I'm a bit intimidated by the long list of things this app is trying to do.
Is it a project management tool? If so, how do I share everything with my team? Project management tools are defined by their collaboration and workflow features.
Is it a journaling tool? If so I absolutely don't want my team in the tool, and so can't use it for project management. How does it encourage me to do better journaling and build the habit?
Is it a wellbeing tool? How well does that work if I don't put my project management in there? If I can't use it for half the stuff it's intended that I will, then it might be of limited use.
Is it a coaching tool? Why would I want to use an AI coach over a mentor or human coach?
Is the AI required? I have no idea how many tokens I'd need to use something like this? Do I need a million a day or a million a year? (When coding I tend to use ~10-50m input tokens per session, will this cost $500 per day to use?) If the AI features are optional, what is the product without it?
Overall my feedback is that there's a lot here, and I think the product needs a much clearer story. The copy on the site is long and rambling and needs a lot of tightening up. Personality is good, but in moderation.
I love the vision. From what I can tell, you're building something that I think should exist and we have the technology for now. I think we need a place to put our 3, 5, 10 year goals, and some kind of process to keep us on track for that. And it's so personal, of course the LLM aspect needs to be local-only.
One concern I have is that I think I will need more than an empty "add Journal entry" nudge or prompt. I think I would want what a real coach would do/say. Something like, "How's the meditation/exercise/calling friends/making stuff going?"
Calendar is central, but I use a Google calendar which is important to me. Connect it?
Seems like a "dlog" is a calendar entry. So is my "journal" broken up into separate pages, not a sequential document or blog?
2:30 ff, strongly suggest that for your next video you pre-script it to avoid fumbling and mumbling.
5:10 side note, interesting that your personality(?) model was from 2018, well before LLMs.
7:50 for an app to produce such output (impact of a friend on mood) you surely must do a copious amount of extremely frank journaling. When, and in what format? As scattered calendar entries? I'm confused how I fuel the app.
10:40 relating diary entries (reported activities and attitudes) to one's stated goals -- this is what I would expect an AI to do, and tell me about them rather than the reverse.
I'm sorry, I just don't see how I could use or adapt to something like this when I have a well-established diary/blog and calendar, it would mean changing many daily habits and adding what looks like a lot of detail work.
I like the concept, but I bailed at "GPT 5". The only thing that has given me peace of mind and the ability to journal honestly and successfully is Obsidian, because it lets me own my data (as text files).
First comment: I freaking love your privacy policy. Seriously. Great job!
Second: I haven't downloaded it yet because my itsatrap.gif warning bells are going off about pricing. On a scale of free to kidney, what are we looking at here? Is this going to be priced for end users, or will it look closer to an enterprisey kind of plan?
Can you let me know what would reduce the warning bells regarding the itsatrap.gif? Like, what gave you that impression? Really need to get this right.
For general users it's free for 14 days with 10K free tokens; then its 1.99 per month at the moment.
However, if you or HN readers that DM me or email me with the email they register with, I'll give a free perpetual license so there's no monthly fee; and add 1 million tokens.
Thanks again for the feedback, I'm glad you liked the privacy policy! :))
Oh! That's pretty reasonable. It's just that I've seen so many slick looking tools that go for waaaaaaayyyyy more than I'd ever personally consider paying for them, like "use AI to sort your CD collection for only $29.95 per month! For only a cup of coffee a day, you could have perfect sorting!"
Do you support Bring Your Own Key (BYOK)? If I'm the first to ask, I'm 100% certain I won't be the last. That a standard question we get from our own customers.
That might've been an exaggerated example, but only a little! I've seen lots of tools add AI as a feature and immediately jack their prices.
Sure, lots of apps do that. For example, Zed (https://zed.dev/docs/ai/llm-providers) has a subscription plan but alternatively will let you plug in your own key and then provide the same features free of charge.
Also, I added the pricing to the home page; hopefully this reduces those warning bells! Thanks so much, I hadn't considered that that would be a barrier.
Should include systems requirements on the download - I got a grumpy MacOS message about needing to do an OS update to run it. It's not a big deal but little frictional hiccups like that results in invisible abandonment.
I'm a bit intimidated by the long list of things this app is trying to do.
Is it a project management tool? If so, how do I share everything with my team? Project management tools are defined by their collaboration and workflow features.
