👋 Hey Sumo-lings!

I’m Ahmad Salameh, founder of PenPilot AI.

I built PenPilot because I write a lot, and I couldn’t find an AI writing tool that truly worked for me. Everything I tried either gave me bland drafts, or forced me to bounce between five different apps just to get one piece of content finished. That’s when I decided to build something better.

✨ Why did I build it?

Honestly, I was frustrated. Writing takes time, and AI tools I tried didn’t make it easier — they just made me rewrite everything. I wanted a tool that could actually help me write from idea to draft to polished content, while keeping me in control the whole way.

🔥 What makes PenPilot different?

It’s interactive. You don’t just hit “generate” and cross your fingers. With PenPilot, you can reference your own material for accuracy, create custom AI personas that match your brand voice, and guide the AI as it writes. The built-in editor has AI commands, text auto-completion, proofreading, readability, and plagiarism checks, plus integrated AI chat so you can brainstorm without leaving your flow. And because content isn’t complete without visuals, we added AI image generation too.

💡 Why should you care?

Because writing is hard, and most AI tools make it harder by spitting out content that feels off. PenPilot helps you go from idea to polished draft — with images included — while staying in the driver’s seat. Faster, sharper, and more on brand.

What started as me solving my own writing struggles has turned into a tool our early users love, and now I’m excited to share it with the AppSumo community. I can’t wait to see how you’ll use PenPilot AI to make your writing easier and your content better.

What are past projects, failures, or successes you’ve had in your career?

It’s been a journey.

I started out in frontend development, then moved into backend development, later shifted into web security, and eventually found my way into UI and UX design. Each step gave me a new perspective — from building strong foundations, to keeping things secure, to creating tools that are actually enjoyable to use.

I wish I had a cool failure story to share, but honestly, PenPilot AI is my first startup. Instead of failures, it’s been long nights, lots of experimenting, and pouring everything I’ve learned into building the kind of AI writing tool I always wished existed.

PenPilot AI is the result of that journey.

What 3rd party tools is your product critically dependent on?

Our product currently depends on OpenAI’s GPT models (ChatGPT) as the core engine for content generation. In the near future, we plan to expand support to other leading AI platforms such as Google Gemini and Anthropic’s Claude to ensure flexibility, reliability, and access to the best AI models available.

Where is your customer data stored?

All customer data is stored securely on AWS infrastructure in the US East (Virginia, USA) region. We rely on AWS’s enterprise-grade security, encryption, and compliance standards to ensure that your data is safe, highly available, and scalable.

What is your current monthly recurring revenue (MRR)?

~250$

How many customers do you have today?

We have a total of 2328 users today!

What’s the origin of the idea for your product?

The idea for PenPilot AI came from my own experience as a developer who had to create content for products, websites, and communities. I was juggling too many tools. AI for ideas, editors for writing, separate checkers for proofreading and plagiarism, and none of them worked together in a smooth way.

I wanted something simple: one place where I could go from idea to finished content without switching tabs a hundred times. So I built PenPilot AI. It started as a tool for myself, but the more I used it, the more I realized others needed the same thing. That’s what makes me passionate about it, seeing people save time, stay in control of their writing, and actually enjoy the process.

What problem is your product solving and how?

PenPilot AI solves the biggest problem with AI writing tools: they often take over and spit out generic content that’s hard to edit and doesn’t sound like you.

What sets PenPilot apart is its interactive process. You stay in control while the AI helps at every step, from drafting long-form articles to polishing with proofreading, readability, and plagiarism checks. You can reference your own materials for accuracy, set up custom AI personas for your brand voice, and even generate images right inside the editor.

We believe the future of writing isn’t by AI, but with AI!

What’s the #1 thing you’re looking to gain from the AppSumo campaign?

The #1 thing we’re looking to gain from the AppSumo campaign is feedback from real users. PenPilot AI has been built hand-in-hand with a small group of early adopters, but to truly shape it into the best interactive AI writing tool out there, we need insights from a wider community of creators, marketers, and businesses.

Alongside feedback, we’re also hoping to gain word-of-mouth momentum. AI writing tools are everywhere, but PenPilot AI is different, and the more people who experience that difference firsthand, the more the community can grow.

What are your plans with the customers, cash, and learnings from the AppSumo campaign?

Honestly, my plan is simple: keep building and improving PenPilot. I use it every day myself, and I love seeing it get better with each update. If hundreds of other people also enjoy using it and find it helpful in their daily writing, that’s a huge win for me.

Any details to clarify about the deal?

There are just a couple of limits to clarify:

Knowledge-based sources → This refers to how many documents you can reference at the same time so the AI can pull from them and generate more accurate, on-brand content.

AI words per month → This is the number of AI text completion words you get each month while writing.