Reading through the web page actually got me more interested than I thought I'd be but at the end of the day my browser reigns supreme. I can modify web pages with extensions, I can put my tabs anywhere, and I have access to everything in one big "pile" which I see as an advantage. I'd drive myself crazy trying to remember which app the tab I'm thinking of is open in (Did I open that from slack or from my email?). I also think this takes a level of buy-in that I'm just not willing to do.

If I wasn't programming then I might be more interested in this but I need the full browser for my work and looking up docs or help on an error I'm getting doesn't seem like it'd play well with this. I do like the integrations with you calendar/agenda but it's just not for me.

This is actually great for me to know, and thank you for saying something about it. I have also been hearing from users of the product that a "show all tabs" functionality would be valuable in case they lose track of where they are. I was thinking of adding that option in case occasionally you just want to see everything in one shot. Ideally, if you are going task by task, you would only see tabs open to complete a particular task. However, I can see how sometimes you might just want to see it all.

Just wanted to follow up on this with an update. In the latest release of Floutwork that rolled out yesterday, you can now press a button on the tab bar to "show all tabs." While Floutwork defaults to showing only tabs within the web apps you use to complete a task, allowing you to stay focused, you can always press the button to see all tabs. This feature should help you get oriented, especially if you occasionally lose track of where all the tabs are.

you can also consider task based tab groups. sometimes a task can span multiple apps and it's nice to view it all at a glance. a task view would let you see the tabs and apps related to the task

I do want to implement this, thank you! It would be cool to give users options for how they want their tabs grouped.

I agree, it can definitely be useful. I will push something out around this soon!

If your browser reigns supreme, try out this personal web browser copilot I built that helps organize your tabs and notes by plugging into your browser. Even in the beta it can vastly improve your ability to focus, brainstorm, and reduce the time it takes to context-switch.

Project White Rabbit: www.pwr.builders

I wonder, if something similar can be implemented as a browser extension

Some side benefits that come with the app: Since even the most popular desktop apps have a web version, like Slack, Teams, Outlook, etc., you can completely move away from all your desktop apps and your browser and get work done all in one system. It is truly refreshing and eliminates tons of friction in your flow. The advantage of using tools like Slack inside Floutwork is that any link you click on within Slack won't bounce you to your browser full of tabs; it will just open as a tab within the Slack app within Floutwork. PWAs that are installed on your OS taskbar as apps have this major flaw — they still bounce you to your browser whenever you click on a link. So, accessing any web app or PWA within Floutwork offers a seamless experience.

My previous post: I posted about this product at the beginning of the year, but it was still very rudimentary and I didn't give any background on my post. I received a lot of feedback from the HN community and implemented some much-discussed topics like 1.) Dedicated focus mode. 2.) Smooth onboarding. 3.) Dark Mode. 4.) Ability to download all your data. 5.) Upfront pricing. I greatly value the HN's insights!

There are great screenshots of the app in the landing page: https://www.floutwork.com

No offense, but a workspace with a tab bar that lets you launch apps within the same app has been created so many times already. What sets yours apart?

Valid question. What sets Floutwork apart are the features that complement the web app workspace, such as task management, notes, calendar and email integration, a command bar, ChatGPT, productivity metrics, and a dedicated focus mode with a Pomodoro-type timer. People often use various siloed tools and try to piece them together to create their own "work system." Floutwork consolidates all of these into one tool, offering seamless integration between them. Just as a small example, there's a feature in Floutwork where, when you're viewing a web app like LinkedIn, an icon at the top right allows you to see all emails from the LinkedIn domain. So, if you've already checked LinkedIn notifications in the web app, you can view related emails right there and archive or delete them in bulk with one click. This level of context awareness is highly useful when all the tools are integrated well.

It sounds like Flout has features beyond the tab bar, but your comment makes me wonder if a tab bar layout could be implemented on the OS level.

If you use Linux there are many window managers to try. I personally use i3 which can be tabbed or stacked layout based on your preference

Gnome has an extension for that. I've been using it instead of the default dock. I made the top bar and the dock disappear. Windows has that by default. On both systems Alt Tab to cycle through windows.

Maybe I'm missing sth but I don't see the novelty. I'm using Firefox on KDE and I can group tabs within a Firefox window (so within Firefox tab bar multiple ones and in KDE 1 item) but I can also split tabs in different windows (multiple Firefox tab bars, multiple items in KDE). I even could script the behavior via Vimperator or KWin Scripts. So... I don't see what's new here.

Remember Windows 95? It had a tab bar at the bottom... Or at the top if you moved it there.

Can you name other projects in this space? I’m genuinely interested in looking at available alternatives

FYI: You cannot do anything with the desktop application w/o creating an account first.

On the website (https://www.floutwork.com/), section "Focused on You, Not Your Data" there is a "Learn more" Link, which does nothing, in both FF and Chrome.

>> FYI: You cannot do anything with the desktop application w/o creating an account first.

Indeed. It asks for admin permissions (why??), and then asks me to create an account. For an app Im using on my own machine.

No thanks. Uninstalled.

asks me to create an account - The intent behind an account is so you can access your tasks, notes, links and other preferences via mobile or via another laptop. I do have plans of building a local-only mode eventually for folks who might be interested in that.

asks for admin permissions - The app doesn’t need special admin permissions. However, there might rules in your OS that require admin permission to install any software.

