Launch HN: Fig (YC S20) – Autocomplete for the Terminal

I find it disingenuous as it makes users feel as if they're being offered something "for free" only to pull a "gotcha" after I gone through a lot of steps to reach the end of the installation process.

I feel it's far more candid to place the email gathering step at the start of the process so I know "okay, these guys aren't charging money, but they do at least want an email address to use this software". From there I can base my decision on how comfortable I am with providing my email address without going through the work of downloading, installing and updating system privacy settings first.

I completely understand the need to build up a list of client email addresses and that nothing in life is free, however; I think this should be done in a more tactful way that doesn't make me feel like I am have been "cornered" into providing my contact details at the end of a lengthy installation process.

Additionally; I think it's questionable that you hide the fact that you track users behind a low-contrast drop down in the installation process, and that tracking is switched on by default. I should be able to opt out before the installation process is completed and not be required to manually opt out via an arbitrary command that is difficult to remember after the installation is complete.

Finally; @mschrage - There's no doubt that what your team has built is beautiful and really nice to use. Thank you for sharing it with this commmunity and congratulations on your launch. I wish you the best on your journey and hope you'll reconsider some of these less-than-ideal patterns in your software.

Is there a plan to support the completion APIs over LSP so existing tools can implement support independently? For example if I could write a language client for various language servers just for the completion apis, it would go a long way.

I'm surprised it requires nodejs on the client to run - how do you lock node versions so it doesn't break on updates, or needs to run in the same dev environment as older versions? If my dev environment has node locked to an older LTS, will fig still work?

As well, linux support would be great. So would a vscode extension so it can run in the integrated terminal, but I'm not sure if that's possible.

You can run `fig settings app.disableTelemetry true` to disable all telemetry except for one daily ping.

You also make a good point: in our onboarding we should move our privacy information to before granting accessibility! We will make this more clear