Today ChatGPT is launching "Pulse" — a shift from reactive to proactive, personalized assistance. It's rolling out as a mobile preview for Pro users; it researches overnight and surfaces a set of visual cards in the morning.

The Evolution of Information Access #

The eras I use to think about this:

• Yahoo / Yellow Pages: Human curation, users searched within fixed directories.
• Google Search: Keyword queries, you had to know what to type.
• TikTok Recommendation Engine: Interest modeling, the system proactively surfaces what might catch your attention.
• ChatGPT Prompts: Semantic understanding + complex instructions — the more context you give, the better the output.
• ChatGPT Pulse: Context-aware and history-driven, it prepares valuable insights for you before you even ask. You can opt in to connectors (calendar, email, etc.) and steer with feedback; connectors are off by default.

In short: from manual input → system-level inference, from reactive → proactive.

The Bottleneck Shifts #

When AI is purely reactive, answer quality is capped by question quality. Proactive systems change the bottleneck by improving the questioner—assembling context and surfacing hypotheses before we ask.

Pulse embodies this direction: context-aware, history-sensitive, and increasingly personalized. It's the industry's move from "tell me exactly what to do" to "infer what I'm trying to do."

The "Palantir-for-One" Vision #

This aligns with the "Palantir-for-One" gap I described:

• Context engine: pull trusted, opt-in signals (notes, calendar, docs, learning trails).
• Semantic memory: track patterns and evolving hypotheses over time.
• Timely triggers: deliver the right nudge at the right moment.
• Privacy by design: user control and clear auditability of which data drove which nudge.

Better context → better hypotheses → better outcomes.

The long game isn't just better answers; it's expanding awareness—helping users notice what they would've otherwise missed. That's the promise of proactive agents.

New Frontiers #

Pulse as an AI-Native Ad Surface #

If done responsibly, Pulse could host clearly labeled, task-oriented sponsored cards—book, subscribe, add to calendar—aligned with your context and intent. That shifts online advertising from buying traffic to being agent-callable: make products machine-readable so agents can identify, cite, summarize, and recommend them. If it works, this could be the PMF for AI-native ads.

From Digest to Executive-Grade Brief #

A daily Pulse can evolve beyond a simple digest into goal-aware synthesis grounded in your strategy, history, and context—delivered at the right moment. The upside isn't "more info," it's better timing and higher decision leverage. What used to be a head-of-state privilege can be productized for individuals.