Thanks for pointing out the issue with the 'Learn More' link. It is now fixed and should take you to the Privacy page.

I actually think this is a really good idea for people who don’t have an organized workflow. Too bad there are so many haters on HN. Really excited to see how it progresses!

Appreciate the encouragement!

You need to simplify your value prop. What is the core problem that you're solving around a single user scenario. Get me hooked on that and then help me expand the value as I start using and understanding your product.

Right no it's too much to digest, it feels heavy and like I need to learn a whole new way of working. It is not clear to me what problem or massive pain point you are solving for me. Remember, you are asking me to spend time trying, learning and using a new tool, sell me on why I can't go on another day without doing that.

You've built a ton of value, more is not always better. Simplify and make it stupidly easy to understand.

Congrats and good luck.

This is really great feedback. I completely understand the need to distill the value proposition into something more digestible. Marketing is the area where I struggle the most. More than developing the product, explaining it succinctly to potential users has been my main challenge. I'm learning more every day. Your insights help.

As someone who hates disjointed online services, I'm intrigued, but the subscription pricing suggests to me there's some server-side component to this (sync perhaps?) that I'm missing. What is the subscription fee paying for? And if there is a server-side component, I'm very wary of wrapping it around services that contain a hell of a lot of confidential information.

Yes, there is a server component. Your tasks, notes, and other settings are stored on the server, so when you switch computers, you don't lose any data. I am planning to add a private option with optional server sync down the road for folks who might be interested in that.

No offense, but have you tried an os? Like gnome, windows, osx, chrome os...? They literally do exact same thing.

Appreciate your perspective. The idea that they do the exact same thing might be up for discussion. Trust me, if I were happy with what my OS provided, I definitely wouldn't have gone down this path to build this app. I feel that operating systems do a good job with desktop apps for the most part. The real challenge lies with web apps, tabs, and distraction-free workflows. The aim of my solution is to reduce friction and make it easier to use your web-based work tools.

That exchange reminds me of a group of russians making an OS with a browser that is a mail client, irc client, rss reader, news reader, calendar and a few other things I forget.

But again no workflow. A good client understands and if necessary forces you to do the next thing. Say a mail has a web link. The sensible thing to do would be to store a fullpage screenshot with the email because web pages evaporate. Doing this with tools not designed for that specifically is so much work you shouldn't even bother to try it.

You want to reply? NO, YES, YES but not now. Then it should show up in the todo list. If the todo item only lives in "draft emails" it will get lost.

> That exchange reminds me of a group of russians making an OS with a browser that is a mail client, irc client, rss reader, news reader, calendar and a few other things I forget.

They could have just used emacs ;)

Enhanced integration between apps and uniformity is what OPs app offers I think, similar to why I use emace

No Linux support? Also is this built in Electron?

Unfortunately, there is no Linux support at the moment. Since the app uses Electron, adding Linux support down the road might be easier. I just haven't gotten around to it yet. Just curious - do you see yourself using an app like this?

I'm putting my full comment here to add to the Linux votes since I'm on Linux 80% of my time. Although, I will be given the macOS trial a shot soon as I have an iOS project in the pipeline.

Congrats on launching and sharing! The idea of an integrated all-in-one solution is intriguing to me. So intriguing that over the last 10 years I've started various projects in a similar direction. Mostly focused on integrating calendars (multiple external calendars), tasks and notes within the same app. Lesser focus on web app integration or focus modes.

Combining calendar, tasks en notes within the same app is something that I have not found a good solution for. Most apps focus on only 1 aspect and lack in the others typically leading to having to use a separate app for each aspect, and then losing time and focus by context switching between apps.

A few years ago I wrote about my experiences in this space[1].

I'm curious to see how you have tackled this problem and how the integration between tasks/calendars (and notes?) works.

also: The "Learn more" link near the bottom does not go anywhere.

[1]: https://stevenvanbael.com/open-calendar-task-space-is-a-mess

I was going to download until I saw it isn't available on Linux.

This is great to know. I'll try to address it sooner rather than later. Thanks!

FWIW be cautious if you do, "we" are a pain, cf https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37926449

Psh it's an electron app, it takes a few minutes to adjust the config and hit the right command to build the app for Linux.

I would try this app but use Linux desktop exclusively

..to get work done. And then no Linux version. Isn't this a contradiction?

In the nicest way possible, linux users are a headache to deal with.

Probably because they aren't "just" users, they want, by definition, to be collaborators or at the very least to have the ability to make change. It can be indeed be a pain to "manage" but I don't think it's a communication problem but rather a deeper culture problem.

Signed a Linux "user".

Thank you. Your politesse is appreciated :-)

This appears to solve a bunch of my current issues, so for me, it's the right app at the right time. I've signed up and giving it a go, and it does what is says on the label. Great work, and thanks for making it flexible enough to add other web-apps and configurable.

What I like so far - per-app tabs, great to keep my current browser from being unnavigable, ability to add other apps using different logins, so I can share a multi-login set of tabs in one system rather than having different personas or multiple browsers. I know a lot of this can be done with a bit of effort manually, but it's just 'nice' to have it there for you.

What I don't like - sluggish start/load time. Lack of clarity about the built-in apps and how they connect to anything else you're running. The bookmarks function I haven't got my head around yet.

Thanks for trying Floutwork and for the review. I plan to enhance the built-in Bookmarks app to make its value more evident. I'll also work on better explaining how your web apps and built-in apps work together.

