I bought into the hype a few years ago with linking apps but quickly grew tired of spinners and steep learning curves, so I started over with a text box and my HTML skills from twenty years ago. Then Chatgpt came out, giving me the tools to add a bit of magic and dig into my stance on simplicity even more.
I'd love to get a few more people testing. HN may not be the target user, but it's the best crowd for feedback.
Grug Notes is an effort I've been able to fit in after my kid goes to sleep. As someone who is not always on a computer for my work, I became disillusioned with Roam Research, Coda, and Notion. I have no ambition to build a big company, but a cash-flowing saas sounds nice.
Building this has been a source of flow and optimism when the rest of my life has been chaos. My entire career and current business is building carbon fiber outrigger canoes, but competing against good products made in China is nearly impossible. I've tried for 17 years. I may try for 17 more. But it's also very realistic that without some diversification into aerospace or tech, my days as a small business owner in manufacturing may be numbered. My last three years have not gone as planned personally and professionally, and the reality is that I've used programming as some form of escapism. I've enjoyed it and will keep working on Grug Notes indefinitely, but with my daughter starting pre-school next week and my regular business needing my attention, I'm at an inflection point. It's probably time I push to move beyond seven paying customers so I'm not paying server bills out of pocket. :)
Anyway, I'd love for anyone to take a look, and I am happy to answer any questions about Grug Notes or canoes!
You don't want search and information extraction to be powered by a certain algorithm that is measurably better at this than other algorithms?
Is it okay that this product uses timsort or you're only ok with quicksort?
A diversity of viewpoints is healthy for discussion, and diversity yeilds a healthy and robust eco-system.
Not all of us drink deep of the Kool-"AI"d. So far it's main application appears to be give marketing something to annoy the snot out out you with.
Grug Notes is good case of applying LLMs — organizing information — which is far superior than previous algorithms (try extracting entities with regexps or previous NLP models). It also doesn't really do over-the-top BS advertising of its AI features. But no, let's dismiss it because "AI".
There's the whole thread of comments, but so far there's not a single comment (including yours!) explaining their point of view apart from "I don't like AI", "I don't like AI marketing", "I think it would be slow because I see 'AI'" or "this part of the software was not made by or is run by the same person who made the software".
Reminder an algorithm is a finite sequence of mathematically rigorous instructions, which is why we can in fact meaningfully talk about the performance of timsort or quicksort. Not only is "Grug AI" not measurably better, it isn't even measurable in the first place. Not just to me, but not even to the guy who runs the website.
In a note taking system it seems quite natural that one wants precision, transparency and full control and not use a technology that by design cannot accurately distinguish what even exists in my notes in the first place and what doesn't.
Furthermore, the original "grug developer brain" essay argued about reducing complexity. Despite the name, slapping AI on a simple note taking editor makes it very non-grug.
As for third-party: almost everything is third-party online. I agree with that if you don't want to use software using third party services (be it AWS/GCloud or OpenAI), you shouldn't use it (I don't, I keep my notes locally). But that's now what the comment said.
Notes are personal. I don't want my notes online at all, let alone being feed into a language model likely managed by a third party that feeds them into it.
Same with semantic search.
I keep my notes in text files. But I understand that LLMs are better for powering the features Grug Notes provides than other algorithms, even if they are non-deterministic.
The GP was clear at what they don't want.
Using the following words for simplicity, not to be inflammatory;
It typically amounts to "AI stinky" or "I don't want big brother to have my data"
I consider "AI stinky" variants invalid because this is one of many software development paradigms. simply because the market is overhyped, it doesn't mean that all applications are automatically useless.
"big brother" fails to consider the incremental big-brotherness. we, when using tools like this, expose our data already. The incremental risk from an LLM provider seems small.
> end-to-end (...) encryption add friction
How?
> And we're building canoes over here, not storing nuclear codes.
The good old "I have nothing to hide."
I understand that on hn it's good karma to be a privacy-absolutist, but I think in the space of note taking apps, surely, there is enough product to let makers who are slightly more flexible cook?
Why would I login before even knowing what it is?
I like the logo, though!
Shucks. That's an error.
Please try again, and if you continue to get this message, contact support.
Whatever you did, it loads now - cheers :-)
Initial Feedback 1. Search is easy 2. Can start quickly on notes 3. Too many CTA's and actions in single screen - so a little confusing 4. Find/create looks same as search - whats the difference?
1. It's been fun to implement. Always room for improvement, formatting results is up there. But surprisingly good with simple keywords and rag. There is some fun NLP in there, like filtering by date or navigating to that day if you just type a date. And doing rag only for questions.
2. Yep, high priority -- for me it's the small things like bringing focus to the text area by default, etc.
3. Absolutely. I'm into density and packing as much onto the screen as possible, so I ultimately have to click around as little as possible. But you're right; it's confusing. I occupy this weird space, being super nerdy but also wanting ridiculous simplicity, though not in a super consumer way. Wanting to stick to plain text, for example, markdown, etc, but also targeting smb and tradespeople is an odd path. My dad, of all people, had the same feedback. :)
4. Search/ask is for looking in your notes. Find/create is more like: I know this prompt/entity exists or add it. It's mostly a direct search for the 'prompt' names or entities and a shortcut to adding blocks to your day. For example, if you're having a meeting with a person or company and don't want to clutter your daily notes. Or even my changelog, I hit ctrl-k 2x, type chan, hit tab to get 'changelog', enter, and type away. It's also the only current way to find out what prompts are in your account. Still, very worth exploring if there's a clean way to get rid of find/create. I suppose there could just be an 'add block' button, and then you can pick your prompt on creation. Simpler UI, but I'm also not convinced it's entirely better. Probably worth trying, I'm sure there'll be a time I can circle back to iterate on it. Development is mostly dictated by what's most annoying at this point.
And regarding the intermittent errors during this hn post, I think it was my db max connection django setting causing issues. Reset back to the default of 0, and it's been good so far.
I do keep thinking long form audio and diarization would get me something practical more smb and trades people would consider using.
My original personal desire was to replace my use of roam research which is not the most consumer friendly. Not sure how long I can stay focused on plain text without staying super niche, but sticking with it for now. :)
I love the idea of not having to worry about tags to keep notes organized. Nice work!
As a pwa, it'd be a bit annoying since it'll have to ask you every time to geolocate. At least, I think it's the same as mic access.
So if I write down “Bob’s first kid’s name is John” it will segment that note into a section about “Friends and Relationships,” but if I write down “FAST Stroke Acronym = Face Arms Speech Time” that note will get segmented into “Medical Knowledge”.
And then having some way to explore that graph of notes would be super cool.
But yeah, there is lots of room for improvement -- I'm such a minimalist when it comes to notes, there's a narrow band of use cases I feel like it's good for at this point. I've never tried to organize actual deep knowledge with an app.
Also while it may be a form of escapism there is a stark difference between shipping something while learning new (valuable) skills, and tinkering with a novel under your desk indefinitely. Kudos on getting to that next step!
Grug notes, lowest-friction option: whatever the native notes app is on the platform you most often have around to take or refer to notes (probably your phone).
It’s unfortunate that people on here have to post the same tired complaints on every side project people share. It’s fine, you don’t need the stuff they’re asking for. They’re not your target customers and they don’t seem to understand that. Plenty of others are upvoting the submission itself, keep on keeping on.