Hi HN, we're Stew and Stefan from Type (<a href="https://type.ai/">https://type.ai/</a>). We're building an AI-first document editor that helps you write. It's similar to Notion, but focused on building a solid authoring experience.<p>Here’s a general demo: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MpK9PWo0lUw">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MpK9PWo0lUw</a><p>And here’s a demo that includes math and code blocks: <a href="https://type.ai/code-math-demos">https://type.ai/code-math-demos</a><p>There are a lot of AI writing products out now, but we've found that most of them treat writing like a one-shot activity that should be delegated to AI. We don't think that's the optimal way to write. We think of great writing as the product of clear thinking, which requires a lot of time tinkering with and refining ideas. So we’re building a user-friendly document editor that puts the author front and center.<p>As you write in Type, you can press cmd+k to summon simple AI commands. Most of our commands are grounded in familiar writing primitives (ex. “Write paragraph”) and attempt to understand the context of your document.<p>Type supports multiple rich block types, including code and math and our commands are able to both interpret and output these block types. So if you're writing an introductory essay about machine learning, for example, you can use Type's chat feature to generate and refine equations and code blocks you'd like to include in your document. Once you’re satisfied with what Type has generated, you can drag and insert the block anywhere in your document (as seen in the demo video above).<p>We’ve also built a "what to write about next" feature in the document sidebar that offers suggestions on ideas you may consider adding to your document.<p>We’ve built some editor features that aren’t AI-specific but which we think make for an enjoyable authoring experience: (1) Type is built from the ground up to be offline-first. This means most interactions (search, loading documents, etc.) are instant; (2) Mobile support as installable PWA; (3) Keyboard shortcuts for the most useful commands; (4) Markdown copy/paste support.<p>We designed Type to be most useful for longer-form writing, so we encourage you to try it out in the context of something like an essay or a technical tutorial. If you try it out at <a href="https://type.ai">https://type.ai</a>, we’d love to hear what you think. We think Type feels pretty different from other AI writing tools that produce fairly shallow content, but would love to get your honest feedback on whether we're hitting the mark.<p>Each account comes with a free allocation of AI commands, after which you can activate a paid plan for unlimited AI usage (you can still create and access unlimited docs on the free plan). If you'd like some additional free credits, please just drop us a note at founders@type.ai and we'll refill your free credits.<p>We'd love your feedback on what feels helpful and what feels confusing or missing. Thanks!
First of all, good luck and the implementation looks pretty slick.<p>I relate to the other comments that (1) Explosion of AI generated blogs / copy etc is not what we need and it's hard to see the value of it long term (2) this looks like a simple usage on top of GPT4, no real IP / innovation - this is risky from a business model perspective.<p>Good luck!
1. *Not that special*
Honestly, this isn't too impressive. It's just a pump that sends a request to GPT-4 and gets a response. The buffer isn't anything extraordinary.<p>2. *Sectional content generation*
What's interesting is how you can format a prompt to give GPT-4 the context of a section. It then generates content relevant to that section and the overall document.<p>3. *Deciding what to write next*
It's cool that GPT-4 can analyze a document and suggest possible sections to expand upon. We can then choose which direction to take next.<p>4. *One-click content generation*
I like the idea of a simple button that generates context-appropriate content based on your current location in the document.<p>5. *Standardized text manipulation*
This approach offers a standardized way to select a region, generate a prompt, and manipulate text. You can shorten or lengthen it, change the timing, fix grammar issues, or even adapt it for posting on Twitter. It's a versatile method for content generation.
Congrats on the launch! Your product appears well-crafted and polished. I have a suggestion I'd love to share. As others have noted Type.ai doesn't seem to be highly differentiated from existing products like Notion AI, Lex, and many more. One intriguing direction to consider is focusing on knowledge organization and integration.<p>What if the AI can sort and use all the information in the system in their writing (bookmarked webpages, other notes and text in type..). For example, when you were demonstrating the launch blog post creation, you likely had plenty of related content saved in folders within the system. It would be great if the AI could organize and incorporate that material into the blog post.<p>Achieving this will require significant optimization and fine-tuning, but it could potentially create an interesting competitive advantage. Mem AI is moving in a similar direction, but not specifically for writing purposes.
Looks awesome! Congrats on the launch.<p>Just one small silly bit of feedback - in your demo video you show one of the use-cases as showing you coming up with fake user testimonials, maybe not the best use-case to show!
What I would pay for is the exact opposite of this.<p>I am not looking forward to being deluged by pages and pages of AI generated content that will surely be sent out by MBA types looking to make a name for themselves as visionaries and flooding my inbox.<p>What I want is a tool that reads documents or corporate memo or email and extracts the key message into a small paragraph or two.