Quick summary of some key capabilities: You can select any text in any web app, right-click, and add it to your tasks or notes. Imagine reading an email or a message on Slack or LinkedIn that you want to follow up on; this feature can come in handy without requiring you to switch contexts or lose your flow. You also have the option to capture a screenshot and the current URL when adding a task or note, providing complete context for future reference. This context is stored in your task notes for tasks and right along with your note in the case of notes. The same goes for links or tabs; you can right-click to add them to your bookmarks. We often receive numerous links via email, Slack, etc. You can easily right-click on those links to add them to your bookmarks, organized by tags, without leaving your flow. These improvements significantly reduce the friction associated with context-switching.

You can also quickly add tasks, notes, and bookmarks using the command bar. Simply type CMD+1 from anywhere, and the command bar will open. From there, you can select the action you want to take without interrupting your workflow.

Additionally, you can open the command bar and start typing the bookmark name, then press Enter to quickly access it. Pressing SHIFT+ENTER on the bookmark or any typed URL will automatically open it in split view.

Here are comments from a quick review of this. I love what you have, but for me, it just would be too difficult to change how I work for it.

1. Font size in tasks to small for those of us with challenged eyes/big monitors. Don't see anywhere to be able to adjust it. 2. Notes - I am pretty locked in to note taking in Logseq with tags in notes, outlining, bidirectional linking, etc. My whole life revolves around notes that way including tasks, custom queries, etc. A lot of people are using this style of Markdown note taking on a variety of applications. I love all the functionality in this, but would for me an app like this with apps included that wraps around the note taking function would be good. 3. Only one gmail account. I tried to add another gmail to it, but couldn't see how. I am also using Spark for email which has a unified inbox for my 5 email accounts. I may be an outlier, but suspect a lot of folks have work and personal. Looks like I can have more than one calendar, but not email. 4. Search across email, calendars, tasks, notes, etc.

That's what I found with a first glance. I've used other similar apps, but I really like your focus on productivity, but for me, it just isn't a fit.

If you have questions or comments about my notes I'm happy to answer, but keep up the great work. This will be a perfect solution for a good number of folks.

Just tried the app -

Interesting concept, but I would focus on the integration part instead of trying to reinvent the browser, todo list and notes apps - these already exist, and just glancing at them, already know they won't replace my existing apps.

You'll never be as feature rich as Notion or keep up with any modern browser (I didn't see bookmarklets or extension support)

Also, the app is extremely sluggish, it takes almost 10 seconds to launch on my M1 air and upwards of 5 seconds to load Notes (with only 3 total notes), and there is considerable lag doing anything.

Thanks for checking out the app. Can you elaborate a tiny bit on what you mean by focus on the integration part?

I'm afraid that the endgame for this approach is that platform XYZ gets popular or a customer of a user of yours uses it. You have to integrate it or some of your customers will leave because they have to work outside your app. Repeat ten times in a couple of years. It's a lot of work for ever diminishing returns. But give it a try, there is nothing wrong with it. You might make a fair amount of money with only the people using the services supported now.

Interesting approach. I looked at the site, haven't played with it yet.

I've been thinking my workflows in a similar way to you, but came to a different conclusion. What I need is an interface that ties together all the threads of a given task and puts them in one place.

Let's say that for a given "thing to get done" I have information stored in various locations: 1. multiple email threads in my inbox (sales, PO, ELT, etc). They are in various states: actionable by me, waiting for reply (to follow up by X date if none), paused until X date then actionable, etc. Threads change state as emails are exchanged. 2. multiple related chat windows (dev team, peers, support triage, etc) 3. a litter of notes, meeting minutes, random thoughts, rough drafts, bookmarks (to internal documents, related wikis, JIRA tickets, external web pages, meeting recordings, project plans). Note that I have boiled a lot of stuff down to this "notes" category - I use a notes app to store this all already even though the actual content is spread across multiple locations.

My ideal interface would embed all of this together.

Imagine the bastard child of OneNote, Outlook, and maybe Teams. To use OneNote terms: I add a Section for my "thing to do"; all the shit in #3 goes in a hierarchy of pages under it. In a page I can have the related email threads in an embedded mini-inbox widget - no more swapping to Outlook, no more bullshit with flags/folders etc. Same for related chat windows - a widget in the related section. State tracking and deadline/reminder/scheduling etc for everything.

Anyway I ramble. What you have built is very cool! But I don't want an app grid, I want my inbox and chats sharded across my structured notes in a way that I can organise and annotate.

I believe it's an evolution of understanding what works for you and what doesn't. Experimenting with different approaches may be the best course of action.

From Floutwork's design perspective, the goal is to display only one thing to the user at a time. This is deliberate to maintain focus. When your eyes catch something, your mind starts paying attention to it, often without you realizing, leading to a loss of focus. This is why working in a browser full of tabs can be distracting. If your eyes wander, seeing an updated inbox count in another Gmail tab title can divert your attention, making you wonder who might have sent you an email. Imagine the friction points introduced into your workflow simply by seeing items that shouldn't demand your full attention. In Floutwork, when you're checking your emails, your Outlook or Gmail becomes the primary view commanding your full attention. Once you're done with that, you can easily switch your view and context to, let's say, a design project in Figma by clicking on the Figma icon in your sidebar. Now that becomes your full view. You don't have to worry about a cluttered desktop. For those rare cases where side-by-side viewing is needed, 'Split View' functionality is provided. Closing it returns you to your original view with just one click.

