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Ask HN: Who's building an AI-free product?

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Re: Ask HN: Who's building an AI-free product?

#41

Post by yak0 »

mklepaczewski wrote: post #30
stonecharioteer wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I logged in after ages to reply. This sounds useful. I'm having trouble concentrating on my work, remote work has become too much of a toll on my mental health. But that being said, it's so crazy that there's a need for this. How are you guys making money? I see you have a single person tier for 3 USD an hour? Even so, that's crazy.

Thanks! For some, it's the only method that works (myself included). > How are you guys making money? I see you have a single-person tier for $3 an hour? Even so, that's crazy. Update: First of all, users are _not_ our product. Our only source of revenue is subscriptions to our service. Each user has a dedicated Productivity Partner, and they connect with them in a 1-on-1 video call. 90% of the time, Productivity Par…

Here is an AI feature for you :D => Users share their screens and you detect webpages, and applications on the client side (process frames/images, detect logo, extract text from it, etc.). Don't send the stream to other parties only you share detected apps/webpages with others.

Re: Ask HN: Who's building an AI-free product?

#42

Post by mklepaczewski »

jim90 wrote: post #38
mklepaczewski wrote: post #24

We're building WorkMode ( https://workmode.net/ ) - a body-doubling platform for extreme procrastinators. In a nutshell, we connect with our users via video call to ensure they stay focused on their tasks. These video calls usually last the entire day. Think of it as "Focus/Productivity as a Service." Replacing our productivity partners (body doubles) with AI avatars simply wouldn't work. The method's effectiveness r…

Sounds similar to https://www.focusmate.com/ - are there any big differences?

The concept is the same, but the execution is different. As a rule of thumb, Focusmate may work well for light, occasional procrastinators, while WorkMode is tailored to the needs of lifelong procrastinators.

I'm going to mention some disadvantages of using Focusmate, but please note that I'm not criticizing their platform. If Focusmate works for you - great, continue using it. However, if you find yourself scrolling through Hacker News instead of working, you might want to consider using WorkMode.

So, here are some differences between WorkMode and Focusmate:

On Focusmate, you're connected to another procrastinator who is there for their own benefit and usually doesn't care about your productivity. On WorkMode, it's different—you work with our employee whose only job is to ensure that you're working on your tasks.

On WorkMode, there's no such thing as a "no-show." I'm a hedonistic procrastinator, and even one missed session can result in skipping work for multiple days. This can be catastrophic if you charge by the hour (e.g., many freelancers and consultants). When I started body doubling, my income rose by 2-3x, and my disposable income increased even more.

We call you every day 30 minutes before your scheduled session to remind you about the meeting. We can also email or text you, but in our experience, these methods are less effective. It's sometimes convenient to "miss" an email or a text, but it's not easy to ignore a phone call from your Productivity Partner.

On WorkMode, you always work with the same Productivity Partner. People with social anxiety appreciate this consistency. It also helps build a relationship with them. They get to know you, understand when, why, and how you procrastinate, recognize potential triggers, and help you avoid them.

On Focusmate, you're responsible for showing up and scheduling your sessions. For many, this becomes just another to-do item on their list—one they may fail to complete because, well, they procrastinate. On WorkMode, you just need to connect with us the first time, and we'll take that responsibility from you. We'll ensure that another session is scheduled, remind you about it, and call you before it starts.

Screen sharing is much safer on WorkMode. Just make sure you don't break any NDAs.

Re: Ask HN: Who's building an AI-free product?

#43

Post by jzellis »

Working on a new free and open source social platform called Kowloon that doesn't even have "algorithms" (unless you count sorting posts by date as an algorithm), much less AI.

When I was a kid I went to the Media Lab and got to meet a few of the pioneers and got my copy of Society Of Mind from Dr. Minsky's wife Gloria. I wanted to build AI so bad.

Now I'm middle-aged and have zero desire to dick around with Markov chains on meth so marketing scum too lazy or stupid to even write their own copy can pimp their crappy products that no one wants or needs to a dying planet. I'd rather go build furniture on an Amish farm.

In lieu of that, the only thing I use AI for is as an autocomplete in VS Code.

Re: Ask HN: Who's building an AI-free product?

#45

Post by mklepaczewski »

matyaskzs wrote: post #31
mklepaczewski wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks! For some, it's the only method that works (myself included). > How are you guys making money? I see you have a single-person tier for $3 an hour? Even so, that's crazy. Update: First of all, users are _not_ our product. Our only source of revenue is subscriptions to our service. Each user has a dedicated Productivity Partner, and they connect with them in a 1-on-1 video call. 90% of the time, Productivity Par…

This sounds like a nightmare and very questionable in any serious work capacity. You are paying to breach your nda...

Meta: Sigh, miss click - deleted the wrong comment, so here it goes again.

Screen sharing is optional - it's up to the user to decide whether they want to use it.

Not everyone works under NDA. Some of our users are medicine/law students, entrepreneurs, life coaches, history professors etc.

Re: Ask HN: Who's building an AI-free product?

#46

Post by cddotdotslash »

I’ve been working on https://console.wut.dev as an alternative, simpler AWS console. Given that AWS has recently started embedding Q (their AI tool) into their UI, I’ll likely keep Wut AI-free.

That being said, there are a few features I’ve been thinking of where AI could theoretically make sense (like summarizing recent changes to cloud resources from CloudTrail logs) but if I build that, I’m going to focus on the feature/use case and not try to just “jam AI into it.”

Re: Ask HN: Who's building an AI-free product?

#47

Post by mklepaczewski »

yak0 wrote: post #41
mklepaczewski wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks! For some, it's the only method that works (myself included). > How are you guys making money? I see you have a single-person tier for $3 an hour? Even so, that's crazy. Update: First of all, users are _not_ our product. Our only source of revenue is subscriptions to our service. Each user has a dedicated Productivity Partner, and they connect with them in a 1-on-1 video call. 90% of the time, Productivity Par…

Here is an AI feature for you :D => Users share their screens and you detect webpages, and applications on the client side (process frames/images, detect logo, extract text from it, etc.). Don't send the stream to other parties only you share detected apps/webpages with others.

We can think of several AI applications for WorkMode, but we don't want to implement them. In our case, the less AI, the better.

AI, automatic data gathering, big data processing - no thanks, we'll skip it. What we do works; we don't need to improve it - at least not with AI. We don't want our Productivity Partners to handle hundreds of users simultaneously, as this would result in losing the personal connection with the user.

Re: Ask HN: Who's building an AI-free product?

#50

Post by darrelld »

I'm building a loyalty points platform.

Started off as a one off solution for a single client, but then I realized that I could generalize it.

The one off solution is running for my client for the last year, but the generalized API is still just a docker container on my PC.

I've been starting to write about the dev process[1]

[1]https://darrelld.com/signal/21/

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