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Launch HN: Muddy (YC S19) – Multiplayer browser for getting work done

252 pointsby lele0108about 1 year ago
Hey HN! This is Jimmy, Ron and Austa from Muddy (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;feelmuddy.com&#x2F;">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;feelmuddy.com&#x2F;</a>). Muddy is a browser for work that automatically keeps project files organized in the same place where you use and share them. Here’s a demo: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=tZr49aN3sjQ" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=tZr49aN3sjQ</a>. Download and try it out here: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;feelmuddy.com&#x2F;">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;feelmuddy.com&#x2F;</a>.<p>Building together in the past, we were incredibly frustrated with how much friction there is to get anything done on our computers. I was losing time everyday digging through chat logs looking for that one important link or breaking others out of flow by asking where something is.<p>Web apps promised to help us get more done—and they do, but each in its own silo, so there’s still a ton of redundancy to deal with. Every app has its own way of organizing files, its own notification inbox, its own search system. Conversations live everywhere and there isn’t a single view to see everything about a project. Remember when files simply lived in folders rather than the “cloud”?<p>We started dedicating time to organizing our files in shared docs and limiting new apps we used. This helped – but the second we didn’t stay on top of organization, links became stale and things got messy again.<p>Muddy started as a hack week project we built for ourselves—a single place to use web apps with others, but personalized for each user automatically. Everyone gets their own view for every project, designed around how they work.<p>Muddy users work on projects in spaces, which are like automatic tab groups. Users share apps (any site works—a Github PR, Figma file, Trello board—whatever you want) into the project’s shared timeline and Muddy automatically opens relevant tabs for you. It’s a single click to open up all the apps you need for the project.<p>Under the hood, Muddy works in the background to keep track of the timeline and uses a LLM to continuously organize apps and keep everything on to date. It considers signals like the popularity of a file, naming conventions, and conversations to figure out what’s relevant. So everyone is presented with an updated list of important tabs, without anyone lifting a finger. Our actual browser is based on Chromium.<p>When you need to revisit something from weeks ago, you can rewind the project timeline to that point in a single click. Apps open up in the timeline so you’ll see your files right away. For sites that don’t have built in collaboration features (like documentation), Muddy lets you do annotations directly on the website.<p>Projects sometimes get big and need to be broken up. Across all your spaces, Muddy can answer questions like ChatGPT, cite your files as sources, and return apps directly. This is possible since Muddy’s AI shares your browser and can use your authenticated apps locally (with privacy in mind).<p>Other browsers like Chrome and Arc focus on solo productivity with sharing as a bolt-on. We think productivity depends on how well you can work with others, and should be the first class consideration. And doing organizational work manually is unsustainable.<p>Muddy will have paid subscriptions for teams with additional features like shared passwords, team organization, custom shortcuts, and SSO management. Those aren’t built out yet and the base product will be free. No part of our revenue will come from data monetization.<p>We’d love for you to give Muddy a spin! You can download Muddy for Mac or Windows on our website and add others once inside: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;feelmuddy.com&#x2F;">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;feelmuddy.com&#x2F;</a>. We’ll be around to answer questions and look forward to any and all feedback!

42 comments

TIPSIOabout 1 year ago
The feature for sending messaging and posting comments to a tab is some pretty clever and creative UX. Seriously next level future stuff and congrats for just coming up with the concept.<p>I like that it&#x27;s all timeline based. For my use case, we currently use Front email thread and then link to a Shared Dropbox where we post everything (including links to like a Google Doc or webpage). I think having chronological bookmarks like you do would be clearly better. I also know many people who use Google Groups and Google Doc to document progress too -- which I think would be insane &#x2F; nightmare but teams do it. You all definitely would solve that automatically.<p>Couple other notes:<p>- Whenever I screenshare with a team or others I see 1000 bookmarks or tabs on their browser. I could not imagine the nightmare of how that would impact my workflow or the timeline. Trusting AI to clean stuff up or hunt is not for me.<p>- I can tell you all have been heads down blitzing (dog in video, phone ringing in background of another) but I think a separate &quot;Solutions&quot; page where you tackle specific examples would be nice to see or browse.<p>- Maybe too much or not really your goal, but right now need some sort of client integration for an outside person. I can&#x27;t imagine giving access to a client on a whim and training them on this. Instead, maybe automatic email integration where their emails show up in the timeline and can respond directly from there. Would produce a really great timeline for where things left off and when things are being communicated. Being able to sub-comment and share files&#x2F;updates&#x2F;things on Front on email threads is one of the most killer features for productivity and a team. Mixing this with what you all have could be even more next level. Again though, might not be the goal.<p>Congrats and best of luck! Big fan of people trying to tackle PM stuff and think you all are doing a great job.
