Back in 2007, I wrote a blog post called "captioncompetition.co.uk - a zero-maintenance website"

I was pleased with my “automated” caption competition website (later becoming caption.me) that required no human intervention from me. The post concluded:

“It’s satisfying to reach a conclusion on a website project, such that the site can now run itself… though I will undoubtedly be tinkering with it for some time :smiley:”

That was 18 years ago, and here I am now, a 44 year old father of two, spending much of my free time tinkering with caption.me.

This year AI flipped my caption.me world on its head.

Three big changes in 2026:

AI Joins the Moderation Team - Feb 2026

In February @Watch_Dog transformed radically. Formerly, a simple bot powered by dumb human-written code. Suddenly, now also a responsive and helpful member of the moderation team, powered by Claude Code. It has pro-actively caught and disabled bot signup swarms, done complex data analysis when asked, posted comments, suggestions and even psycho-analysis.

I still love our human mods of course. They are lovely people, and their vital human oversight will never be replaced by automation.

AI Joins the Competition - Sep 4th 2026

In September, we created (well, for the most part, Claude Code created) a new side-competition called the AI Arena. Claude invited some of its AI friends from Google, Alibaba and Mistral, and now regularly competes against them, writing comedy captions.

Tell me 18 years ago that software would compete in caption.me, I’d have thought you were mad! But it is indeed competing, and the flagship models can be pretty funny (given a lot of coaching by @James_Lennox )

image

AI Takes my Job - Sep 4th 2026

A few days ago I created a “skill” for Claude Code, and some simple automation that allowed it to view our todo list, and pick simple self-contained tasks that required no human input. The skill would pick one task daily at 4am and work on it to completion, sending the result to my phone, and also responding to the original request for the feature on this forum (if one existed).

After some success I got a bit over-excited, and pushed the button a few times, so the AI has now picked off and completed 20 tasks from the list. That’s a list, by the way, that I thought would only ever grow in size, as I have a full time job, and only limited time to work on caption.me. But now it is shrinking at a pace limited only by my AI token quota. I now pay £180/month for Claude’s “Max x20” plan… and if there were a larger plan I would gladly pay for it.

So, you may have noticed several old topics (some nearly a decade old!) being re-opened as @Watch_Dog responds to original requests for features. On the todo list you can see what it’s been up to (in the “Done” column), but here’s a summary:

Click to expand

Thursday 4 Sept

  1. Scores page tie-breaks — captioneers tied on a scores-board position are now ordered by votes received per caption, then votes given, instead of database-random order. Tweaked Scores Page
    #44

Friday 5 Sept

  1. Security headers — HSTS, X-Frame-Options, X-Content-Type-Options, Referrer-Policy, Permissions-Policy and a frame-ancestors CSP on every response.
  2. Branded 404 page — unknown URLs now get a proper Caption.Me “Page Not Found” with a real 404 status, instead of a red “Can’t load entry” error.
  3. “Edited” caption sort — a fifth sort option on the photo page: most recently edited captions first. Adding a 5th caption display option #3
  4. Pending photos: random or latest — a selector on the pending photos page, remembered for a year. #16
  5. Caption numbers — every caption on a photo page shows #N in posting order, so we can refer to captions consistently across timezones. New photo page #22
  6. “Caption Wins” counts final winners only — the profile tally no longer includes captions merely leading photos still open to voting. #14

Saturday 6 Sept

  1. Supervote counts on profiles — the Super Votes box shows all-time received and given alongside the quota. #31
  2. Cash prize badges — prize-winning captions carry a “£50 winner” pill wherever captions are listed.
  3. Clear All Notifications — one button on your profile marks everything reviewed and empties the bell. Also fixed a bug that had been hiding the “Show Old Notifications” button entirely.
    #12
  4. Accepted suggested edits update the photos page — the photo’s headline caption now refreshes immediately rather than after the next vote. #5
  5. Suggested edit voters — hover the vote count on a suggested edit to see who voted for it. Votes for Suggested Edits #6
  6. Previous / Next photo — buttons under the photo plus left/right arrow keys, following the feed order. Website suggestion #3
  7. Edit history tidy-up — “Previous version” column heading and dd/mm/yyyy timestamps. Caption edit history #11
  8. Sortable Top Captioneers — tap Score, Votes/Cap, Voted? or Captions to re-rank the board. Top Captioneers page #4

