Designing how people work with AI at Parai

At a Rotterdam civic-tech startup that turns citizens' stories into AI voice carriers, I own a municipal client project end to end and design, from zero, how people and AI agents should work together.

The company

Parai is a civic-tech startup in Rotterdam that researches how technology can strengthen democracy. It collects real stories from residents and turns them into stemdragers, or voice carriers: digital characters, grounded in real conversations, that decision-makers can talk with to test their plans against perspectives they haven’t heard yet. Every position a voice carrier takes is traceable to what real people actually said. Parai works with the Sociaal AI Lab at Erasmus University Rotterdam.

I work there part-time, about 16 hours a week, writing Go.

The Deventer project

I own the Deventer municipality project end to end, from October to December 2026: design, UX, architecture, and the full module that plugs into Parai’s core platform.

A third-party vendor collects spreadsheet data for an employee at the municipality. The data arrives messy. My module cleans it, then lets the employee run statistical and spreadsheet operations by working with an AI agent instead of by hand.

Designing how people and AI work together

I’m also designing, from zero, how working alongside an AI agent should feel. Most applied AI today is a chat box bolted onto an existing product. I’m rethinking that interaction from the ground up, starting with a data analysis module that helps recognise patterns in qualitative surveys of citizens.

Product, not just code

The CTO asks me why I’d build something a given way and how it should feel to use, so the role is as much about product decisions as implementation.

What’s next

A possible second phase from January 2027 would connect the Deventer module to Parai’s other modules, such as the stemdragers.