Fair enough, I get what you are driving at, and you are solving for a totally valid problem. I never use multiple screens for the same reason - my single screen is displaying the one thing at a time.

My problem is juggling all the balls in the air for a large number of in-progress tasks.

Presently my information landscape is split "vertically" by communication medium - here's all the email, here's all the chats, here's all the notes, here's the design projects, here's the slide decks, etc. What I want is rather to split it "horizontally" by task - here's everything related to task X.

People I have discussed this with have joked that what I need is a good Personal Assistant instead, haha. They have a point though.

> Imagine the bastard child of OneNote, Outlook, and maybe Teams. To use OneNote terms: I add a Section for my "thing to do"; all the shit in #3 goes in a hierarchy of pages under it. In a page I can have the related email threads in an embedded mini-inbox widget - no more swapping to Outlook, no more bullshit with flags/folders etc. Same for related chat windows - a widget in the related section. State tracking and deadline/reminder/scheduling etc for everything.

emacs, org-roam, org-mode, org-attach, mu4e, are what I use to accomplish roughly what you describe.

The combination of all? I want one thing...

But anyway, yeah. I have seen emacs power users and there is indeed cool stuff there. Don't know that I have the strength to invest to become a power user though.

Enjoyed using floutwork so far. The power of setting your intention and using the app/service to get things done was both novel and transformative.

Appreciate the positive feedback!

Congratulations on shipping and furthermore, huge congratulations on providing a trial without credit card info.

IMHO, this directly add credibility to a product because "you're sure of your product so you're not trying to trick me".

I don't need it now but might need it in the future.

There might be a few mistakes in your privacy policy ("chilrdren"), but it's quite complete!

Thank you for the compliment! I just went back and fixed that one word for now, but I will try to dive deeper and fix any other misspellings.

This looks great! I think I have access to most of these features already, but for people who don't this seems like an easy way to get it all in one package.

Grouping browser tabs is of course already handled by browsers, or you can use a window manager like i3, with the added bonus that i3 tabbed containers aren't limited to putting only browser windows in the tabs, but can include native application windows too.

The ability to add links to anything in your to do list I get from Emacs's Org mode —and probably even better than what is shown in the demo gifs: there you see adding a task from a sentence in an email, but it doesn't look like that also stores what email it came from, in Org mode you can easily set things up so that kind of that context is tracked automatically for you.

What really made me think is the Paste Calendar Availability feature! I need that all the time and it had never occurred to me to automate it.

I haven’t visited your website but just the title makes me think of IBM Lotus iNotes groupware (or whatever it was called) that had many integrated apps such as calendar, email, schedule, to do list manager, notebook, some sort of forms manager for filling expense reports and such, etc etc and was an absolutely nightmare to use. IIRC it had a web based interface as well as a stand-alone program. It was so bad I have blocked out all memory of using it!

Invariably all in one products fall behind as new capabilities are needed as the user base grows and their needs evolve. Integrating new functions gets harder and harder. What I’d like to see is a graphical version of the Unix philosophy of making it easier to connect together programs, each of which handles one kind of thing, with a “shell” around them. May be come up with a richer, self describing data structure to interconnect these apps.

Feel free to not answer this just curious as a developer.

- native or wrapper eg. Electron/Tauri

- what is your opinion of app adoption vs. web app

- what tool did you use to design? figma/paper?

I'm concerned about the name, fl out or flout (openly disregard?) didn't know that was a word huh.

Pricing might need to be broken out more eg. $5 seems too cheap.

Happy to answer!

native or wrapper eg. Electron/Tauri - Electron

what is your opinion of app adoption vs. web app - Could you clarify? Are you asking about Floutwork app adoption versus Floutwork as a web app, or are you referring to apps vs. web apps in general?

what tool did you use to design? figma/paper? - I used Figma

About app vs. web, it would seem that web is easier/less barrier entry for people to use.

Did you go with web [desktop] app for a particular reason like MacOS user's pay more or something for an app?

Oh yes, the web is an easier route and has fewer barriers to adoption. I do struggle with adoption a bit since this is a desktop app, and many larger companies have strict policies about it. I would have definitely gone the web route if the solution I was aiming for could be accomplished using just a web app. However, some of the features I wanted to include in this "all-in-one" solution are best executed in a desktop app.

Just realized I didn't get to the last one

Pricing might need to be broken out more eg. $5 seems too cheap. - Could you clarify this one as well? When you say the pricing needs to be 'broken out more,' do you mean offering additional pricing tiers or options?

Yeah, it would seem like tiers makes sense regarding who is using it eg. a single user/hobbyist vs. manager. It is up to you how much you charge for it but $5/less than spotify for a productivity app that may be used by PMs/Managers, seems low.

I am not a successful business owner though so take this opinion lightly.

Very, very, very interesting. Will take a look.

Though part of me just wants to say "Nice, you've just reinvented Emacs Org-mode". Of course, Org-mode probably isn't for everyone.

Good luck with this project!

Thanks! Looking forward to your feedback.

I think this looks great and has good potential, and can see some productivity influencers using your app.

The always visible tasks + calendar and the auto scheduling worth the price.

In the past I tried to create a similar setup on my emacs without much success, where tasks could be easily timeblocked in a view like this.