Is it a journaling tool? If so I absolutely don't want my team in the tool, and so can't use it for project management. How does it encourage me to do better journaling and build the habit?
Is it a wellbeing tool? How well does that work if I don't put my project management in there? If I can't use it for half the stuff it's intended that I will, then it might be of limited use.
Is it a coaching tool? Why would I want to use an AI coach over a mentor or human coach?
Is the AI required? I have no idea how many tokens I'd need to use something like this? Do I need a million a day or a million a year? (When coding I tend to use ~10-50m input tokens per session, will this cost $500 per day to use?) If the AI features are optional, what is the product without it?
Overall my feedback is that there's a lot here, and I think the product needs a much clearer story. The copy on the site is long and rambling and needs a lot of tightening up. Personality is good, but in moderation.
I love the vision. From what I can tell, you're building something that I think should exist and we have the technology for now. I think we need a place to put our 3, 5, 10 year goals, and some kind of process to keep us on track for that. And it's so personal, of course the LLM aspect needs to be local-only.
One concern I have is that I think I will need more than an empty "add Journal entry" nudge or prompt. I think I would want what a real coach would do/say. Something like, "How's the meditation/exercise/calling friends/making stuff going?"
Questions while watching the video.
Calendar is central, but I use a Google calendar which is important to me. Connect it?
Seems like a "dlog" is a calendar entry. So is my "journal" broken up into separate pages, not a sequential document or blog?
2:30 ff, strongly suggest that for your next video you pre-script it to avoid fumbling and mumbling.
5:10 side note, interesting that your personality(?) model was from 2018, well before LLMs.
7:50 for an app to produce such output (impact of a friend on mood) you surely must do a copious amount of extremely frank journaling. When, and in what format? As scattered calendar entries? I'm confused how I fuel the app.
10:40 relating diary entries (reported activities and attitudes) to one's stated goals -- this is what I would expect an AI to do, and tell me about them rather than the reverse.
I'm sorry, I just don't see how I could use or adapt to something like this when I have a well-established diary/blog and calendar, it would mean changing many daily habits and adding what looks like a lot of detail work.
I don't do subscription based apps as a matter of principle if it has no business being a subscription based app
You may enjoy the 2024 Hugo winning short story, "Better Living Through Algorithms": https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/kritzer_05_23/
I like the concept, but I bailed at "GPT 5". The only thing that has given me peace of mind and the ability to journal honestly and successfully is Obsidian, because it lets me own my data (as text files).
First comment: I freaking love your privacy policy. Seriously. Great job!
Second: I haven't downloaded it yet because my itsatrap.gif warning bells are going off about pricing. On a scale of free to kidney, what are we looking at here? Is this going to be priced for end users, or will it look closer to an enterprisey kind of plan?
Hey kstrauser, thanks for the first comment!
Can you let me know what would reduce the warning bells regarding the itsatrap.gif? Like, what gave you that impression? Really need to get this right.
For general users it's free for 14 days with 10K free tokens; then its 1.99 per month at the moment.
However, if you or HN readers that DM me or email me with the email they register with, I'll give a free perpetual license so there's no monthly fee; and add 1 million tokens.
Thanks again for the feedback, I'm glad you liked the privacy policy! :))
Oh! That's pretty reasonable. It's just that I've seen so many slick looking tools that go for waaaaaaayyyyy more than I'd ever personally consider paying for them, like "use AI to sort your CD collection for only $29.95 per month! For only a cup of coffee a day, you could have perfect sorting!"
Do you support Bring Your Own Key (BYOK)? If I'm the first to ask, I'm 100% certain I won't be the last. That a standard question we get from our own customers.
OMG that's ridiculous. I will definitely look closely at integrating BYOK. Do you have an app that uses BYOK?
That might've been an exaggerated example, but only a little! I've seen lots of tools add AI as a feature and immediately jack their prices.
Sure, lots of apps do that. For example, Zed (https://zed.dev/docs/ai/llm-providers) has a subscription plan but alternatively will let you plug in your own key and then provide the same features free of charge.
Also, I added the pricing to the home page; hopefully this reduces those warning bells! Thanks so much, I hadn't considered that that would be a barrier.
Should include systems requirements on the download - I got a grumpy MacOS message about needing to do an OS update to run it. It's not a big deal but little frictional hiccups like that results in invisible abandonment.