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

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

#221

Post by GordonS »

mschrage wrote: post #211
GordonS wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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.

I guess I'm still missing something, as I don't get why the domain of my email address is relevant for who I share things with? My (hopefully constructive!) feedback is that by asking specifically for a business mail, you send certain signals to the end user.

Are you honestly saying that emails won't be used for sales purposes? (that might sounds a bit adversarial, but it's a genuine, non-judgemental question!)

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

#222

Post by heavyset_go »

zumu wrote: post #162
12ian34 wrote: 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?

> Like why is a CLI tool VC backed? Is the business model just selling our data?

Agreed. Take a look at Nabu Casa, the developers of Home Assistant and Home Assistant Cloud. They are 100% self-funded by their revenue from HA Cloud and the hardware they sell.

Because of this, I don't have to worry about investors demanding a return on investment by any means necessary and potentially generating revenue from users' private data.

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

#223

Post by sidlls »

mschrage wrote: post #217
sidlls wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

A distinction without difference, in my opinion. And it doesn't change the fact that anything other than 0% telemetry without full, complete disclosure and permission from the user is not good.

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

#224

Post by renewiltord »

Cool tool. I like this sort of thing. Some feedback:

* Telemetry page is scary, man. I disabled everything instantly. This "we send a ping every time you" is too much. It's not even the content. It's the fact that I fear some sort of limp CLI because of slow Internet. I have to admit I am glad you made a clear telemetry page but I am sad you chose to put all that stuff into it. I'm generally a high-telemetry guy so I would have given you a fucking shit ton of data (I even install popcon on Debian) but I don't want my shit to slow down noticeably as a result.

* Sign in at the end of the setup process. Clever. I've already committed work into it. Used car salesman tactic, but fine, I get it.

* Your tutorial page didn't autocomplete `fig` CLI commands. When I typed `fig se` and hit Tab I got `fig settings.json`. Not inspiring.

* Prompt for iTerm 2 very good.

* Tool itself is pretty good. UI quite snazzy. Some unpredictability in whether I can just go to a folder vs. it tab-completing to a subfolder. Still, so far I like it. I'll respond tomorrow.

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

#225

Post by smoldesu »

mschrage wrote: post #217
sidlls wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

So wait a second, the text I type into the terminal never leaves my device, but the commands I invoke do? What's the difference?

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

#226

Post by mbreese »

mschrage wrote: post #217
sidlls wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>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

And this is why you're never going to get people to use it. I get that you want to know what is being used, but really -- this is a terminal. You can't have any kind of telemetry for a terminal.

If you had a very big notice when you install, asking for permission to send which commands get autocompleted, you'd have likely been in a better position. Debian does something like this on install -- asking permission to track what packages you've installed. But it very clearly optional. And their level of knowledge is just that a package was installed, not necessarily how frequently it it used. Anything approaching telemetry within a terminal is just a bad idea.

And I fail to see how you couldn't also get the same data from surveys, features requests, issue tracking, etc... It wouldn't be the same quality, but this is really really bad. And because you started out with this major faux pas, you're going to have a major problem with trust going forward.

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

#227

Post by _h9mb »

avinassh wrote: post #145
12ian34 wrote: 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…

Can you suggest some tools which auto suggest like Fig and work with zsh? The built in auto complete in zsh works nicely, but how do I get the drop down of all options?

You need no tool at all as you can do I reverse search in any shell with ^R. If you want to do it with a better UX you can use fzf. If you want the suggestions you can use zsh-autosuggestions or fish shell. Setting them up is straightforward. And if you want an example config for Zsh you can look mine. Zinit, the package manager, automatically load/install the plugins when loading the shell.

https://github.com/danisztls/dotfiles/blob/main/shell/zshrc

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

#229

Post by _h9mb »

vishnugupta wrote: post #165
avinassh wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you suggest some tools which auto suggest like Fig and work with zsh? The built in auto complete in zsh works nicely, but how do I get the drop down of all options?

This is the closest I see: https://github.com/ohmyzsh/ohmyzsh Since switching to it from the default shell of Mac OS terminal (zsh I think) I have found it immensely productive. Some of the things it does seem Magic like auto completing uncommitted files when I say “git add ”

https://github.com/zsh-users/zsh-autosuggestions

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

#230

Post by mschrage »

zumu wrote: post #162
12ian34 wrote: 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?

> Is the VC backing for another product and the CLI tool is just a PR thing?

Autocomplete is our first product. The bigger vision that Fig can enable an ecosystem of terminal extensions. Here are some early prototypes we built [0] and here is the discussion from when we were posted on HN last summer [1].

> Is the business model just selling our data?

We will never sell data. That just isn't the business we want to build - Brendan and I like hacking on the terminal because it's interesting and we get to solve our own problems.

We've been lucky enough to find investors, most of whom have an engineering background, who understand how important the terminal and believe there is a lot of room for improvement.

Obviously, we would like Fig to become a sustainable business. We plan to monetize in the short term by offering autocomplete for internal CLI tools and scripts. Longer term, we think that there is a lot of stuff that developers do in the browser that make more sense in the terminal. Fig's autocomplete product is powered by an API that lets anyone build graphical extensions that are connected to the terminal.

[0] https://fig.io/videos/old-sizzle-reel.mp4

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23766980

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