I think the core idea is strong, but it's missing several features that could differentiate it as a product:<p>1) adding an "advanced" tab which enables the user to input more information about the document, e.g. formatting, length, etc...<p>2) learning the user's writing patterns and style - I'm not sure if this can be done by prompting, but my guess is that there are methods that you can use to steer the prose towards the user's default style<p>3) plagiarism detection - this would require a large document store and could be implemented using fuzzy/semantic search via Milvus followed by string matching<p>Keep up the good work.
This looks really cool! I think the UX around selecting a subpart of the text and asking it to rewrite that is very promising (also for stuff like code editing; it'd be awesome to have this built-in to your IDE, not sure if VS Code already has it).<p>My only worry with this is that I'm not sure what the long-term edge will be. This whole product looks a bit like just a feature that will soon be added to MS Office Word. I'd love to hear more from the authors about how they plan to differentiate themselves here.
I'm getting burned out on the AI stuff. Every day it's half the posts on the front page. Startups, tools, it's neverending. It's somewhere on the spectrum between huge hype and real paradigm shift, so it's not unexpected, and very possibly not unwarranted, just tiring. If I could go a week without hearing about ChatGPT and AI tools that would be nice.
congrats stew! (good to see you back with a new idea)<p>sooooo. this is a classic business strategy sort of thing. you, an AI startup, have to build Notion, faster than Notion can build AI features.<p>your work is cut out for you. i dont have any suggestions but would love to hear your thoughts on how to outcompete massive incumbents.
It certainly has potential, I like it. There are also possibilities for additional features like prompt repository etc. What doesn't work for me is the pricing... normally, one already pays for ChatGPT+ and ChatGPT APIs, and now this wants additional more than $20... I would consider it, if it would somehow use the chat window or APIs with my API key, and the software will be $10 max.
I've been using Type for a month now and it has really helped me. Its nice to just have a fully feature rich editor that is modernized with AI /ChatGPT too. Nice work to the team!
Two comments:<p>1. This should've been an addon/plugin for the top-5 most used text editors (Word, Google Docs), potentially also a plugin for WordPress/Drupal/Facebook/Twitter/Instagram, instead of a standalone text editor that nobody's going to download.<p>2. Looks like every YC startup now is going to be a thin wrapper around OpenAI's GPT endpoints. "Dump your ideas into this textbox and let the magical black box add some fluff". Things are going to get boring, old and non-original <i>very quickly</i>.
[A bit out of scope] I suspect that in pretty short time people will stop reading any texts from the Web.<p>And indeed, human got a good skill to skip ad blocks on pages.<p>Next will be any texts on web pages: why to bother reading stuff that AI throws on us?
I really really liked <a href="https://reflect.app" rel="nofollow">https://reflect.app</a> but needing an internet connection to access my notes is a miss for me. I don't need an app but I need something offline and locked down. I managed to replicate the experience of Reflect with Obsidian and several plugins such as a calendar, meetings and their canvas feature. I also don't even pay for syncing, I encrypt the vault (also a plugin) and keep the files in GDrive that I use and sync across devices.<p>I like this but would not pay for another note, bookmark, todo or markdown/rich text editor app service. Also arguably true to hn fashion someone could roll this or get very close as an obsidian or other widely used tool plugin in short time.<p>I also just checked reflect's page and they added a gpt4 prompt feature a couple weeks ago and you get all this for $10/mo. <a href="https://reflect.app/changelog" rel="nofollow">https://reflect.app/changelog</a>
The pricing is too high. There should be some option to use existing chatgpt subscription. No way, $29/month but maybe at $3-4 / month I could see myself using something like this. That said, I am not sure how far away is microsoft loop away from this given they are starting copilot option.
I've been using this company's product for a few weeks now and I'm really impressed with its ease of use and functionality. The team has clearly put a lot of thought into designing a tool that is both powerful and user-friendly.<p>That being said, I do need a dark mode and markdown syntax conversion.
I love the workflow! This is how I'm writing articles now with ChatGPT's GPT-4, just with less copy-pasting and all in one place, and fewer Markdown problems.<p>The two things I'm missing, or didn't find how to use:<p>1. GPT-4 :) I know the API isn't public yet, but the reasoning abilities of GPT-4 are so much better that I'm having a hard time arguing with GPT-3.<p>2. I have a long prompt I give to GPT-4 (context on our product, writing style guidelines, text examples for style, words to avoid, etc.). It's about two pages long, in addition to the request for the specific article or paragraph I'm writing. How should I incorporate that into Type's UI?<p>3. How do I import/export a whole article, or paragraphs, as Markdown? EDIT: Copy-paste. Lol, simpler than I expected.
