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

fig.io

211–220 of 390 posts

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

#211

This looks nice, but requiring an email during setup, with no explanation or discernible reason - and demanding a work email at that - seems very creepy. This decision alone removes my trust in your product and your company, sorry.

Requiring a work email is a common tactic for B2B sales, so that sales people can contact you and try to get you to buy. This doesn't seem like a B2B kind of product, so it does seem... odd.

The reason we suggest logging in with your work email is so that you can share shortcuts and completions for internal CLI tools with your team.

We should probably add this explanation to the login page because I can see how this would be confusing.

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

#212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We ask people to sign in with their work email, so you can share private completions for scripts and internal CLI tools with teammates. (You can use your personal email, if you prefer!)

Thanks, I installed it. Looks like neither Alacritty or Kitty are supported yet.

Not yet, but we are working on integrations. Want to subscribe to the relevant issues:

Alacritty: https://github.com/withfig/fig/issues/28 Kitty: https://github.com/withfig/fig/issues/26 More: https://github.com/withfig/fig/issues?q=is%3Aissue+is%3Aopen...

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

#214
post #162
post #80

Nice website, but I wouldn't switch to this from Fish/Zsh on account of: 1. Cannot identify any killer features above what I already have with forever free tools with much larger support communities. 2. Less trust in you as a YC startup. What if you fail? What if you sell out? 3. Requirement of email. 4. Telemetry and privacy concerns raised by others. 5. Not available for Linux, and I get the feeling that Linux woul…

> 2. Less trust in you as a YC startup. What if you fail? What if you sell out? > 3. Requirement of email. > 4. Telemetry and privacy concerns raised by others. Dovetailing on these... Like why is a CLI tool VC backed? Is the business model just selling our data? Is the VC backing for another product and the CLI tool is just a PR thing?

CLI is a relatively "pristine" environment, where a lot of people's time is spent and nothing competes for our attention (or data as was pointed out). Any business model that could plausibly exploit this environment for financial gain would be an easy sell to investors.

I don't know anything about this product's intentions, but it's easy to imagine the possibilities once you start getting permission to pop something up in someone's terminal window.

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

#215
post #198
post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just adding, from their website: > Investors: We've raised several million dollars from amazing VCs like General Catalyst and Kleiner Perkins, and angels like Jason Warner, Adam Gross, Olivier Pomel, Scott Belsky, Will Gaybrick and a handful of other impressive dev tool founders and executives. The fact that a CLI tool raised millions of dollars while also being basically powered by open-source contributions is also…

With millions of dollars you could probably just write a shell that does this sort of completion inside the terminal.

[deleted]

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

#216
post #198
post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just adding, from their website: > Investors: We've raised several million dollars from amazing VCs like General Catalyst and Kleiner Perkins, and angels like Jason Warner, Adam Gross, Olivier Pomel, Scott Belsky, Will Gaybrick and a handful of other impressive dev tool founders and executives. The fact that a CLI tool raised millions of dollars while also being basically powered by open-source contributions is also…

With millions of dollars you could probably just write a shell that does this sort of completion inside the terminal.

I did exactly that for free ;)

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

#217
post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We started with macOS because I have a background in Swift development. Linux is definitely not an after thought to us! As for the telemetry concerns, I totally get that. We've tried to strike a balance and it seems like we've got it wrong. This will be fixed in the next update.

The correct balance is 0% of terminal activity is sent with telemetry, unless the user explicitly and specifically authorizes it.

Just to clarify, the text you type into the terminal NEVER leaves your device. Fig does not store or collect this information.

We send an event when you insert something using Fig's autocomplete, so we can get a sense for how frequently people use the app. We also send which completion spec (eg. git, npm or cd) was used to generate the suggestions to know which commands to prioritize.

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

#218
post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are clearly not the ideal customer profile.. my guess is that the Fig team are going after corporate developers who won’t be as concerned about privacy so much as they are concerned about convenience and productivity.

As someone with the misfortune to work in a large enterprise, this doesn't make sense - corporate are very sensitive to data leaving their network. As just one example, the place where I work very rarely let's us use anything cloud-hosted (Slack is just one example). And when the do, it's a years long process to get it. I haven't looked into how this works, but if it's sending keystrokes or command lines to the cloud…

I want to add something a bit more positive - if you come with an on-prem version, it will have much more of a chance to sell within the enterprise. Of course, that's a lot more hassle to support etc.

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

#219
post #168
post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 2. Less trust in you as a YC startup. What if you fail? What if you sell out? > 3. Requirement of email. > 4. Telemetry and privacy concerns raised by others. Dovetailing on these... Like why is a CLI tool VC backed? Is the business model just selling our data? Is the VC backing for another product and the CLI tool is just a PR thing?

Just adding, from their website: > Investors: We've raised several million dollars from amazing VCs like General Catalyst and Kleiner Perkins, and angels like Jason Warner, Adam Gross, Olivier Pomel, Scott Belsky, Will Gaybrick and a handful of other impressive dev tool founders and executives. The fact that a CLI tool raised millions of dollars while also being basically powered by open-source contributions is also…

> The fact that a CLI tool raised millions of dollars while also being basically powered by open-source contributions is also kind of a wtf moment to me, but what do I know.

There's probably more money than people know what to do with. So they might be investing in completely crazy ideas hoping that the founders figure it out along the way.

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