Join the discussion
Write your take first — we'll ask for email only when you're ready to publish.
- Hacker News
- The responses here so far have been amazing; working hard on your suggestions. I wanted to also share that Dlog received its first sales and founding supporters from Show HN in the last 24 hours; I can't thank you enough for the encouragement and motivation.by dr-j
- You may enjoy the 2024 Hugo winning short story, "Better Living Through Algorithms": https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/kritzer_05_23/by minihat
- New update shipped responding to requests from Show HN; restart Dlog or select "Check for Updates" in bottom toggle to get it free.
- New ANONYMIZER in Coach; toggle on to anonymize names in entries sent to coach AI API.
- Fixed Bug in Four Rings where comparisons were miscalculated when swapped.
- Fixed Dataset load failed … Dlog.(unknown context)…LoadError. The error had occurred when no entries have been scored.
- Fixed Bug where 1 million tokens were not being applied upon purchase.
- Other general improvements.
Also, dlog now has a bluesky @dlog.bsky.social where I'll be posting all updates and news. Also email me johan@dlog.pro to get the perpetual license for ShowHN users.
Thanks for all the support and energy in the comments!!
by dr-j - I like the concept, but I bailed at "GPT 5". The only thing that has given me peace of mind and the ability to journal honestly and successfully is Obsidian, because it lets me own my data (as text files).by canadaduane
- Questions while watching the video.
Calendar is central, but I use a Google calendar which is important to me. Connect it?
Seems like a "dlog" is a calendar entry. So is my "journal" broken up into separate pages, not a sequential document or blog?
2:30 ff, strongly suggest that for your next video you pre-script it to avoid fumbling and mumbling.
5:10 side note, interesting that your personality(?) model was from 2018, well before LLMs.
7:50 for an app to produce such output (impact of a friend on mood) you surely must do a copious amount of extremely frank journaling. When, and in what format? As scattered calendar entries? I'm confused how I fuel the app.
10:40 relating diary entries (reported activities and attitudes) to one's stated goals -- this is what I would expect an AI to do, and tell me about them rather than the reverse.
I'm sorry, I just don't see how I could use or adapt to something like this when I have a well-established diary/blog and calendar, it would mean changing many daily habits and adding what looks like a lot of detail work.
by fernly - Hi I'm nobody and the stories on here constantly remind me of this old parable. There once was a man who was afraid of his own shadow and who hated his own footprints. Somehow he got it into his head that if he could just run fast enough he could outrun them, so he ran and he ran, but no matter how fast he ran his shadow stayed by his side, and the faster he ran the more footprints he made. Somehow the man got it into his head that he just wasn't running fast enough, so he ran and he ran and he didn't stop or rest and he died. Not knowing that standing still is how to stop making footprints, and that resting under a tree is how to stop making shadows, is just so tragic.by inavida
- I love the vision. From what I can tell, you're building something that I think should exist and we have the technology for now. I think we need a place to put our 3, 5, 10 year goals, and some kind of process to keep us on track for that. And it's so personal, of course the LLM aspect needs to be local-only.
One concern I have is that I think I will need more than an empty "add Journal entry" nudge or prompt. I think I would want what a real coach would do/say. Something like, "How's the meditation/exercise/calling friends/making stuff going?"
by thusjustin - I'm a bit intimidated by the long list of things this app is trying to do.
Is it a project management tool? If so, how do I share everything with my team? Project management tools are defined by their collaboration and workflow features.
Is it a journaling tool? If so I absolutely don't want my team in the tool, and so can't use it for project management. How does it encourage me to do better journaling and build the habit?
Is it a wellbeing tool? How well does that work if I don't put my project management in there? If I can't use it for half the stuff it's intended that I will, then it might be of limited use.
Is it a coaching tool? Why would I want to use an AI coach over a mentor or human coach?
Is the AI required? I have no idea how many tokens I'd need to use something like this? Do I need a million a day or a million a year? (When coding I tend to use ~10-50m input tokens per session, will this cost $500 per day to use?) If the AI features are optional, what is the product without it?
Overall my feedback is that there's a lot here, and I think the product needs a much clearer story. The copy on the site is long and rambling and needs a lot of tightening up. Personality is good, but in moderation.
by danpalmer