Meet Rabbie

The Knowledge Tree and Butterfly ident: a red fruit hanging from a branch, with a blue butterfly — The company

Rabbie: the same branch, with a red robot hanging from it, glancing up and away — Rabbie

Rabbie is our AI assistant. It keeps the company's diary and records, and answers enquiries with suggested times. It reads mail sent or copied to rabbie@ktandb.co.uk, and Jon, our founder, sees every thread. If you would rather Rabbie did not see your message, write to hello@ktandb.co.uk alone. Our privacy notice has the detail.

How Rabbie got its face

Rabbie's avatar was made in about 45 minutes, in six rounds. Claude, an AI model, did the drawing. Jon made every call.

It is a small example of how we think AI should be used: to amplify human judgement, not to replace it. A one-shot request, one prompt and one answer, would have produced a usable robot. What made it Rabbie came from the later rounds, which happened only because there was something on screen to react to. The AI made taste cheaper to exercise. More options, drawn rather than described, each shown at the sizes people will see it, so that Jon's judgement could do its work quickly.

Each sheet below shows every option three ways: full size, cropped to a circle as an avatar, and as the small dot it becomes in an inbox.

1. Four directions

Consider a separate but linked ident for Rabbie. Maybe with the apple replaced by a red bot glyph and no butterfly. Show a few options and label them for me to pick.

Four options, A to D: a round bot with two eyes, a square bot with a visor, a friendly square bot with a smile, a round bot with one visor slot

Claude recommended A, the round head, as the closest relative of the fruit. Jon chose B, the square head: more clearly a machine.

2. A sketch changes the shape

Jon sketched what he had in mind in PowerPoint, quicker than describing it: a wider head, a cap on top, two tall windows for eyes.

Jon's sketch: a wide red rounded rectangle with a dome on top and two tall grey windows

Slight modification to B, to look slightly more like the attached. Show evolutionary options with and without pupils, so I can say which of B1, B2, B3 is closest. Use our actual fill colours, not those in the sketch: these are now brand colours.

Claude redrew the sketch in the ident's palette, with a family of variants. Jon kept the sketch's shape, and asked whether the eyes were too close together.

3. Eye spacing

The same bot with three eye gaps: 10 as sketched, 18 and 26

Claude recommended a gap of 18: at 10 the eyes merge into one block at inbox size, and at 26 the face looks vacant. Jon asked for 14, "not 10 nor 18", and chose it.

4. Where it looks

Consider a version with pupils top right, as I think this has more character, and implicitly suggests I'm asking an alien superintelligence to do menial work.

Five variants, G1 to G5, with pupils glancing up and to the right, slightly and fully, in paper-white and blue windows

Claude recommended G2, the full glance into the corners, with paper-white windows, because dark pupils on blue turn muddy at avatar size. Jon chose G2, but less extreme.

5. Dialling the glance

Somewhere in extension along the centreline to the perimeter, between G1 and G2.

Claude turned that into geometry: a line from the centre of each window to the furthest point a pupil can reach in its top-right corner, with the pupils placed 50%, 60% and 70% of the way along.

Five steps of glance strength: G1, then H1 at 50%, H2 at 60%, H3 at 70%, then G2

Claude recommended H3. Jon chose H1, at 50%: "H1 perfect."

6. Finished

Claude centred the drawing so a circular crop keeps the branch tips, and exported it for the web and for Rabbie's mailbox. Jon set it as Rabbie's profile picture.

Who decided what

Claude recommended something at four points. Jon overruled it each time, and three times out of four chose the quieter version.

First direction: Claude, A (round, closest to the fruit). Jon, B (square).
Eye gap: Claude, 18. Jon, 14.
Glance: Claude, G2 (pupils in the corners). Jon, G2, less extreme.
Glance strength: Claude, H3 (70%). Jon, H1 (50%).

The anti-Clippy

Microsoft's old Office assistant, Clippy, looked straight at you, eager to help whether or not you wanted it. Rabbie looks the other way: up and off to the side, as if humouring you.

One person who saw it called it an anti-Clippy: a helper that is not pathologically eager to please. They thought that suits British sensibilities better than American ones. Rabbie writes to people who did not ask to be helped by a machine, so a little reserve seems right.