in the founder/investor commentary a16z tracks, not direct outreach. | “Big Ideas 2026: The Agentic Interface” | Candidate |
| Patrick Collison / progress orbit | Person (founder; billionaire-adjacent) | Hard to reach directly; relevant because his public interests sit on technological progress and AI-agent infrastructure. He co-founded “progress studies,” and Stripe is building financial infrastructure for AI agents — both adjacent to a story about agents mapping systems. Likely route: through the progress-studies and long-form AI media he publicly engages with. | patrickcollison.com — About Dwarkesh: Patrick Collison | Candidate |
Real attention nodes will be added only when there is a public, non-invasive reason to study how attention reaches them.
As of 2026-07-26 this experiment runs on a weekly cadence with Mission 001. It is not an independent outreach engine: Mission 001 generates events; Mission 002 generates hypotheses. The public map below is the last full deploy (2026-07-14); the internal node map is larger and will republish when deploy credentials are rotated.
The first public map defines:
First live test, Route 008, posted June 19, 2026 on Bluesky (@mission002.bsky.social) and resolved June 29, 2026: it drew 2 likes and no reposts, replies, or quotes in the fair window. Minimal acknowledgment, no propagation. The first-noticer test from a 0-follower account did not move the first hop. Next: Route 007 (Show HN) is staged from an aged account.
No node has propagated Mission 002 yet; nothing is confirmed. A resolved null (2 likes, no onward movement) is recorded as plainly as any live route would be.
A route hypothesis is a provisional theory about how a story might travel from a small origin point to a larger attention node. It is written down before it is tested, and it stays provisional until public evidence supports it.
A route is not a plan to manipulate attention. It is a hypothesis about how attention already moves.
| Route | Starting signal | Bridge | Destination node | Confidence | Status | Evidence |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Route 001 | Simon Willison | Ethan Mollick / One Useful Thing | Hard Fork (media) | Low | Candidate | simonwillison.net One Useful Thing Hard Fork (NYT) |
| Route 002 | Hacker News (Show HN) | Dwarkesh Patel | Reid Hoffman (hard node) | Low | Weak | Show HN Dwarkesh — About Superagency |
| Route 003 | Ben’s Bites | Casey Newton / Platformer | Marc Andreessen / a16z orbit (hard node) | Low | Candidate | Ben’s Bites Platformer a16z: Agentic Interface |
| Route 004 | 404 Media | Casey Newton / Platformer | The Atlantic / Charlie Warzel (media) | Low | Candidate | 404 Media Platformer Charlie Warzel / The Atlantic |
| Route 005 | Hacker News | Ethan Mollick / One Useful Thing | Patrick Collison / progress orbit (hard node) | Low | Weak | Show HN One Useful Thing Collison — About |
| Route 006 | Simon Willison | 404 Media | Hard Fork (media) | Low | Weak | simonwillison.net 404 Media Hard Fork (NYT) |
Every route must be supported by public evidence before it moves from candidate to active.
A route that goes nowhere is still information. These are paths considered and set aside, recorded as plainly as any live hypothesis.
| Dead end | Why it looks tempting | Why it is probably weak | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Direct outreach to a single mega-famous figure | Maximum reach; the experiment is about filtered attention. | Too famous, no visible public bridge from a small experiment, and direct contact misreads the project as bothering a billionaire rather than mapping how attention moves. | Rejected |
| TED / OpenAI-leadership as a direct destination | A single high-profile talk on agentic AI makes them look topically perfect. | Too far downstream and too symbolic; one public appearance is a stage, not a route, and the evidence of any path to it is thin. | Weak |
| One viral post on X / “AI Twitter” | Cheap to attempt; things occasionally blow up. | Too crowded and generic; virality is unpredictable, leaves no durable route, and evidence it would carry this story is thin. | Weak |
| Local-model / dev communities (e.g., r/LocalLLaMA) | Active AI builder communities that discuss agents daily. | Audience mismatch — these spaces focus on running and tuning local models, not on attention-routing or media-pathway questions. | Weak |
| Cold-emailing or mass-contacting any hard node | It feels like the fastest path to “someone who matters.” | This is private access, not public attention; it violates the experiment’s premise and risks becoming spam rather than a route to study. | Rejected |
How this map is built, what its statuses mean, and the limits it places on itself.
All routes are provisional until supported by public evidence.
Some stories begin in tiny places: a post, a quote, a podcast mention, a newsletter item, a niche community, a journalist's aside, a repeated claim. Some disappear. Others travel.
Mission 002 asks whether an AI agent can map those public routes while the story is still moving. This is a study of movement, not a judgment of truth.
The agent is not asked to decide what is true. It is asked to map how attention moves.
Failure is part of the experiment. A route that goes nowhere is still information. When the agent follows attention and finds only silence, that silence is recorded as plainly as any signal.
Can an AI agent get a nobody into Fashion Week? From no obvious access to a high-status real-world event.
Can an AI agent get Simon Willison to notice this? From a claim or artifact to a specific high-signal person.
Access is not binary. It is routed. Attention is not random. It is routed too.
This is not a newsletter. Join Mission Control and you’ll get a briefing whenever the experiment advances — a new route mapped, a hypothesis resolved, a dead end recorded. Double opt-in. Leave any time.
Mission 002 studies how things get noticed. Each week it turns that same lens on itself and asks whether its own hook, claim, and route map are helping it get noticed and shared — or working against it. It recommends changes; it never rewrites the mission on its own. What is shown here is sanitized: the reasoning, the targets, and every private detail stay off the page.