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

Post by Grustaf » Tue, May 25, 2021, 8:11 PM UTC

version_five wrote: post #214

zumu wrote: 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?

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…

Post by mschrage » Tue, May 25, 2021, 8:15 PM UTC

GordonS wrote: post #221

mschrage wrote: post #211

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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 honest…

Post by Hammershaft » Tue, May 25, 2021, 8:20 PM UTC

hnlmorg wrote: post #216

ttt0 wrote: post #198

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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 ;)

Post by rabidrat » Tue, May 25, 2021, 8:26 PM UTC

smoldesu wrote: post #225

mschrage wrote: post #217

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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?

Post by design-material » Tue, May 25, 2021, 8:28 PM UTC

mschrage wrote: post #230

zumu wrote: 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?

> 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 bu…