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Launch HN: Zenfetch (YC W23) – Turn notes/browser history into an AI assistant

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Launch HN: Zenfetch (YC W23) – Turn notes/browser history into an AI assistant

#1
Hey everyone! Akash and Gabe here from Zenfetch (https://www.zenfetch.com) - a Chrome extension that transforms your saved web browsing into a personal chatGPT and search engine. Here’s a demo video: https://www.loom.com/share/abe9d40dc82545a482be55b631f9bf2a?...

How it works: (1) Optionally import your existing saved web browsing through one of our integrations or through a URL CSV import. (2) Click the Zenfetch icon in a tab to save any PDF, YouTube video, note, article, email, forum post, etc. Zenfetch can save almost anything across the internet. (3) Zenfetch indexes the text or transcript and adds that information to your personal knowledge assistant. This is done on your computer so you don’t have to worry about paywalls, logins, etc. (4) Use the dashboard or side panel to search your knowledge or chat with your personal knowledge assistant.

We built Zenfetch to solve our personal problem: we were reading tons of content but using little to none of the information. While searching for solutions, we found that most tools were good at storing information but not at retrieving it. We even found that search functionalities on existing read-later tools got worse the more content we saved.

A few examples of how our users use Zenfetch: “What was that article I read on the new nuclear fusion company?”, “Analyze this strategy based on the Lenny Rachitsky article I read”, “Summarize Karpathys video introducing LLMs”, “Which research papers mentioned the increase in carbon emissions?”, “Compile the different perspectives I’ve read on climate change”, and more.

Zenfetch is free for the first 14 days and then costs $14.99/mo (No credit card needed for the trial).

We’d love for you to try it out and let us know what we can do to improve your experience! While we only work on Chromium-based browsers right now, we’re actively working on browser compatibility and integrations. Let us know which ones to prioritize!

Re: Launch HN: Zenfetch (YC W23) – Turn notes/browser history into an AI assistant

#3
post #2

'GPT assistant' is now associated with OpenAI's GPTs for me. Very confusing.

That's fair. We've considered a few other terms such as "personal AI," "browsing copilot," "personal knowledge assistant." Do any of these feel more intuitive?

Re: Launch HN: Zenfetch (YC W23) – Turn notes/browser history into an AI assistant

#5

How does this compare to something like Rem [1] [2]? [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38787892 [2] https://github.com/jasonjmcghee/rem

Hey, good question. Rem and it's closed source competitor Rewind capture everything on your screen. Zenfetch only captures information that you explicitly add to Zenfetch. We've found that using a curated approach as opposed to capturing everything allows us to do two things: 1. Return much higher quality answers than Rem/Rewind as the information we store are items you thought were important at some point. 2. Allow us to help you remember that information with proactive features like our recap emails.

Re: Launch HN: Zenfetch (YC W23) – Turn notes/browser history into an AI assistant

#7
I have been building something similar [1] with the goal to make it easy to save and share things you find. I will not use SaaS for saving content anymore as I find myself wanting to build larger compositions of work and dealing with APIs just isn't it. Maybe the SaaS works today, but you will always end up wanting a plaintext, offline-first experience.

[1] https://github.com/justshare-io/justshare

Re: Launch HN: Zenfetch (YC W23) – Turn notes/browser history into an AI assistant

#8

I have been building something similar [1] with the goal to make it easy to save and share things you find. I will not use SaaS for saving content anymore as I find myself wanting to build larger compositions of work and dealing with APIs just isn't it. Maybe the SaaS works today, but you will always end up wanting a plaintext, offline-first experience. [1] https://github.com/justshare-io/justshare

This looks cool! A few notes on our approach to Zenfetch:

1. We're not trying to become your personal knowledge management solution, we want to be the layer on top that helps you retrieve and use the knowledge you've stored.

2. The biggest reason we don't do this locally is we've found hosted models are much more powerful for the knowledge retrieval and synthesis use cases. However. we do hope to move more local over time.

Re: Launch HN: Zenfetch (YC W23) – Turn notes/browser history into an AI assistant

#9
post #2

'GPT assistant' is now associated with OpenAI's GPTs for me. Very confusing.

OpenAI just got denied on their Trademark for GPT

There are many other GPTs from outside OpenAI, such that GPT is the contemporary Escalator

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