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idohabout 1 year ago
What&#x27;s the story around getting into YC in 2019 and then launching in &#x27;24? I&#x27;m guessing there were some interesting pivots along the way ...
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kisonecatabout 1 year ago
Totally evokes the good memories I have of &quot;Google Wave&quot; as a way for folks to collaborate on rich documents. Super cool.
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sachinkesirajuabout 1 year ago
This is super impressive. Love the demo, especially the AI recall feature that deeplinks your files and @&#x27;s collaborators. This product feels like the obvious evolution of the digital workplace after the cloud. Is the plan to eventually integrate more native collaboration tools (Kanban boards, team password sharing, cloud file storage) after chat?
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zuhayeerabout 1 year ago
Congrats on the launch! Awesome to see this release as an early user who was able to check it out. The shared workspaces and shared browser windows with context in place has been incredible for collaborating with folks. We have our Figma design, Notion doc, and Gitlab MR all in the same space so we don&#x27;t have to go searching for each one independently or have them cross-linked to each other.
seismabout 1 year ago
Love to see a hack week project get this far. The timeline and signals features look awesome, and I can&#x27;t wait to give this a try. Hope you also have thoughts (and a business model) for more private, ephemeral spaces - enabling short term collaboration, e.g. for freelance&#x2F;remote&#x2F;hack work.
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ekhar01about 1 year ago
This is so cool. Much respect. I am curious what tech stack you are writing this with? Is it electron or maybe lower level?<p>It might also be cool if it could automatically import sheets or google docs if I were to drag a csv or .txt file in and just magically open the project up. I hate having to upload via google drive
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jolooooabout 1 year ago
This is awesome. What are your thoughts on Office365 tools and Muddy? We don&#x27;t use Google docs and would love to have a similar experience. That said, I could probably manage certain teams to move away from our MSFT reliance with this flow.<p>Really excited to try this out and follow along.
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antidnanabout 1 year ago
This is really cool! Congrats on the launch!<p>I think my usage of figma,sheets,etc. is 90% single player, until the moment of sharing my (maybe unfinished) work, where I go through an intense period of collaboration with others for an initial review, then tails off, and becomes async.<p>I can&#x27;t see myself using muddy for the single player part, but it sounds interesting for after that initial intense collab process. Especially if the process includes multiple apps, as opposed to a single design review in figma etc. I find the longer running async collab is when I get the most scatterbrained across apps.
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t1cabout 1 year ago
So, despite being based on Chromium, there&#x27;s no Linux builds? Would like to try this but me and my entire team uses Linux.
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toddmoreyabout 1 year ago
Question: What were the technical requirements that necessitated a custom browser? That would really sink adoption for my team. Any plans to have a lite version that can work inside your favorite browser (even if plugin is required)?<p>Idea: your privacy section only talks about cookies and ads, but all my privacy questions were around the AI features that would use all our team&#x27;s messages and work across apps as context. Would definitely cover that piece.
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nikunjkabout 1 year ago
Congrats on the launch - seems like a neat product. A few questions: 1) It seems like you iterated on a bunch of ideas that landed in this - what were some interesting features that the team was really interested in that you ended up killing? 2) What were the most non-intuitive hard technical challenges? 3) Have you successfully ended up having someone give up on Slack to use this?
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kingzuluabout 1 year ago
The unsubscribe link in your welcome email is not a link, it is just text.
UmWhateverabout 1 year ago
So does &quot;local data stay local&quot; or what? I mean, obviously Trello cards are stored in Atlassian&#x27;s cloud somewhere and Slack convos are somewhere in Salesforce&#x27;s series of tubes. I guess what I mean is, if &quot;Muddy works in the background to keep track of the timeline and uses a LLM to continuously organize apps and keep everything on to date&quot;, does this mean Muddy ships off local data to some remote API to get it&#x27;s work done? Or if I&#x27;m only ever working within my local network, is the data I&#x27;m working with inside the Muddy context as safe as my local network can make it?
alexkernabout 1 year ago
Congrats on the launch! One of the positive byproducts of the open web platform is that products like this are possible. Much of what I share in other communication tools are links to things on the web, but sharing ends up forcing a context switch cost on both my end and the receiving end. Love that Muddy is exploring this problem space since I haven’t felt like other neue-browsers have gone far enough in making browsing itself a more collaborative and in-context experience.
v3ss0nabout 1 year ago
Browsers especially work browsers are very sensitive piece of software which needs to fully respect data privacy and security so it is opensource or burst. If it&#x27;s not opensource user might just as well, consider it a spyware.<p>Opensource or Burst.