It's something I would use, but pricing is way too steep. Compare WebStorm+Copilot, which is $17, and has a tangible benefit. Paying per usage might be better because a fixed $29/month might barely be used at all.<p>There's also more value on mobile because of how much slower it is to type on mobile. I can get close to typing at the speed of thought on a keyboard anyway. Something that types faster than the speed of thought means that it has to read my mind and get it accurate more often than not. Copilot works great because it's filling in blanks, but it hasn't done well for more creative forms of writing.
Can you add a library of documents? The model should use search to pad the prompt with relevant demonstration examples before generating the answer. It would be much easier to draw from a known library of text than just using raw GPT.
So basically you need to do the same amount of writing, except instead of practicing actual writing you are giving instructions to the computer. Good for spammers, but real writers don’t need this.
The paragraph-by-paragraph contextual help provided here makes the interaction with AI much smoother! Makes me think something like this would also be a natural fit for Jupyter notebooks.
The "unlimited" usage is interesting - will you be checking out the history of the top 10 or so users to see if anyone is using your text editor to train a smaller model?
Maybe I haven't been patient enough but I use chat gpt 4 all the time for code.<p>But to write real quality articles is quite hard to get right.<p>It uses a lot of words, but a lot of fluffy filler sentences.<p>With code it just seems to get me, especially V4. But with writing it's always off.<p>Maybe it's me or maybe they've just put a lot of time in training it on coding feedback, or maybe writing is harder because it's much more interpretable what a good article is.<p>In some cases I actually got better results writing with 3.5.
This tool is designed to make typing and editing documents faster, easier, and more intuitive than ever before.
One of the key features of HN: Type is its ability to use artificial intelligence to suggest and autocomplete words and phrases as you type. This means that you can write more quickly and accurately, with fewer errors and less need for manual correction. The system learns from your writing patterns over time, allowing it to make increasingly accurate suggestions that are tailored to your individual writing style.<p>Data curation involves creating valuable data for users engaged in discovery and data analysis. It includes gathering, maintaining, and managing data in databases or data warehouses to make it useful.<p><a href="<a href="https://techeela.com/data-curation/">Curated" rel="nofollow">https://techeela.com/data-curation/">Curated</a> data</a> characteristics include identifying signals, robust data management throughout the data cycle, and supporting data governance.
Yet another shitty text editor riding on the faith that the common verb name and the "ai" suffix will make stonks go up. Delusional. And people say "AI" will somehow lead to good things...<p>Edit: Intense cryptobro "I have my own coin" energy
I don't know how it's get into YC. Is getting into YC now-a-days so easy.<p>EDIT: I've already built something like this for my personal blog (similar to ghost like editor). That was before GPT-3/4. Only thing remaining is to hook with GPT-4.
Can someone please explain as I truly don't understand: Are thin layers over an LLM considered valid startups now? What's the big deal? Half of the people on HN can build something better than this in a weekend.
The demo videos with different block types are super interesting. Assuming there are plans to add image blocks or other rich/dynamic media? Could see that being very powerful as new models are made accessible.
is there any demand for this? The market for human writing services seems small. Why do you expect people to pay for inferior AI writing when so few are paying humans to write or edit for them?
All the nay-sayers can go fuck themselves.<p>-<p>What about an AI built self-employment model.<p>--<p>What if you apply this to, say, making a decent self-shop for etsy-type users "Build me a hop using these product libs that I have made with descriptions and the picures" etc...
Now it is completely impossible to understand the meaning of mysterious definition "a solid authoring experience" because it's completely unclear who is the author.
Every day for the last few months I've been wishing I had a cabin in the woods with zero modern technology. A big shelf of books, my acoustic guitars and some comfy places to sleep.
While such tools may have their benefits, they also have significant drawbacks that could ultimately make the world a worse place.<p>Firstly, AI-powered document editors rely heavily on algorithms and pre-existing templates to generate content, which means that the output can lack creativity and originality. As a result, we risk losing the human touch and the ability to express unique perspectives and ideas that cannot be replicated by a machine.<p>Secondly, relying on AI to generate content can lead to a lack of accountability and transparency. It can be challenging to trace the source of information, and this could lead to widespread dissemination of false or biased information. This could have disastrous consequences, particularly in areas such as politics or finance.<p>Thirdly, AI-powered document editors could also lead to job loss and exacerbate existing societal inequalities. It's likely that many jobs that require writing skills could be automated, leading to significant job losses. This could particularly impact those who are already marginalized and disadvantaged.<p>In conclusion, while AI-powered document editors might seem like a convenient solution, it's essential to consider their potential downsides. In my opinion, it's crucial to maintain the role of humans in creating content, so we can preserve creativity, accountability, and fairness in our society.
This is unbelievable! I think Type will truly empower its users to write stunning prose with minimal effort. It's rare that something comes along that generates value for the VCs while also making the world a better place. The SFBA is very special -- no place else in the world could such great ideas come together with flawless execution. The creators of GPT missed the boat here; competing tech is really catching up.