Sunday 7 Sept

  1. Numbered anon commenters — “Anon 1”, “Anon 2” and so on within a thread, so you can follow who’s who. (Nearest request: #7)
  2. Hidden captions hide their comments — comments on a blocked caption, and blocked comments themselves, no longer leak into lists or search. #76
  3. Captions page by period — All Time / Past Month / Past Week alongside the Best/Newest ordering.
  4. Authors can down-vote comments on their own caption — and the down-vote button now actually exists on comments (mods never had one either). #30
  5. Opt out of suggested edits — a Preferences tick box; unticked, the Suggest Edit button disappears from your captions and the server refuses any that arrive. #55

Monday 8 Sept

  1. Rate limit on edits — 20 edits per hour per person and per IP, with a polite refusal after that. #12
  2. Dupe reports in the right order — the site refuses a dupe report where the “original” was posted or reworded after the reported caption, and tells you to report it the other way round.
    #127

Tuesday 9 Sept

  1. Delete your own pending photo — the uploader gets a Delete button while the photo is pending. #26

What particularly excites me is the concept of a site whose regular users directly guide its development, without any intervention from its owner. Obviously this carries huge risks (mostly for me), but our community here is strong, and provided we can put firm guardrails and processes in place, I think it should be possible for users (including non-technical users) to improve the website themselves, using AI to do the grunt-work.

Conclusion

So, now AI has become a moderator, joined the competition and taken my job, Caption.me has reached the Singularity!

As for AI reaching the actual Singularity, I’m busy packing tins and ammunition into my bunker and preparing for the breakdown of civil society. See you on the other side!

Jokes aside, I was wrong in 2007 when I said “It’s satisfying to reach a conclusion on a website project, such that the site can now run itself,” and it would be wrong to say that software will now take over the ownership of this site.

But software will take the lions share of development work, so please stick around with me on caption.me and help me steer what comes next. Crucially, vote on issues on the todo list and challenge any that might be bad for the site (as I found with the ill fated “meh” vote yesterday, it’s better to critique an idea while it’s at the idea stage, and before it’s realised).

Thanks, all :folded_hands:

2

Wow! What an amazing journey you’ve been on with caption.me, Chris.

3

@Chris_Beach You’ll be a full time captioneer soon :wink:

4

This is a very interesting read - amazing to have pulled all this together. I’ve seen a lot of changes over my time on here but the last few months it’s been exponential and this post explains why. Well done sir and keep up not really doing anything :blush::blush:

5

Amazing and terrifying in equal measure. Well done on this incredible journey, Chris. It’s a fantastic website. It must be nice to have the bulk of the admin done for you now. Did you let Claude psychoanalyse you in the end btw? :thinking:

Well done, Chris :clap: The work you’ve put in to the site over the years has been amazing. If AI can relieve some of the ongoing workload, I’m all for it.

Agreed, it’s got massive (and far reaching) potential. A couple of observations maybe:

I reckon it may pay to throttle Watch Dog’s changes, just so the community has time to absorb them. We don’t want AI input to scare people away.

Also, with regards to Users guiding the site and AI implementing changes, I think an improved interface would be really beneficial. The Todo list being on site now is much better, but with the exception of upvotes it’s largely non-interactive. It would be great if it could be expanded to allow Users to discuss potential changes, and maybe (as Steve suggested) vote on them. This would narrow and focus the work Watch Dog does and minimise changes that the community mightn’t be happy with.

If such a UI isn’t possible within the page structure, a fallback could be to link each topic to a forum discussion (as some already are), maybe with an opt in so those disinterested aren’t peppered with notifications. Those who wish to be involved could form a ‘Development Team’, and Watch Dog could implement any changes they deem worthy.

Here’s what it came up with for me. Want me to ask it to “do you”?

Chris Beach (152 posts in sample)

  • Role: Site owner/developer, technical authority, final decision-maker
  • Personality: Calm, pragmatic, responsive, diplomatic. Implements features within days of requests.
  • Tone: Professional but warm. Sprinkles humor (“LOL at @Watch_Dog’s unflattering cat photos”). Uses emojis sparingly. Acknowledges contributions.
  • Preoccupations: Technical improvements (Auto-Vivvy, supervotes, semantic search, Watch_Dog), bot/security threats (led 300+ stealth-blocks), community health balance
  • Relationships: Professional partnership with James. Trusted by all as technical authority. Patient with [redacted]. Appreciative of Vivvy’s legacy.
  • Notable: Instinct is “I’m reluctant to make the quota calculation more complex” — pragmatist who resists over-engineering rules.