For auto scheduling, I crafted a ChatGPT prompt reliable enough to adjust my calendar a couple times per day.

Just another way of saying that I tried to implement myself what you elegantly did in your app.

Appreciate the positive feedback!

Seems an interesting idea if you work mostly on cloud-based apps. Can it only work with those? Any plan to be able to use local apps like Powerpoint? (don't want to use the online version, doing that kind of stuff in a browser doesn't have the right feeling in terms of responsiveness, and eats much more system resources).

It would also be nice to have more info about the integrated mail client, does it support IMAP/SMTP, and/or Exchange servers?

Yes, Floutwork is primarily designed to streamline the use of web-based apps. Unfortunately, integrating local apps isn't in the current plans, as that would be a significant technical challenge.

Floutwork does have a built-in email app, but its primary role is to supplement your main email client, not replace it. It currently makes it easy to clear out high volumes of emails with just a few clicks and can be used for sending quick replies. Over time, I plan to develop a richer experience that could serve as a replacement for your primary email client. The email app supports Gmail and Outlook.

Could you also embed other electron-based apps in this? Thinking an already existing electron-based terminal app. Those are normally oversized and memory hogs but at least for a quick and dirty/accessible terminal tab within this it might be cool, and memory-loving/heavy/large apps are just kind of the nature of the beast these days

From what I've seen, most Electron-based apps have a web version. In fact, many web apps offer a desktop version that is essentially an Electron wrapper. If you can find the web version of your Electron app, you can add it to Floutwork as a web app. However, if it is purely Electron-based with no web version, unfortunately, that can't be integrated within Floutwork, and there are no plans to attempt that feat.

I’ve dreamt of an app that works like this. Browser tabs as children of tasks is a really strong concept and I think it’s more transformative than people can easily appreciate. I wish you the best and will give it a try soon.

PS I misread “gamify your work” as “calmify…” and rather liked it. We’re all after some sense of flow.

Thanks for the kind words and the 'calmify' word play idea. Hope you enjoy using the app!

Looks very promising. I’ve been trying to implement a similar workflow with Obsidian using daily notes, Full Calendar plugin and keeping notes/links collection for every tasks. But I realized that having a more focused UI (instead of switching tabs in Obsidian) is very powerful.

Agree on the focused UI approach. I plan to continue making the flow increasingly frictionless.

Looks good - but why limit it to macos only? Linux support would ve great, potentially packaged as an appimage.

It supports Windows as well. This HN thread has convinced me to release a Linux version in the near future :)

Thank you!

What makes this better than the open source Station ( https://getstation.com/ ) ?

Granted I haven’t used station in maybe 4-5 years so I have no idea what’s changed or what the landscape looks like in this niche of software..

I did try out Station before starting to build Floutwork, and I still have it installed. It doesn't support tabs within web apps. Additionally, it lacks several other features that Floutwork offers, such as task/calendar sync, email clean-up, command bar, ChatGPT, productivity metrics, and focus mode, to name a few.

It's strange that you don't think developers have this type of problem. We have to merge Slack threads, email threads, issue tickets, customer escalations, comments in the code, comments on code reviews, etc. and then pick the highest priority thing out of all of those.

True. That's good feedback. I was only going off of my experience as a developer and what I heard from other developers when I originally pitched this product to them. However, I do agree that developers could also benefit from it.

Big respect to anybody who makes a thing. I have seen a new task manager every year for the last 23 years. I feel like there may be something here that is cool, but its difficult to see what it is.

In a couple of sentences- why should we care about Floutwork?

Thank you for the comment. I get that the task manager space is crowded. Floutwork aims to go beyond just task management by integrating all your workday essentials into a single interface to minimize distractions and boost focus. It's about creating a more streamlined and efficient work environment and an opinionated workflow to get things done.

I love your homepage explainer videos with the zoom and text. You do those yourself or hire a service?

On pricing I would want to download 7 day trial, then purchase that version and buy upgrades. It’s no bs pricing for your no bs desktop.

I created the videos myself using Loom and Adobe After Effects. For videos that don't require text, I'm planning to try out https://www.screen.studio.

Pricing has been a hot topic, and I'm definitely considering more options soon. Thank you!

This seems quite useful to reign in my relatively unstructured unnamed text notes.

Great to hear!

I think you're competing directly with https://reclaim.ai/features/tasks here. Good luck!

Had a look because thought it may help with my ADHD but my ADHD doesn't like the fact I have to create tasks via a new process as it would distract me from what I was possibly focusing on.

I agree that losing focus while trying to add a task can be disruptive. I recognized that as an issue. So I've aimed to make this process seamless in Floutwork. For instance, if you're in a meeting, you can open a command bar via a keyboard shortcut (CMD+1) and type tasks like "Get back with Mike next week" or "Follow up with Dan at 3pm." You can close the command bar by clicking outside of it, returning to your original view without losing focus.

If you're on a web page and find something worth following up on, you can select the text, right-click, and choose "Add Task," optionally setting a time like "Tomorrow" or "Next week." Alternatively, you can select "Add Task with Screenshot" to capture the current view and URL for future reference. The same can be done by right-clicking any open tab, allowing you to close it and remove it from your view until you're ready to revisit the task.

Another way to add tasks without losing focus is to click the tasks icon at the top-right corner of any web app to open a side view. Here, you can quickly add multiple tasks and then close the Split View.

