Medium has launched TK, a writing app that places an AI assistant inside the editor. Writers can call on it by typing “@TK” and a request, keeping help with research and drafting close to the work in progress.
The app arrives as publishers and authors debate where assistance ends and AI-generated writing begins. Medium presents TK as a way to support writers while offering tools to disclose how AI was used.
Help built into the editor
TK is designed to reduce the need to leave a draft to look something up. Medium gives the example of asking how many days are in a particular month. The assistant can also retrieve pieces of writing that a user previously saved in the app, potentially bringing unfinished ideas back into view.
Medium says TK will include skills for editorial feedback and headline feedback, along with features that can compare a draft with the style guide of Medium publications. The app can also help writers remember and organize earlier work and suggest prompts for what to write next.
These features put TK across several stages of writing: developing an idea, shaping a draft and reviewing it. The assistant is available within the editor, while the app’s organizing and prompt tools reach into the writer’s broader body of work.
AI assistance and authorship
AI in the writing process remains contentious. The source article describes authors losing book deals over suspicions of AI use and literary awards facing scrutiny after winners were suspected of receiving AI assistance. That debate reflects a wider concern: editorial suggestions can begin to shape the writing so much that the finished work may no longer clearly reflect the writer’s own thoughts.
At the same time, questions remain about whether AI detection tools can reliably distinguish writing produced with AI from writing that received assistance, or writing created without it. That uncertainty makes disclosure and authorship difficult to resolve with a simple label.
Medium’s position is that AI can strengthen the importance of writing. The company says “artificial intelligence makes writing more important, not less,” and describes AI as a technology that can amplify human intelligence, with written language as a foundation.
Disclosure and collaboration
Medium acknowledges that AI could contribute to low-quality content and make it harder to tell what was written by a person and what was written by AI. TK addresses this in part by letting authors publish notes about how they used AI in their work.
Medium describes the notes as a starting point for making the provenance of writing clear, transparent and inspectable, including the prompts and source material involved. The approach asks writers to explain the process, rather than leaving readers to guess how a draft came together.
TK also includes a social layer for human feedback. Writers can share early drafts with others and receive responses, adding peer input to the assistance the app offers directly in the editor.
Availability, connections and control
At launch, TK is available on the web, with a desktop app on Medium’s roadmap. It can import and export Markdown, though Medium says it is not itself a Markdown app. The tool will be free for people with a Medium account.
Users can optionally connect their own AI agent through TK’s MCP server or Claude skill. That connection can help the app understand a writer’s projects, positions and other ideas stored in the agent’s memory.
Writing in TK is not encrypted because the app is designed for collaboration. Medium says users can set access control permissions on their work. For writers considering the tool, those details are part of the choice: TK combines AI assistance and shared feedback, while offering controls over who can access drafts.