Wow, this took me BACK!
My first computer was a 486, I was running MS-DOS (iirc) and there was an app that did just that with a very similar (Text)UI, anyone else used it/remembers the name?
Show HN: Micasa – track your house from the terminal
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Re: Show HN: Micasa – track your house from the terminal
#52I think/hope the whole "home manager" category is going to take off soon. On a cost basis, it no longer makes sense--practically--not to use visual/text/audio intelligence to manage such a large asset. We just don't have the user-friendly mass-market interfaces for it just yet. It's possible to scan every manual, every insurance policy, ingest every local bylaw. It's possible to take a video of your home and transfor…
I've been working on something like this the last few months specifically around service quote analysis (repairs, construction, hvac, auto, etc.) and it's really cool. I think LLM analysis is the way to go because the amount of complexity is absolutely staggering - just to start the difference in quality and information available on a quote is drastically different between vendors within the SAME vertical. Then to do actual do analysis on local laws, the details of your property (not just photos/videos, but zoning and lot details), vendor analysis, etc.
On top of it all, the most important thing to consider is intent -> An emergency plumbing visit is often very different than a proactive upgrade.
edit: spelling
Re: Show HN: Micasa – track your house from the terminal
#53This looks awesome but I think I might still prefer to have an agent make these changes. Not sure though. In general, I love the juxtaposition of the most advanced computer technology ever (AI) causing an explosion in one of the OLDEST computer technology we've ever had (terminals). I spend most of my day in a terminal now. It's just funny.
> This looks awesome but I think I might still prefer to have an agent make these changes. Not sure though. Not entirely sure what you mean here, but the next big feature for micasa is an autopopulation pipeline. Upload a quote PDF and populate the project, quote, and vendor tables. It might not be viable ultimately, but I would love to see how far I can get. Overkill? Definitely.
Yep that's exactly what I'm talking about. I don't think it's overkill. It feels very natural and filling out forms feels archaic to me (unless it's a "edit this quickly" where that's almost always faster than asking an agent.)
So I've been building a full piece of software to manage my small business. And it looks like traditional software (forms, tables, etc). But every single thing also has an MCP tool.
So then I find myself just talking to the agent especially as an input mechanism way more than clicking around and editing a form.
I'm just saying, as an input method, I think forms, TUIs, etc will be good as a backup. Over time, as you've outlined, we'd just say "here's a PDF, figure it out" and the agent just inputs the right values into the right fields.
That's how I've approached my run-my-business app. I have models/tables for clients, purchase orders, invoices, support tasks, everything. But my interaction is more like "Add me to all the active projects, set my cost rate to __" and it'll run 15 MCP calls and put the data where it belongs.
Or I'll ask "what invoices are way overdue?" and it'll run the MCP calls to get it, even though I have pretty dashboards.
Glad to see you're already thinking of it.
Re: Show HN: Micasa – track your house from the terminal
#54Looks nice, I like this TUI aesthetic, but I’m not sure I could use it on a daily basis. A self-hosted app or phone app might be more convenient
100% on the phone app. Maybe the web app is the phone app? Dunno. Being able to enter information as close to receiving as possible seems key actually. I'll probably poke on this soon.
It could be a native mobile app, but in that case you’d need to think about platforms, the App Store, and so on.
A progressive web app could be a nice alternative: just add the website icon to your phone, and you can open it in seconds.
The app could be self-hosted on a home server, and solutions like Tailscale would let you easily access it outside the house as well. A big plus is that you can open it on all your devices and have a unified database across them.
With a web app, you could even keep the TUI aesthetic - just style it like a CLI interface.
Re: Show HN: Micasa – track your house from the terminal
#55Any ideas why Claude forces TUI application development?
It’s easy then run a web server for a web UI, but it still looks better than a regular CLI
Re: Show HN: Micasa – track your house from the terminal
#56I feel like a lot of these types of apps could just be spreadsheets. Maybe a "smart" spreadsheet like Grist[0] executing Python code. Am I off-base there? [0] https://github.com/gristlabs/grist-core
Probably right. My brain is probably stuck in old-man spreadsheet land and I did not explore any new horizons that might have obviated micasa. That said, I also didn't want to invest a bunch of time in developing a domain specific app using spreadsheets as the API, I wanted to invest a bunch of time developing a domain specific app using AI. Might end up being a choice I regret!
Re: Show HN: Micasa – track your house from the terminal
#57I love TUIs and I love the way this looks and the concept behind it, but often I'm doing household stuff on my phone because I'm walking around checking on things or just taking photos of things.
Re: Show HN: Micasa – track your house from the terminal
#58Cool! Although I'd rather use Obsidian with the Tables stuff, so I get everything in my UI with photos, and I can share with mobile
Re: Show HN: Micasa – track your house from the terminal
#59Just want to say, I appreciate your work on Ibis. I’ve been looking into building sort of a dbt-esque alternative on top of it and noticed how involved you’ve been with its development. I think it’s a cool piece of tech that deserves more attention.
Re: Show HN: Micasa – track your house from the terminal
#60I built something somewhat similar to this that's web app based (honeydew) but it's much more focused on DIY and doesn't include any of the quote/contractor stuff. It's absolutely focused on powering through a huge pile of todos from a home inspection with dependency tracking as well as remembering stuff (when was the last time you empty the washing machine filter).
It practice it alternates between annoying thing I dismiss the notifications from or use obsessively. Doesn't seem to be much in between