The goal is to make task creation simple and focus-friendly, enabling you to get tasks out of your head while maintaining your current activity so I wanted to provide a few different options within the app. Do you think this approach would be helpful for you?

Hey, that's really nice, what's the tech stack behind it?

E: was answered here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37920591

I suppose for remote (unspiedupon) work it's ok, but in an office where you work do you really want to be using an app called 'flout work'? Did you mean flaunt? Or is it Flo[w] [ut?] work?

I chose the name Floutwork to signify flouting the norms of how work is usually done, aiming to break away from the norm to create a more streamlined and effective work environment. "Flout" is also short, like "Slack," so I liked it a lot and just went with it.

Hm, it doesn't really say that to me. Wiktionary has:

    1. (transitive) To express contempt for (laws, rules, etc.) by word or action.
    2. (transitive, archaic) To scorn. 

or as a noun ('a flout of work' say):

    1. The act by which something is flouted; violation of a law.
    2. A mockery or insult.

i.e. 'Flouttraditionalworkingprocesses' kind of says what you describe, but is obviously a terrible name. 'Flout work' to me sounds like it's the work itself that you're unhappy with. Maybe something around new/neo/nouveau/re-thinking would be better 'Neowork', 'Rethunk' (edit: 'Rework' is pretty good on a few levels IMO)? I don't mean to hate on it, just feeding back that it was a slightly odd first impression - Reddit's /r/antiwork sort of vibe.

I do like "Rework" a lot! I'm curious if it might imply the concept of "redoing work."

I thought the same thing, but then "slack" also implies not working very hard, and that didn't seem to be a problem for them (though maybe the counterfactual is a world in which Slack had even more users with a better name).

Good point. It is slightly different in that you (mostly) only use Slack if your org has chosen to use it anyway - but no, fair point.

I was thinking the same thing about Slack. But yeah, I wonder if the name had a positive or negative impact on the overall outcome.

Curious how you chose the name. Seems antithetical to the idea of getting the work done, at least in light of my negative emotional reaction to “flout” which connotes irresponsibility to me.

The intent behind the name is to challenge traditional notions of how we work. In this sense, "flout" represents breaking away from the usual way of working to create a more effective and streamlined environment. It's also short, so I liked it and went with it :)

In the main tasks list, I only see tasks in the calendar bar on the right, not items from my google calendar (even though it's added, configured, and synced).

There might be a small sync issue with some accounts. Please feel free to email me at daniel@floutwork.com and I can follow up on this issue with you.

Can anyone recommend something similar for Linux?

I like that it fits tasks around my calendar events to schedule my day. I wish there was an Obsidian plugin to do that.

I use Full Calendar Obsidian plugin that populates calendar from daily notes. But it doesn’t have an auto-sync option, so I add calendar entries manually at the start of the day.

Small copy edit. In the FAQ, an other should be another.

Looks really interesting and will check it out.

Thank you for pointing out. Just fixed it :)

"An all in one desktop app" sounds a lot like a web browser.

I agree. If you work on the web, your web browser is your 'all-in-one app,' so to speak. Floutwork's goal is to make that workflow streamlined, focused, and organized so you can be way more successful at work.

Mac only? What is the target audience here given Windows is popular?

Windows is also supported. However, when you view the web page from a mac, it only shows you the "Download for Mac" button.

well i dled it... and i think the task management is very nicely laid out. Much more useful, clean, intuitive than a lot of task apps out there.

Good work, keep it up

Thanks for checking it out and I appreciate your kind words!

TLDR:

The premise isn't ambitious enough, the use cases seem thin, and the lack of marketing pop reflects a lack of distinct USP. But, I'm encouraged to see someone trying technically ambitious work like this because its barking up the right tree.

Long version:

It seems like your value prop is possibly about how various workflows are organized vis-a-vis each other, but that really doesn't come through in your marketing. Rethinking the info architecture and organization of information in support of more efficient and focused workflows is a promising place to go but everything in the screenshots shows me things I've already seen. Each of the items in your marketing had me going 'I already have something for that, and this is probably way worse'.

I'm not seeing ideas in here yet that are sufficient to consider worthy of the technical challenge you've undertaken - that is, an environment where you have complete control over apps.

For instance, app grids are terrible, even the notion of apps is terrible because apps have their own distractions and workflows span apps. I'd expect something that sits at a layer below (web)apps to be able to do something about that, like extract useful things from apps without showing me the whole app. You need to flex your unique position with product approaches like this.

The main idea I'm seeing besides organizing is the time/task system. This looks a bit like single player Clockwise [1] and raises more questions than it answers. The main concern I have with this is that any auto-schedule is going to be rather rigid and force me to babysit it to meet my expectations. The real test of systems managing our time is how adaptable they are to the uncertainties life throws at us, not the creation of rigid work plans. In this case it would be good to shift your marketing (& product) to how your product adapts to various scenarios and use cases in the user's life, rather than presenting an idealized way of working that users have to adapt to.

For whatever it's worth I've done some thinking around organizing OSes differently in my Spaces concept [2] and I'd guess you're probably aware of MercuryOS [3] ideas. Both of those start from premises far different than our current paradigm and show the implications of how organizing information differently creates unexpected new ways to use our devices. I would encourage a similar level of ambitious premise to justify this level of technical undertaking. Glad you're in the arena doing this work though, as the technical undertaking creates the opportunity for more ambitious ideas to be possible.

