[HN Gopher] Show HN: Scribe generates step-by-step guides for GU...
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Show HN: Scribe generates step-by-step guides for GUI workflows
Author : apodolny
Score : 36 points
Date : 2021-10-26 15:21 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (get.scribehow.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (get.scribehow.com)
| apodolny wrote:
| Hey all, looking forward to hearing your feedback on Scribe - a
| browser extension and desktop app that automatically generates
| step-by-step guides for any GUI-based process you choose to
| record on your computer.
|
| Me and my cofounder originally set out to build an RPA tool.
| Along the way, we discovered that the bigger problem most teams
| were facing had to do with capturing and sharing each
| individual's specialized knowledge. Most of this knowledge wasn't
| written down, let alone stored in some sort of shareable format.
| With hybrid and remote working models becoming the new norm, this
| struck us as a problem that really couldn't wait any longer, so
| we decided to address this need instead.
|
| We wanted to create something that felt quite different to the
| manual and tedious nature that's often associated with putting
| together process documentation or how-to guides. That meant that
| Scribe had to be able to intelligently recognize the key steps in
| your process, while still feeling very lightweight and easy to
| use.
|
| The tool generates instructions and screenshots based on your
| clicks and keystrokes to build your step-by-step guide--to do
| this, there were a few key technical challenges we had to solve:
| 1. Going from a set of keystrokes and clicks to actual steps 2.
| Recognizing when to take the screenshot (i.e. before you do a key
| action) 3. Reconciling different DPI screens (pixel densities) 4.
| Automatically identifying and combining similar (but distinct)
| steps
|
| We have Basic (free) and Pro (paid) tiers. Basic gives you a
| Chrome extension to record web-based apps while Pro comes with a
| desktop recorder so you can record any program on your computer.
| I'd love to hear your feedback on either. If you'd like to check
| out Pro, you can use the code HN2021 after you sign up for a one-
| month free trial.
| klintcho wrote:
| Are the scribes hosted somewhere so that they can be linked?
| Would love this on a FAQ page for end users / customers.
| tiffanyz wrote:
| yup! all Scribes can be set to "shareable with link" - thanks
| for the feedback re: including this on the FAQ page!
| pca2 wrote:
| As someone who's documented a lot of users flows by hand this
| would be a really handy service. However, it'd be great if
| there was more of a demo available without a sign up. At the
| moment it seems like there's just a couple of tiny screeenshots
| and a single GIF showing what your product actually looks like.
| How about a sample screencast or a sample PDF of a finished
| guide?
| tiffanyz wrote:
| for sure, check out our gallery:
| https://scribehow.com/gallery to view Scribes (you don't need
| an account to view them)
| GordonS wrote:
| How long have you been running for - I see you have more than
| 10,000 companies using Scribe, which is amazing!
|
| Echoing what another person here said, I'd really like to see
| some decent examples of the end result - I love the _idea_ of
| Scribe, but a small screenshot and a small gif really isn 't
| hooking me in to spend the time to find out more.
| tiffanyz wrote:
| hey there! sorry about that - you can check out what the end
| product looks like on our gallery:
| https://scribehow.com/gallery
|
| the team has been building this product quietly over the past
| year and a half, and we launched last month on PH.
| GordonS wrote:
| Wow, I'd love to read about how you managed to get 10,000
| customers in such a short time? How much of that would you
| attribute to ProductHunt?
| tiffanyz wrote:
| Product Hunt was really impactful, especially since we
| continue to see ripple effects from that community. Up
| until very recently, that's actually the only real
| marketing we've done!
| nickphx wrote:
| Interesting idea, congrats on putting it all together. Do you
| have any working examples of the end result? The landing page
| only had a few screen shots and it was not entirely clear to me
| what the results looked like. Are users able to export or copy
| the created guides? Are user accounts required to view the
| created guides?
| tiffanyz wrote:
| Definitely! Here's a Scribe I recently created to show all the
| different ways you can share your Scribe:
| https://scribehow.com/shared/Sharing-your-Scribe-with-others...
|
| User accounts are not required to view Scribes, and yes, users
| are able to export and copy the created guides.
| mickgardner wrote:
| Are the guides all PDF or HTML? Or can the guides be videos
| too? You mention 'Markdown' export, do those include images
| etc?
| tiffanyz wrote:
| Yes - all Scribes contain images (no video, though you can
| combine steps to generate GIFs). If you want to see what
| the end product looks like you can check out our gallery:
| https://scribehow.com/gallery
| jasonpeacock wrote:
| Is this a desktop app, a hosted solution, or self-hosted?
|
| For work use, we need on-premise only and can't have internal
| tools exposed/captured by external tools.
| tiffanyz wrote:
| We have a desktop app and a browser extension, but all Scribes
| are hosted on AWS. We do offer a few export options which would
| enable you to take the Scribes "offline" after creating them,
| but in those cases the Scribes wouldn't be "living" docs
| niros_valtos wrote:
| Who designed your landing page? The design is amazing!
| tiffanyz wrote:
| thanks! we used unbounce to put it together and have a great
| contract designer we work with!
| niros_valtos wrote:
| Mind sharing?
| pugworthy wrote:
| _edit_
|
| Why didn't you just send people to https://scribehow.com/? It
| explains the product so much.
|
| I'd love to see some examples of this other than just little
| animations on the main screen. Right now it's just simple
| animations and a request to register.
|
| The world is full of "solutions", as is my inbox from products I
| had to sign up for just to see what it did. Not sure I want to
| bother with that barrier to entry just to evaluate (and get on
| some mail list).
| apodolny wrote:
| Hi -- sorry about that. If you want to see some example
| Scribes, there's a gallery with some basics here:
| https://scribehow.com/gallery. The real difference here is how
| these are made.
| mohanmcgeek wrote:
| I saw this on producthunt the other day. This would really
| save hours of my team's time!
|
| My first question when I saw this was if the produced
| documentation was persisted in scribehow's servers and if it
| would ever work on pages not accessible from open web
| tiffanyz wrote:
| All Scribes are hosted on AWS. We do offer a few export
| options which would enable you to take the Scribes
| "offline" after creating them, but in those cases the
| Scribes would no longer be "living" docs
| DougWebb wrote:
| I skimmed very quickly, and this seems pretty similar to the
| Windows built-in tool Problem Steps Recorder. I assume it's
| cross-platform, which is a nice advantage. Any other big
| differences?
|
| https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/record-steps-to-...
| pugworthy wrote:
| I was assuming at first from the examples that this was just for
| web based applications. But I see it also supports desktop apps.
| Which OS?
|
| I'm being picky but I'm also pretty intrigued. The idea is quite
| nice.
| tiffanyz wrote:
| our desktop app works on Mac and Windows :)
| fishtoaster wrote:
| Well this is really neat. As an engineer at a tiny startup "How
| do I do X in <our nascent internal tooling>" is a common refrain.
| I'm already pitching this internally - if this significantly cuts
| down on the time I spent writing up directions for people (and
| the time they spend being confused by my incomplete directions),
| it'll be worth its weight in gold. :)
| fudged71 wrote:
| Looking at an example https://scribehow.com/shared/Setting-a-
| great-LinkedIn-cover_... I was expecting to see animations of the
| workflow (like Live Photos?).
| [deleted]
| kposehn wrote:
| Go Scribe! Glad to see you launch :)
| iammisc wrote:
| This is great... Thanks. I hate making how-to guides.
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