Chris Downs is nescient
About Now Thinking Edit

I've spent thirty years making invisible systems legible - pioneering service design at Livework, applied AI and data at Normally, and now agentic AI inside the public sector. Nescient is how I come to all of it: a curiosity that doesn't pretend to know the answer before the question is finished.

More about me

Now

Agents in public services. How to make them legible to the citizens they serve, and credible to the institutions whose voice they carry. I'm hands-on as well as advising — building small AI tools of my own, because the only way I know to think about the material is to work with it. The bet underneath everything is that public AI works only if people can see it clearly enough to argue with it.

What I'm thinking about now

Recent thinking

  • 6 June 2026

    Swimming Against Hard Edges

    How I work now just doesn't feel like moving water through pipes - but more like swimming in it. More chaotic but more efficient at the same time.

  • 21 May 2026

    When Is An Agent Not An Agent?

    The definition of an agent really matters. It just so happens, we need two of them.

  • 7 May 2026

    The Compliance Loop

    I turned all the ICO guidance into a Claude Code skill - so now all my engineering and data decisions are compliant by default.

  • 6 May 2026

    The Efficiency Trap

    AI's promise feels more like a threat.

  • 4 May 2026

    AI Doesn't need to be intelligent - just not as stupid as I am.

    Yesterday two of my agents told me, in sequence and without consulting each other, to stop working, close my laptop and put my phone down.

  • 4 May 2026

    30 years of disappointment. The AI Agent I met in 1997

    How a disappointing demo in 1997 started a thirty-year quest to explore agents, data, and who technology actually serves.

  • 3 May 2026

    The Attentive Economy

    When Technology Stops Demanding and Starts Giving

All thinking
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