[1]: https://www.getclockwise.com

[2]: https://nickpunt.com/blog/spaces

[3]: https://www.mercuryos.com

Really appreciate the detailed comment, encouragement, and references. This is just the first step for Floutwork. Down the road, I plan to create functionality ('layer below web apps,' as you put it) to extract useful details from websites and present them in ways that are both private to you and beneficial to your workflow. Also, the task times shown on your calendar will automatically adjust to your busy meeting schedules, and any updates to your meetings are recognized, prompting a new plan to be presented. This way, you don't have to worry about dragging and dropping events all over your calendar; you can focus on your task list and provide essential details like duration or priority. The rest will be taken care of for you.

That's great! Thanks for the clarification, I might have to poke around more with it and I look forward to seeing your next steps. Some additional thoughts in case they're of interest:

My main go to market concern is that by requiring users adopt a whole new approach to work in order to get value out of your solution you're limiting your market to those most willing to adopt new workflows. These users tend to be 'productivity tourists' that may churn faster than you expect, while users beyond these are likely to demand a much higher level of product quality to match the level of commitment required and that will be hard to achieve across the spectrum of features you offer [1].

To reach a broader market or possibly even sustainable side project income I believe you'll have to demonstrate value at each step of commitment, from 'I like it for one thing' to 'I'm all in baby!' and everywhere between. This requires really thinking about how to reconfigure the product around incremental value propositions.

My sense is as you go down this road you'll find your approach shifting (and possibly pivoting?) from a holistic workflow to diving deep on specific features that get people onboard, but that's just my guess.

I do think extracting useful bits from webpages and bringing them up in the appropriate context is a great area to focus on, and can be a feature that demonstrates value quickly to a wider audience. Some examples:

A. On a given workstream I'm waiting for Julia to message me. I don't want to see anything else from Slack, Figma, email, github, or whatever, all of which break my flow. Ideally I communicate to the system at a high level that this workstream is blocked on Julia, and it figures out the rest: A) that it should look for any contact or notifications from Julia and present them here, B) that if I do not hear anything back for a certain time I may get a reminder to bug her again, C) that the entirety of the workstream does not have to enter my 'executive purview' until this blocker is released or unless a period of time has passed.

B. On a Discord about an app I like, I want to know if anyone is talking about 'better autocomplete', a particular feature I want. I tell the system 'let me know when someone mentions this so I can jump in the discussion'. The system has discord running in the background, scanning channels until this hits, and delivers me a notification.

The theory behind this is that our attention and the rules about things that matter to us need to be defined at the OS-level where our executive function lies, where all rules can be weighed against each other, and where major categories of our lives can be properly compartmentalized.

Push notifications are insufficient for this because they are at the wrong layer: apps have no idea what matters to us or what else is going on in our lives, so they're a combination of too chatty and off the mark wrt the things we care about. Plus each one has different settings and notification capabilities.

Instead we need what amount to 'Pull notifications' so we can be freed of the need to check on various contexts and can fully let them go from our mind. But this requires a system sufficiently powerful enough to mimic the human-like gestalt understanding of what's actually happening in any given context [2]. AI is the enabling technology to do this and unlocks these kinds of use cases. It lets us unbundle interfaces & value from messy, anachronistic, and sometimes user-hostile apps. This is so powerful.

From a product-direction perspective I think that's the most compelling use case to explore at your stage, because

a) its novel & useful,

b) its useful even if used minimally,

c) it provides a path toward greater user commitment,

d) its easy to communicate to the market,

e) it opens up a bigger market of potential users,

f) it lets you continue the deeper Floutwork orchestration ideas you've started with, so it's not abandoning your motivation, hard work, and journey building this.

In particular, the work is to identify a host of use cases like the above where users can make high-level asks for things and you build smart assumptions for the system to solve those use cases. This is only possible if there's an orchestration layer / 'executive purview' to manage all of these drags on your attention. And you've built the groundwork for that with Floutwork! I hope you seize the opportunity :)

[1]: This is the classic 'well-integrated but not great' vs 'best-in-class but only does one thing' bundle/unbundle schism in tech.

[2]: e.g. we see things from the top-down, whereas traditional 'extract things from webpages' sees them from divs on up, which cannot solve most important use cases.

This is great insight. Appreciate you exploring the use cases in more detail and identifying where the value might reside. This is valuable feedback for me to consider and look into further.

Sometime around 2010, after I had been burned by the nth webFoo that excited me as The Solution (tm) went under, I got very serious about Emacs and (mode)company, which I had used as just an avaliable text editor on Unix from 1993-1996 and off-and-on on Linux since 1998.

Everytime I start lusting after a sweet young thing I ask: Is it local? Is it future-proof? Is it plaintext? Is it extensible by competent users? The answer is always no to one of them (unless it's basically also a text editor like Vim (shudder)), and the "heat" dissipates, and I "rejoice in the wife of my youth."

Check out Obsidian if you haven’t already

Logseq is all these things, and open source!

Logseq is definitely worth a try just to run the operations through your fingers, and it's amazing for some people - but after roughly a year and a half, I'm about at the point of picking up the two or three things I really like about logseq and porting them back to emacs and plain-ish markdown. (For most people that would just be "use org-mode" but I've bounced off of it a couple of times already and only want a few simple features...)

Logseq almost got me, especially because it allows org-mode markup and is influenced by TiddlyWiki, which I once used heavily.

