How Nia Started: We Were Trying to Build an AI Assistant. We Ended Up Building Something Much Bigger.

I didn't set out to build Nia. At least, not the Nia that exists today.

In the beginning, the idea was much simpler: I wanted my own AI assistant.

I had been using AI tools and watching how quickly they were becoming capable of writing code, operating terminals, searching through projects, and helping developers work. But there was always something that bothered me: the AI was powerful, but it wasn't really mine.

It lived inside someone else's product. Its capabilities were determined by someone else's decisions. Its memory was limited. Its access to my machines was limited. And if I wanted it to do something outside the boundaries of the product, I had to build another tool, another integration, another workflow.

What if I built my own?

That question eventually became Nia.

One of the earliest directions was heavily inspired by the experience of tools like Claude Code. I wanted a terminal AI that could actually work with me — not just "here's some code you could try," but "let me inspect the project, understand what is happening, make the change, test it, and fix it if something breaks."

That became Nia CLI.

And very quickly, I realized something important: giving an AI access to tools changes everything. Once Nia could access the terminal, files, servers and development environment, it stopped feeling like a chatbot. It started feeling like an assistant.

Then we kept adding capabilities.

One of the biggest problems with AI assistants is that every conversation can feel like starting over. I didn't want that. So we built persistent memory into Nia — it could retain important information instead of forcing every session to begin from zero.

But we didn't stop there. We started building a deeper understanding of the projects Nia worked on. A codebase watcher that could analyze a project and build a kind of brain for it — understanding files and relationships rather than treating the repository as a giant folder of unrelated documents.

Nia shouldn't just read my code. It should understand the environment it's working in.

That became one of the foundations of everything that followed.

This was probably the point where the original idea started changing. We built Nia across different environments — web, desktop, mobile, browser, CLI — and then started connecting those environments. Nia could interact with computers. It could work with browsers. It could interact with phones. It could perform actions rather than simply tell me how to perform them.

Eventually, I could sit on my phone and ask Nia something like:

Is Thorium active on my Linux machine?

and Nia could actually inspect the Linux machine and tell me what was running. I could then say:

Open a new tab and go to my DeepSeek usage.

And Nia could operate the browser, navigate to the page, read the information and report it back to me.

That moment made the direction of Nia very clear. I wasn't building a chatbot anymore. I was building something that could actually do things.

Then we connected Nia to the phone. Nia could interact with the Android device through actions such as opening applications, typing, performing gestures and controlling parts of the device. We also started building live voice and camera capabilities into the mobile experience.

I shouldn't have to sit in front of my computer to use my AI.

If Nia could see my computer, my browser and my phone, then the device I happened to be holding shouldn't matter. Nia could be wherever I was.

This one changed how I thought about accessibility. People already live inside WhatsApp. So instead of requiring someone to open an AI application every time they wanted something, why not let Nia communicate with them there?

We connected Nia to WhatsApp. Now Nia could be something you talk to, rather than simply something you open. You could give Nia a phone number. It could message you. It could keep you updated. And suddenly, an AI assistant could become part of someone's normal communication workflow.

That opened a completely different door.

Then we built Nia Bots. The idea was inspired by the emergence of specialized AI bots, but we already had many of the pieces we needed: Nia's brain, memory, tools, computer control and bot creation infrastructure.

We built specialized bots where each bot could have its own environment and computer — meaning a bot wasn't simply a different personality sitting on top of the same chatbot. It could actually have its own workspace and responsibilities.

And that's when we started seeing something unexpected: companies became interested.

One of the most important tests of Nia wasn't performed in a lab. It happened at a school. My partner runs a school with more than 500 students. He started gradually introducing Nia into his daily financial operations.

At first, it wasn't "let's hand the entire school to AI." It was much more practical — let's automate this, let's see whether Nia can handle that, let's use it here, let's see what happens.

After about a week of using Nia for daily financial operations, there were no issues or complaints. Instead of stopping there, he started bringing Nia into more and more parts of the school's operations.

That was a huge moment for me — because now Nia wasn't just something we were building. Someone was actually depending on it to do real work.

We've also started having companies, including companies in Dubai, showing interest in using Nia or having us automate parts of their operations. That's when I started realizing that the thing we had been building for ourselves might actually be useful to other people.

We didn't sit down one morning and decide to build an AI workforce platform. We arrived there gradually: first we wanted an AI assistant, then we wanted it to remember, then to understand our projects, then to use our computers, then our browsers, then our phones, then WhatsApp, then specialized bots.

Then businesses started asking:

Can Nia do this for us?

And the answer increasingly became: yes.

There was another realization happening at the same time: I don't think the future of Nia should depend on a single AI model. Claude is powerful. DeepSeek is powerful. Other models are powerful. Local models are becoming increasingly capable. Why should Nia force someone to choose one?

What if Nia itself was the layer above the models?

A user could bring their own AI subscription. They could connect an API. They could run a local model. They could eventually use Nia-hosted models — and Nia would still be Nia. The memory stays. The tools stay. The computer control stays. The browser stays. The phone stays. The bots stay. The workflows stay.

The model becomes the engine underneath the assistant rather than the assistant itself. That's where the idea became much bigger than simply building a "Claude alternative."

Today, I don't think of Nia as just a chatbot. I don't even think of it primarily as a model. I think of Nia as an AI operating layer — something that can sit between a person and the digital world.

It can communicate with you through an app or WhatsApp. It can remember. It can understand your projects. It can work in a terminal. It can browse. It can operate computers. It can interact with phones. It can automate workflows. It can run specialized bots. And eventually, it can use whichever AI models make the most sense for the job.

The goal isn't to tell someone:

You have to use this AI.

The goal is:

Tell Nia what you need done.

Looking back, that's probably the funniest part. We thought we were building an assistant. Then we built a coding agent. Then a memory system. Then a codebase brain. Then computer control. Then browser automation. Then phone control. Then a mobile assistant. Then WhatsApp. Then Nia Bots. Then business automation.

And somewhere along the way, Nia became something much bigger than the original idea. I'm still not sure exactly where this ends. But I know where it started.

What if I built my own AI?

And now the question has become something much more interesting:

What happens when your AI can actually do things?

This is the beginning of Nia.