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Launch HN: Phind 3 (YC S22) – Every answer is a mini-app

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Re: Launch HN: Phind 3 (YC S22) – Every answer is a mini-app

#41

Post by gavinray »

Neat idea!

I tried it out with a relatively basic Medicinal Chem/Pharmacology question, asking for an interactive Structure-Activity-Relationship viewer:

  > "Build an interactive app showing SAR for a congeneric series. Use simple beta-2 agonists (salbutamol -> formoterol -> salmeterol). Display the common phenethylamine scaffold with R-group positions highlighted, and let me toggle substituents to see how logP, receptor binding affinity, and duration of action change."
It did not quite get it right. It put a bunch of pieces together, but the interactivity/functionality didn't work and choice of visualization was poor for the domain:

https://www.phind.com/search/find-me-options-for-a-72e019ce-...

Re: Launch HN: Phind 3 (YC S22) – Every answer is a mini-app

#42

Post by sulicat »

This is pretty cool, I asked it to visualize national import/export data, it did alright.

I was hoping to get a map with arrows like "$35B in agriculture" from China to USA. I wasn't able to make it do that, but the information was still there presented in a reasonable way!

Re: Launch HN: Phind 3 (YC S22) – Every answer is a mini-app

#43

Post by gavinray »

gavinray wrote: post #41

Neat idea! I tried it out with a relatively basic Medicinal Chem/Pharmacology question, asking for an interactive Structure-Activity-Relationship viewer: > "Build an interactive app showing SAR for a congeneric series. Use simple beta-2 agonists (salbutamol -> formoterol -> salmeterol). Display the common phenethylamine scaffold with R-group positions highlighted, and let me toggle substituents to see how logP, recep…

Gemini 3's new "Dynamic View" responses does a pretty good job:

https://gemini.google.com/share/e0cdb00b1854

Re: Launch HN: Phind 3 (YC S22) – Every answer is a mini-app

#46

Post by rushingcreek »

gavinray wrote: post #41

Neat idea! I tried it out with a relatively basic Medicinal Chem/Pharmacology question, asking for an interactive Structure-Activity-Relationship viewer: > "Build an interactive app showing SAR for a congeneric series. Use simple beta-2 agonists (salbutamol -> formoterol -> salmeterol). Display the common phenethylamine scaffold with R-group positions highlighted, and let me toggle substituents to see how logP, recep…

Thanks for the feedback! The model you use in Phind makes a big impact. Claude 4.5 Opus in Phind gave a better answer than Phind Fast here: https://www.phind.com/search/build-an-interactive-app-showin....

Re: Launch HN: Phind 3 (YC S22) – Every answer is a mini-app

#48

Post by alwa »

personjerry wrote: post #21

The problem is I don't think every answer needs a mini-app. I'd argue there are very few answers that do. For example, it feels like Google's featured snippet (quick answer box) but expanded. But the thing is, many people don't like the feature snippet, and there's a reason it doesn't appear for many queries - it doesn't contribute meaningfully to those. This functionality is doing exactly the opposite of the process…

I tend to agree: I don’t understand what the “one-off app” is trying to achieve. In the example of the rental apartment—the user specified the parameters in the query. Just apply them, right?

I offer this in the spirit of feeling like I’m missing something, not out of negativity—I just genuinely don't understand the proposition.

What’s the advantage of trying to extract and normalize features from already-messy data sources, then provide controls that duplicate the query, rather than just applying the query and returning the results? Isn’t the user turning to a natural-language LLM specifically to avoid operating idiosyncratic UI controls?

For that matter, it takes time to learn to use an interface effectively. To understand how what it says it’s doing connects to what it’s actually doing. I know I can always trust McMaster Carr’s filter controls, and I know I can never trust Amazon’s wacky random ones.

It seems to me that it’s much harder to pick the right controls and make them work correctly than it is to throw some controls in an interface. Maybe that’s what I’m missing: that just wiring in controls in the first place is the hard part for most people who don’t work in this space.

Is the idea here that I’d need to learn a brand new interface, and figure out whether I can trust it, with every query?

Re: Launch HN: Phind 3 (YC S22) – Every answer is a mini-app

#49

Post by dwa3592 »

I asked about twinning extra spicy tea bc i had just made it for me: https://www.phind.com/search/twinnings-extra-spicy-tea-bd067...

and after about 90 seconds the mini app was created which had a few sliders for cardamom, cinnamon, ginger which was really confusing, then it showed a bunch of other stuff which was also completely useless. I did the same search on Google ( https://tinyurl.com/47sh4eah ) and did not dislike the answer bc i know it didn't burn 1000s of tokens for that query. Sorry for being a bit harsh but I have never seen wastage of resources as bad as this.

Re: Launch HN: Phind 3 (YC S22) – Every answer is a mini-app

#50

Post by rushingcreek »

alwa wrote: post #48
personjerry wrote: post #21

The problem is I don't think every answer needs a mini-app. I'd argue there are very few answers that do. For example, it feels like Google's featured snippet (quick answer box) but expanded. But the thing is, many people don't like the feature snippet, and there's a reason it doesn't appear for many queries - it doesn't contribute meaningfully to those. This functionality is doing exactly the opposite of the process…

I tend to agree: I don’t understand what the “one-off app” is trying to achieve. In the example of the rental apartment—the user specified the parameters in the query. Just apply them, right? I offer this in the spirit of feeling like I’m missing something, not out of negativity—I just genuinely don't understand the proposition. What’s the advantage of trying to extract and normalize features from already-messy data…

A hypothesis here is that well-crafted UI helps you understand/see options for what you don't yet know.

For example, here's an example for a "day trip plan in Bristol" that contains a canonical example (directly based on the query), but also a customization widget that presents some options that you might not have already thought about if you were just doing a text-based followup.

https://www.phind.com/search/make-me-a-day-plan-ac8c583b-ce6...

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