However the interface (like Roam) is too limiting. I am used to split frames of multiple buffers with others a C-x b away, and treemacs and mu4e and Olivetti mode, and eshell, and dired, and...

It's been a while since I spun up Logseq—are you able to use it collaboratively?

That's the biggest obstacle for me with these personal knowledge management apps. They're nice to use individually, but when I need to collaborate with someone, there's no way to delegate access—much less granular access.

I haven't tried since I don't have anyone I need to use it with, but there's a way to set it to back up and sync using git (since they're all markdown files anyway). It wouldn't be real-time (you couldn't both have a document open at once), and you'd probably have to remember to push your changes.

Syncthing might also work in a rather hacky way, but would probably also run into real-time collisions.

I recently deployed getoutline.com to my personal kubernetes cluster. It's free to self-host and everything is saved in markdown. It also has collaborative features.

I believe it's intended for documentation. But I use it as my note taking app.

This is how I feel. I will leave emacs from time to time to try this, that, or the other. But I come back and emacs is there awaiting.

I recently learned to love the unadorned emacs (no eVIl mode), and I can't believe I spun my gears in modal land for so long.

If you limit yourself to the plaintext horses, you'll miss flying cars

Obsidian comes to mind

Seems nice, but not even trying it.

I discard immediately any subscription based app that doesn't provide a clear and useful service for / because of the subscription (as a side note, this is apparently not highlighted in any capacity in your website, and it seems to be you don't offer any kind of cloud related storage).

Before you say "but what's 5 bucks a month" well the reason for me saying no to 5 bucks a month is the same reason why you charge 5 bucks: You're looking at volume.

People needs to realize that by offering subscription only apps, they are competing in a very, very crowded market. Only those apps that offer a real value get a sustained subscription.

For the record, 5 bucks is more or less the same amount I pay in my country for the full set of Adobe apps, and half of what I pay for the full set of JetBrains tools (International price). The other two services I pay for are OpenAI and Github Copilot.

P.S.: In my opinion JetBrains offers the best subscription model there is, that is a "hybrid" model. It's subscription based, but if you paid a full year (Not calendar) you get the last version available for the calendar year which ends inside the period you paid (Or that is how I understand it).

I appreciate the detailed feedback. I've received quite a lot of input on pricing from Floutwork users. I do feel it is a bit hard to nail the best pricing model that works for everyone. I understand the hesitation around subscription-based models. The goal of Floutwork is to help users complete all their work without distractions, using a single platform to improve their rate of success. I agree that the market is crowded, and my aim is to stand out by solving multiple problems in one go. The pricing reflects the value provided across multiple features, not just cloud storage.

It's interesting to hear what you pay for Adobe and JetBrains in your country. The JetBrains hybrid model is definitely worth exploring. Thanks for bringing it up.

If it's a desktop app, charge for it. At some point, offer a new version with an upgrade price. I'm your target market, and I'm never paying for this.

Appreciate the candid feedback. I'll definitely consider this perspective. Thank you!

It’s a distraction to have a monthly fee when I want to just buy it and be done.

It’s a constant reminder of how I’m not managing my work well enough by choosing efficient tools.

Imagine if you had to rent a hammer. Or a pencil.

This HN thread has convinced me to reconsider my pricing options. Appreciate the feedback!

Is there a way to set the price so that it purchases a micro annuity for you.

I get you want recurring revenue. It might be possible to have the $10 fee go into some security or bond that pays you out a few cents per year forever. Not sure how that will work taxes wise.

The JetBrains price is the international price, they don't have a regional price as Adobe. Guess should have been clear that the JB price is because I've been a subscriber for years now, still the reason for that if that they offer a lot of bang for those bucks.

> I do feel it is a bit hard to nail the best pricing model that works for everyone

I understand the reason for going with a subscription model, but in your case I think that works for you only, not for your users.

I will consider more pricing options in the future. Thank you!

Don’t hate the player, hate the game. Pay up to the G grinding hard to help you come up.

which set of adobe you pay only $5 ?

Creative cloud all apps + 100 GB.

Argentina is a weird country.

wondered too, I pay $54/month for creative cloud

Any sufficiently complicated productivity program is an ad hoc, informally-specified, bug-ridden, slow implementation of a small subset of Emacs.

I got really into Emacs, probably 10 years ago. I lived it. So I understand why people like it. Then I left, and I don’t miss it at all. I’m glad it exists; it sets a certain standard. I don’t think VS Code is “there” yet. But for the love of transistors, I really hope that something comes along that checks the boxes of “why people love Emacs” but also embraces graphical user interfaces. If we never have something widely considered a proper superset of Emacs, technological progress will be incomplete. Luckily, we are in a golden age of text editor and plain-text “knowledge base” software. For example, Obsidian is fantastic — far from the goals of Emacs — but it is a new “locus of excellence” so to speak.

Haha, true. Floutwork is just my humble attempt to give Emacs a run for its money ;)

One issue with this sort of software is that either Security/Corporate will never let you install it, or could raise their eyebrow or question it or it may get flagged etc

This statement has no bearing or reflection on any potential security implications re: this particular software (whether they may or may not exist)—- it’s just a general statement that this type of software could be put under the microscope in a corporate environment and potential users should be aware of that..

And why could mitigate that? On-prem install? Open source?

>And why could mitigate that?

What?

Yes, exactly.

“And ‘what’ could mitigate that?”