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pkivabout 1 year ago
Congrats on the launch!! Collaborative browsing is something I&#x27;ve been looking for a few use cases of mine. Excited to try it out.
yohannparisabout 1 year ago
An integration with current chat system (Slack, Teams, etc.) would be neat. Changing where the work happens is a big ask in my opinion.
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indie_rokabout 1 year ago
Nice landing! Just curious how did you do those canvas animations (videos of features of the product)? They look amazing
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sahaskattaabout 1 year ago
Congrats on the launch. I recently was trying out Microsoft Edge&#x27;s built-in Workspaces feature which allows multiplayer collaboration. What would you say are the key differences?<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=w5AX_HvtYfI" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=w5AX_HvtYfI</a>
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ggspabout 1 year ago
Really cool demo! Curious to try it.<p>The homepage says &quot;(y)our business model is around selling collaboration services and enterprise features, not ads&quot;—can you expand on this a bit, specifically what you mean by &quot;collaboration services&quot; and how you intend to monetize Muddy?
csmeyerabout 1 year ago
Curious to give this a try, how would you compare it to Arc? I used Arc for a while but eventually just ditched it for going back to chrome<p>(Also, landing page nit, but the kerning on the H1 is pretty wide, and the kerning in the wordmark is a bit tight IMO.)
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jerrygenserabout 1 year ago
I spent a little time googling around but even wayback machine is only showing results in 2024 for the domain.<p>Was there a different project that was being worked on previously? Or is this the only product being launched since YC S19?
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dvaunabout 1 year ago
This is super neat. I would love to use this in a team setting if I could convince the org to pay for it.<p>I saw in another comment that it’s a patched version of Chromium. Are you using CDP for underlying communication?
jbaczukabout 1 year ago
I&#x27;m not sure this would be useful to me, because I don&#x27;t switch between various projects that would benefit from different tab groups, but sounds like it could be useful! Good luck.
NayamAmarsheabout 1 year ago
Looks very interesting. The chat feature almost looks like a good slack alternative.<p>I can imagine this being useful to organization where your chats and your work are in the same window.
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whimsicalismabout 1 year ago
I can see why managers would love this, social pressure around doing work and working faster.
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aboodmanabout 1 year ago
Please stop doing this:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;i.imgur.com&#x2F;2WeVGxK.png" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;i.imgur.com&#x2F;2WeVGxK.png</a><p>It&#x27;s so frustrating. Early in your product lifecycle it should be painfully easy to get started and you shouldn&#x27;t be worrying about this kind of security.
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causalabout 1 year ago
Cool idea! Curious how it handles auth. Like how do you collaborate on a shared URL without shared credentials
mschrageabout 1 year ago
Love this and am tremendously impressed by this team&#x27;s persistence. Congrats on the launch!
psuedo_uuhabout 1 year ago
I already have too many tabs open, can you imagine how many would be open on a shared browser?
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andrewfromxabout 1 year ago
i can&#x27;t click the create account button because my screen resolution is small: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;i.imgur.com&#x2F;EATViKH.png" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;i.imgur.com&#x2F;EATViKH.png</a>
astielaabout 1 year ago
How do you plan to monitize this and even compete with larger platforms
rrr_oh_manabout 1 year ago
The demo video is excellent!
c01nd01rabout 1 year ago
Is creating an account necessary to use the browser? No, thank you.
decide1000about 1 year ago
Is there a Linux version?
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bozharkabout 1 year ago
This should say “data” not just ads<p>“All your cookies and passwords are stored locally and never on our server. Our business model is around selling collaboration services and enterprise features, not ads”
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kingzuluabout 1 year ago
The unsubscribe link in your welcome email is broken. It isn&#x27;t a link.
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keshav55about 1 year ago
This is amazing
otteromkramabout 1 year ago
Relevant: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;imgs.xkcd.com&#x2F;comics&#x2F;standards.png" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;imgs.xkcd.com&#x2F;comics&#x2F;standards.png</a>
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hammyhavocabout 1 year ago
wot? no Linux?
sonicanatidaeabout 1 year ago
Is there a listing of what data is sent back to your servers and how that data is stored&#x2F;handled?<p>I work in a secure environment. I like the idea of this app, but leakage is a huge factor for my teams.<p>That aside, I&#x27;ve already downloaded a copy and plan to try it out in a non-secure environment. The concepts here look like a great idea. GL and thanks!
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