Announcing LADLE.
MARCH 2026 · FOUNDING POSTWe opened subscriptions today. One product, one price, one specific commitment: $8 of every $20 is earmarked for the pooled meal fund at the partner's $0.80/meal peg, published monthly.
LADLE is now live at ladle.chat. Subscriptions are open.
The one-line version: it's a general AI assistant powered by Claude Sonnet at $20 a month. Of every $20, $8 is earmarked for hunger relief and pooled toward a $50,000/year commitment — the threshold we have set for ourselves before signing a formal corporate partnership with the hunger-relief charity we select at $0.80 per meal. A minimum of ten meals per subscription per month reserved into the fund, reported monthly, and shipped as real partner-receipted donations once we cross the threshold. Full context in [the-fifty-thousand-threshold](/blog/the-fifty-thousand-threshold).
The reason to build this was small and specific. A lot of people are already paying $20 a month for a general AI assistant. The interesting question isn't whether the product is worth $20 (that question is largely settled — frontier models at that price are extremely useful). The interesting question is whether some of that $20 can do a second job on the way out, in a way that's specific and verifiable rather than vague and marketing-flavored.
Our answer is monthly fund reports. Not "we support hunger relief". Not "a portion of proceeds". A specific earmark amount, a specific meal count at the partner's specific per-meal peg, a specific pooled-fund balance and distance from the partnership threshold — published on a public URL the day the batch posts. Post-threshold, real partner reference numbers publish alongside every fund report.
That commitment shapes everything downstream. One plan, one price — we can't invent a Pro tier without fracturing the meal math. No retention offer on cancel — offering a discount to keep you means offering to reserve fewer meals. No fundraising deck — the business either works at $20 across enough subscribers or it doesn't, and it's on us to make that math close.
There is no free tier. There is no promotional first month. There is a demo at ladle.chat/demo with three free messages, no signup. If it fits your workflow, subscribe. If it doesn't, don't — we'd rather you use ChatGPT or Claude directly than pay us $20 for something you're not using.
Every operating decision we make from here reduces to the report. If a decision makes the report easier to trust, it's easier to make. If a decision makes it harder to trust, it doesn't happen. The whole company is a wrapper around that mechanism.
Signup is open now. First fund report publishes end of March.