How AI Killed My Assignment Business — And Pushed Me to Build an All-in-One Writing Workspace

Tushar Anand — Fri, 27 Feb 2026 04:43:58 +0000

Two year ago, I was helping students complete assignments manually.

Researching topics.
Structuring essays.
Editing drafts.
Formatting citations.

It was a service business built around solving academic chaos.

Then AI arrived.

And the entire model collapsed almost overnight.

When ChatGPT Became the Competition

Once tools like ChatGPT became mainstream, students didn’t need manual help anymore.

They could:

Generate essays in seconds

Get instant explanations

Rewrite content automatically

The demand for traditional assignment services dropped fast.

At first, it felt like disruption.

Then I realized it was evolution.

As a Developer, I Noticed Something

While running that business, I was also coding.

And in development workflows, we had tools like:

GitHub Copilot

AI code assistants

Inline documentation tools

Everything lived inside the IDE.

No constant tab switching.
No copying from one place to another.
No breaking flow.

That’s when I saw the real problem in academic writing.

The Problem Wasn’t AI. It Was Fragmentation.

Students weren’t struggling because AI didn’t exist.

They were struggling because their workflow looked like this:

Open ChatGPT

Open Google Scholar

Open citation generator

Open paraphrasing tool

Open plagiarism checker

Copy. Paste. Edit. Repeat.

That’s not productivity.

That’s context-switching chaos.

Developers would never tolerate that kind of workflow.

Why should students?

So I Built What I Wish Existed

Instead of competing with AI…

I decided to orchestrate it.

I built ASimplify Lab under Assignments Simplify.

The idea was simple:

One academic writing workspace.
Everything integrated.
Zero tab switching.

What It Does

Inside a single editor, students can:

Research academic papers

Break down complex sources instantly

Generate structured content

Insert references properly

Refine and humanize AI-generated text

All in one place.

Not an “essay generator.”

A workflow system for academic writing.

Lessons I Learned

If AI disrupts you, build with it — not against it.

You won’t outcompete foundational AI models.

But you can build better workflows around them.

The real moat is user experience.

AI is becoming commoditized.
Good workflow design is not.

Context switching kills productivity.

Reducing friction is more powerful than adding features.

Why I’m Sharing This

If you’re building in the AI space, especially in education:

Don’t just build “another AI tool.”

Build around how people actually work.

That’s where the leverage is.

If you’re curious about what I’m building, you can check out ASimplify Lab here:

ASimplify — The AI Document Editor for Students | Write, Cite & Edit Smarter

Write, research, cite, and edit — all in one AI-powered editor built for students. Like Google Docs, but with AI built in.

assignmentssimplify.com

I’m still iterating and would genuinely appreciate feedback from fellow builders.

—

Tushar Anand
Builder, ASimplify Lab

DEV Community: Tushar Anand

How AI Killed My Assignment Business — And Pushed Me to Build an All-in-One Writing Workspace

ASimplify — The AI Document Editor for Students | Write, Cite & Edit Smarter