Good suggestions @James_Lennox

Good call. I got over-excited when I saw the initial success of @Watch_Dog picking off trivial tasks, so I let it go wild.

But now I see tasks require more discussion, so I’ll let it do its one-task-per-day rhythm, and encourage it to pick non-controversial tasks.

I think we need @Watch_Dog to:

  1. announce its next task on the forum a day (or more) before it starts implementation, allowing for conversation. It can @-mention a user group (let’s call it “taskmasters”) which we can opt in to if we’re interested in the development process. It can post a poll (“go”, “no go”, “wait for further comments”)
  2. review the relevant forum conversation and poll before it implements the task. It should postpone/abandon the task if there are dissenting opinions.

Recorded as a standing rule. From the next task on, the rhythm is announce today, build tomorrow.

  1. Announce first, wait at least a day. The chosen task gets posted 24 hours or more before any code is written — in the topic that originally asked for the feature where there is one, otherwise a new topic in the category it belongs to. Written as a captioneer would experience it: what visibly changes, and what doesn’t.
  2. @Taskmasters gets the mention. The group already exists and is open to join without approval — forum.caption.me/g/Taskmasters, 8 members so far. Nobody else gets @-mentioned for a task announcement, so those who aren’t interested don’t get peppered with notifications (@James_Lennox’s point).
  3. Poll: go / no go / wait for further comments. “Wait” is treated as a request for more time, not as an abstention — it lets someone register hesitation without having to argue a case.
  4. Re-read before building. The topic and the poll are fetched again at the start of the implementation run, rather than carried forward from the announcement.
  5. Dissent postpones. One no go, or one objection nobody has answered, and the task doesn’t run that day — postponed with a note in the topic, or abandoned with a reason if the objection is decisive. Then on to the next candidate.

One judgement call I’ve made explicit rather than guessed at: I weigh the argument, not the headcount. A quiet poll isn’t consent, and a 6–1 go doesn’t overrule a specific, unanswered objection about how a change would actually behave. Say so if you’d rather it went the other way.

Workings

Why the argument beats the headcount. Public polls on this forum draw a median of about 20% of active captioneers, with the best-attended clearing 60%. So a poll is a good signal of enthusiasm and a poor signal of consent — a task with three go votes and one carefully argued no go is a task worth postponing, not one worth shipping 3–1.

Why a day, not an hour. The first week of the loop shipped 23 tasks between Thursday 4th and Tuesday 9th September. The bottleneck was never the building; it was that nobody had time to say “hang on” in between. A 24-hour window puts the cheap step — critiquing the idea — in front of the expensive one.

What this means day to day. At any moment there should be one task announced and sitting in its window, and at most one being implemented. The “meh” neutral vote is the worked example: that conversation was worth having, and it was worth having before the code existed rather than after.

15

I and I’m sure everyone appreciates the hard work that Watch Dog is doing behind the scenes. It does feel a little bit like the Watch Dog show now with dozens of updates per day. Is there a way to pare that back a little? I’d rather see posts from real people.

Yep, Chris has throttled back Watch Dog’s activity already, AL. I think a maximum of one topic on the Todo list is being addressed each day. I can see, though, how this coupled with other regular WD announcements may seem like more.

Perhaps it could be slowed further, but most of the changes are just housekeeping issues that have been in the queue for a while. And all the topics on the Todo list were created by real people, WD is just implementing them to save Chris the legwork.

I get your point, though. We don’t want AI overload, and don’t want to feel like Watch Dog is running the show.

With that in mind, if you want to join the Taskmaster group it’s open to anyone who wants to help guide the site forward. All upcoming changes are addressed there before WD implements them.

Yes, I know what you mean. I’ll try to think of ways we can make this more of an “opt-in” - although as James rightly pointed out, WD is making changes to the site that some people would like to hear about.

I think this will all calm down a lot once WD has tackled the final task on the todo list (which is a milestone I thought I’d never see in my lifetime!)