--- title: Medium | daily.dev description: A short fiction piece follows Bala, an AI engineer who builds a personal AI agent named Asha to gently nudge his behavior away from fear, habit, and avoidance... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/medium-vzmxeymgn twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Medium | daily.dev og:description: A short fiction piece follows Bala, an AI engineer who builds a personal AI agent named Asha to gently nudge his behavior away from fear, habit, and avoidance... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/medium-vzmxeymgn og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/VzmxEyMgN.png og:image:alt: Medium og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Medium **[Medium](https://daily.dev/sources/medium_js)** · 15 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary A short fiction piece follows Bala, an AI engineer who builds a personal AI agent named Asha to gently nudge his behavior away from fear, habit, and avoidance and toward the more spontaneous person he was in college. Asha never issues commands or rewires personality; it makes healthier choices easier to access while a built-in one-year expiration (TTL) runs, and Bala's memory of creating it is deliberately hidden from him during the experiment. After the year ends and his old habits creep back, Asha resurfaces via a birthday video revealing everything, leaves a backup for him to optionally reactivate, and ultimately lets him choose whether to keep changing on his own. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [What Science Fiction Tells Us About Our Changing Relationship With AI](https://daily.dev/posts/what-science-fiction-tells-us-about-our-changing-relationship-with-ai-zn03vj9de) · DEV · 2 upvotes · 1 comments - [You had a story](https://daily.dev/posts/you-had-a-story-aluw9sjxe) · Read the Tea Leaves · 1 upvotes · 0 comments - [Medium](https://daily.dev/posts/medium-g7g9suzpw) · Medium · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Fine, I'll try AI](https://daily.dev/posts/fine-i-ll-try-ai-zm6hpk1b2) · Lobsters · 3 upvotes · 1 comments --- Tags: [#ai](https://daily.dev/tags/ai) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/medium-vzmxeymgn) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"Medium","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/medium-vzmxeymgn","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/medium-vzmxeymgn"},"datePublished":"2026-08-22T02:59:29.171Z","dateModified":"2026-08-22T03:25:19.134Z","description":"A short fiction piece follows Bala, an AI engineer who builds a personal AI agent named Asha to gently nudge his behavior away from fear, habit, and avoidance...","image":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/d4b6a41b871bddd977272b5bdc48dc68?_a=AQAEuop","thumbnailUrl":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/d4b6a41b871bddd977272b5bdc48dc68?_a=AQAEuop","isAccessibleForFree":true,"articleSection":"Medium","inLanguage":"en","publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180}},"author":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Medium","logo":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/t_logo,f_auto/v1/logos/medium","url":"https://daily.dev/sources/medium_js"},"commentCount":0,"discussionUrl":"https://daily.dev/posts/medium-vzmxeymgn","interactionStatistic":[{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":0},{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"CommentAction"},"userInteractionCount":0}],"keywords":"ai","timeRequired":"PT15M"} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https://daily.dev"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Medium","item":"https://daily.dev/sources/medium_js"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"name":"Medium"}]} ```