Announcing LADLE.
MARCH 2026 · FOUNDING POSTWe opened subscriptions today. One product, one price, one specific commitment: $8 of every $20 becomes ten meals through the World Food Programme, published monthly with a reference number.
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 routed to the UN World Food Programme via ShareTheMeal at $0.80 per meal — a minimum of ten meals per subscription per month, with a public receipt.
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 receipts. Not "we support hunger relief". Not "a portion of proceeds". A specific transfer amount, a specific meal count at a specific per-meal cost, a specific reference number issued by ShareTheMeal, published on a public URL the day the transfer clears. You can email WFP's donor support with the reference number and verify it yourself.
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 fund 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 receipts. If a decision makes the receipts easier to trust, it's easier to make. If a decision makes them harder to trust, it doesn't happen. The whole company is a wrapper around that mechanism.
Signup is open now. First receipts publish end of March.