[HN Gopher] Launch HN: Zenfetch (YC W23) - Turn notes/browser hi...
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Launch HN: Zenfetch (YC W23) - Turn notes/browser history into an
AI assistant
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!
Author : rex123
Score : 61 points
Date : 2024-02-15 17:39 UTC (5 hours ago)
| lawxls wrote:
| 'GPT assistant' is now associated with OpenAI's GPTs for me. Very
| confusing.
| gabev wrote:
| 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?
| rex123 wrote:
| Edit: changed to say AI now
| verdverm wrote:
| OpenAI just got denied on their Trademark for GPT
|
| There are many other GPTs from outside OpenAI, such that GPT is
| the contemporary Escalator
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| How does this compare to something like Rem [1] [2]?
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38787892
|
| [2] https://github.com/jasonjmcghee/rem
| rex123 wrote:
| 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.
| breadchris wrote:
| 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
| rex123 wrote:
| 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.
| breadchris wrote:
| Depending on who your market is (sales leads, researchers,
| developers) it may not make sense to support local/OSS.
| Posting this on hn will always bring a bearded dev, me, into
| the comments to rant about the way things should be, but this
| doesn't always reflect the path to product success. Right now
| your tool is too general, find a use case and crush it. Find
| some inspiration from this ext:
| https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/workona-spaces-
| tab...
| rex123 wrote:
| Thanks for the thoughts. I actually use Workona and love it
| haha
| travelton wrote:
| Very cool! Index my Google Email, Drive, and Calendar. "Find the
| receipt for that TV I bought from Best Buy 7 years ago."
| rex123 wrote:
| Thanks! Right now don't have automatic integrations for those
| yet but we do allow you to individually save emails and docs.
| Full integrations and sync for Drive and Email coming soon!
| dre_bot wrote:
| I'm good chief.
| geepytee wrote:
| I used to be the guy who would save cool websites I stumble
| across so I could 'read them later'. Lol, ya right.
|
| Fast forward to today, I've been using Zenfetch for a few months
| now. Basically, everything I read, or wish I had the time to read
| / watch (they support Youtube too) gets saved on my Zenfetch
| library.
|
| Being able to ask for summaries of stuff you are browsing in real
| time is great for picking up new knowledge.
|
| Chatting with your entire library with 1,500+ saved articles and
| drawing correlations between different subjects + never
| forgetting anything, is next level.
|
| Don't be the 'bookmarking this for later' guy.
| dougSF70 wrote:
| Interesting. Just for context Autonomy (now part of HP) built
| this cool app called Kenjin back in the 90s it used Bayesian
| inference applied to your browsing session to suggest content.
| gabev wrote:
| That's awesome! We haven't explored content discovery too much
| right now, since we're more focused on re-discovery of content
| you've already saved.
|
| As a statistician by training, I appreciate how the traditional
| inference techniques were helpful way before LLMs became
| mainstream for these tasks :)
| jeeshan wrote:
| When will this be available on safari?
| gabev wrote:
| It's part of the roadmap, likely releasing in Q2
|
| Is that your browser of choice?
| eitland wrote:
| Safari is my current everyday browser, but anything that
| isn't based on almost anything modern that isn't tainted by
| the chrome should be fine.
|
| Just like IE 6 I refuse to touch it if I can at all prevent
| it.
|
| (Feel free to join in folks. We can do this, IE was much
| better entrenched at its worst.)
| fudged71 wrote:
| It's interesting.
|
| How do you see this comparing to Pocket, Readwise, and Dewey? I
| think many Read Later apps will add AI search on top
| rex123 wrote:
| Great question. A couple ways we see ourselves differentiating:
| 1. We're adding more and more integrations to become your
| knowledge assistant over your entire knowledge not just what
| you read online. This includes your notes, content, emails,
| etc. 2. We're working on doing more than just search over your
| knowledge. Many of our users use us to brainstorm topics for
| new content, compare and contrast perspectives across articles,
| or even create first drafts of content. 3. We're implementing
| features soon that will allow our model to create a "preference
| graph" for each user so that overtime the responses get more
| and more personalized to what you're looking for.
| squirrel wrote:
| I'm using zenfetch intensely for research using my own work
| (hundreds of podcast episodes and blog/forum posts) and others'
| (books, articles, and more). Results so far are largely
| excellent, with the occasional bug fixed quickly. RAG as a
| service is tremendously beneficial and zenfetch means you don't
| have to roll your own.
| dakshgupta wrote:
| Can I manually add notes too? I have been looking for something
| exactly like this.
| rex123 wrote:
| Yep you can! We support adding notes form Google Docs and
| Notion. You can also upload PDFs. Are your notes in a different
| format?
| m1117 wrote:
| There's a nice tool called Glasp
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