Learn from your own words

Feedback on the words, at the moment, never on the person.

For example

Porcupine · a tipKept: “I felt left out when the plans were made without me.” You named the moment and how it felt, without blaming.

How Porcupine uses it

“Why it changed” explains each change privately, quoting your own words.
It points out what already worked, not just what changed.
Tips appear only when they’d help. Most turns get none.
What you learn carries over to your next conversations, privately. What’s about one person stays with your conversations with that person.

Why it helps

Feedback helps most when it’s specific, arrives when it applies, and is about the task rather than the person. A large review found that feedback can make performance worse, especially when it draws attention to the person (praise or criticism of who they are) rather than the task. So Porcupine’s lessons are about what a phrase does, they come right when the sender sees the change, they point out what’s already working, and most moments get no feedback at all.

What we don’t know yet

The feedback research comes from work and school tasks, and the one study of AI feedback on written messages looked at the messages written with it, not whether people wrote better on their own afterward. Learning to talk differently may take more practice over time than a single note can give.

The research

Studied with adults in general

In a randomized study of 300 peer supporters from an online mental health platform, those who could see AI suggestions while writing replies to posts wrote replies rated about 20% more empathic. It measured the replies written with the suggestions, not whether the supporters wrote better on their own afterward.

Sharma, A., Lin, I. W., Miner, A. S., Atkins, D. C., & Althoff, T. (2023). Human–AI collaboration enables more empathic conversations in text-based peer-to-peer mental health support. Nature Machine Intelligence, 5(1), 46–57.

Studied with adults in general

A meta-analysis of more than 600 comparisons found that feedback improved performance on average, but in about a third of cases it made performance worse, especially when it drew attention to the person rather than the task.

Kluger, A. N., & DeNisi, A. (1996). The effects of feedback interventions on performance: A historical review, a meta-analysis, and a preliminary feedback intervention theory. Psychological Bulletin, 119(2), 254–284.

Studied with adults in general

A review of feedback research concluded that feedback is most useful when it’s about the task and how to do it, and least useful when it’s praise or criticism of the person.

Hattie, J., & Timperley, H. (2007). The power of feedback. Review of Educational Research, 77(1), 81–112.

Library last updated October 2026.