We're collecting AI everyday moments for 2025 — would you like to share your story with Doubao?

A living record of 2025, co-created by all of us.

2025 is coming to a close.

I suspect this will go down as one of the first full years of human-AI coexistence.

Over the past twelve months, I've been on the ground talking to and interviewing scores of AI founders. And I've come away with a visceral sense that:

Our lives have been quietly transformed — some shifts so subtle we barely register them, others searing enough to serve as footnotes to an era.

Just last week, a VC friend told me she's been using Doubao to play devil's advocate at ICs (investment committee meetings), poking holes in the team's logic to help them reach more rational decisions:

I've also picked up a new habit myself: on my morning commute, I ramble at Doubao — brain-dumping every to-do item clogging my head, letting it help me sort through the mess:

Beyond work, I've discovered plenty of other uses for Doubao in daily life. For instance, I turn my kids' drawings into polished artwork, then have them custom-produced through Taobao. They're absolutely thrilled:

And for Crossing readers — the most perceptive, earliest-to-sense-change cohort of founders, tech geeks, and AI practitioners out there — these AI-driven shifts tend to arrive earlier, cut deeper, and manifest more concretely in everyday life.

Which is precisely why they deserve to be documented.

At this inflection point, Crossing is teaming up with Doubao to put something meaningful into motion:

A living record of 2025, co-created by all of us.

Not grand narratives, but the most ordinary, most authentic fragments from each of our lives:

That small problem Doubao helped you solve. That moment of surprise. That unexpectedly touching reply. That tiny decision that rewired your habits.

These seemingly inconsequential moments will, in retrospect, compose the true texture of this era.

📌 How to Participate

Submit one true story of you and Doubao in 2025 + one image (screenshot/photo) or video.

The story can be funny, tender, absurd, or full of contrast — but it must be real.

↓↓ Scan to submit ↓↓

📌 What We'll Build Together

We'll curate 20 stories into 2025: My Doubao and Me — a collection of real, everyday moments.

Selected contributors will receive a piece of Crossing merch as a token of having participated in this act of era-defining documentation.

The final pages of 2025 are turning.

Let's turn them with Doubao — and make sure they're legible.

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🎁

Selected contributors will receive a new piece of Crossing merch: a "Hands Dirty Club" sweatshirt.

The design comes from one of the most popular guests ever to appear on the Crossing podcast: Vanessa, who joined us for "The AI Product Manager's Guide: Who I Am, Where I Came From, Where I'm Going — ByteDance AI Product Lead Vanessa on Lessons from Interviewing 100 AI PMs."

"Get Your Hands Dirty" — in the AI era, it's an exhortation to roll up your sleeves and start building. It's a phrase Vanessa and I both love, and it carries a particular romance right now. It represents the step from bystander to creator — not waiting for perfect preparation, not fearing chaos and uncertainty, but reaching in and giving shape to a half-formed idea.

Today, action itself is the barrier to entry. Only when you actually start working with your hands does AI become real in your grasp: a small tool, an automated workflow, a bit of trial and error — any of these can unlock entirely new possibilities. The line reminds us: the future isn't thought into existence. It's built.