[HN Gopher] Launch HN: Muddy (YC S19) - Multiplayer browser for ...
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Launch HN: Muddy (YC S19) - Multiplayer browser for getting work
done
Hey HN! This is Jimmy, Ron and Austa from Muddy
(https://feelmuddy.com/). Muddy is a browser for work that
automatically keeps project files organized in the same place where
you use and share them. Here's a demo:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZr49aN3sjQ. Download and try it
out here: https://feelmuddy.com/. Building together in the past,
we were incredibly frustrated with how much friction there is to
get anything done on our computers. I was losing time everyday
digging through chat logs looking for that one important link or
breaking others out of flow by asking where something is. Web apps
promised to help us get more done--and they do, but each in its own
silo, so there's still a ton of redundancy to deal with. Every app
has its own way of organizing files, its own notification inbox,
its own search system. Conversations live everywhere and there
isn't a single view to see everything about a project. Remember
when files simply lived in folders rather than the "cloud"? We
started dedicating time to organizing our files in shared docs and
limiting new apps we used. This helped - but the second we didn't
stay on top of organization, links became stale and things got
messy again. Muddy started as a hack week project we built for
ourselves--a single place to use web apps with others, but
personalized for each user automatically. Everyone gets their own
view for every project, designed around how they work. Muddy users
work on projects in spaces, which are like automatic tab groups.
Users share apps (any site works--a Github PR, Figma file, Trello
board--whatever you want) into the project's shared timeline and
Muddy automatically opens relevant tabs for you. It's a single
click to open up all the apps you need for the project. Under the
hood, Muddy works in the background to keep track of the timeline
and uses a LLM to continuously organize apps and keep everything on
to date. It considers signals like the popularity of a file, naming
conventions, and conversations to figure out what's relevant. So
everyone is presented with an updated list of important tabs,
without anyone lifting a finger. Our actual browser is based on
Chromium. When you need to revisit something from weeks ago, you
can rewind the project timeline to that point in a single click.
Apps open up in the timeline so you'll see your files right away.
For sites that don't have built in collaboration features (like
documentation), Muddy lets you do annotations directly on the
website. Projects sometimes get big and need to be broken up.
Across all your spaces, Muddy can answer questions like ChatGPT,
cite your files as sources, and return apps directly. This is
possible since Muddy's AI shares your browser and can use your
authenticated apps locally (with privacy in mind). Other browsers
like Chrome and Arc focus on solo productivity with sharing as a
bolt-on. We think productivity depends on how well you can work
with others, and should be the first class consideration. And doing
organizational work manually is unsustainable. Muddy will have
paid subscriptions for teams with additional features like shared
passwords, team organization, custom shortcuts, and SSO management.
Those aren't built out yet and the base product will be free. No
part of our revenue will come from data monetization. We'd love
for you to give Muddy a spin! You can download Muddy for Mac or
Windows on our website and add others once inside:
https://feelmuddy.com/. We'll be around to answer questions and
look forward to any and all feedback!
Author : lele0108
Score : 143 points
Date : 2024-05-09 15:38 UTC (7 hours ago)
| sahaskatta wrote:
| Congrats on the launch. I recently was trying out Microsoft
| Edge's built-in Workspaces feature which allows multiplayer
| collaboration. What would you say are the key differences?
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5AX_HvtYfI
| lele0108 wrote:
| The main difference is that Muddy automatically creates and
| updates those shared tabs for you based on what's being added
| to the project timeline (multiplayer feed of apps/websites).
|
| We used some similar tools like Workona in the past but without
| constant maintenance, links would get stale and we'd abandon
| it. Wanted something that did that for us automatically.
|
| (Also we support: website annotations, team presence, and
| letting you rewind a project's timeline back to any point in
| time)
| t1c wrote:
| So, despite being based on Chromium, there's no Linux builds?
| Would like to try this but me and my entire team uses Linux.
| lele0108 wrote:
| Hear you! Coming soon. There are some OS specific patches we
| made to Chromium that make this less straightforward
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| That is really unfortunate, because it removes the only
| advantage of using the web to begin with. Hopefully you guys
| are able to find a solution.
| aranibatta wrote:
| We have Ubuntu and Fedora users through Wine. Not ideal I know,
| but enough to try out unless you have a super custom Arch setup
| antidnan wrote:
| This is really cool! Congrats on the launch!
|
| I think my usage of figma,sheets,etc. is 90% single player, until
| the moment of sharing my (maybe unfinished) work, where I go
| through an intense period of collaboration with others for an
| initial review, then tails off, and becomes async.
|
| I can't see myself using muddy for the single player part, but it
| sounds interesting for after that initial intense collab process.
| Especially if the process includes multiple apps, as opposed to a
| single design review in figma etc. I find the longer running
| async collab is when I get the most scatterbrained across apps.
| lele0108 wrote:
| I felt this pain a lot. Never really resonated with all-in-one
| apps so we always had a few places to check for every project.
| Figuring out the right links was hard and prone to distraction.
|
| In a way, we like trying new software. Downside is each app has
| the need to build their own slightly different file system,
| which makes finding things extra challenging. Wanted to solve
| with Muddy.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| I can see why managers would love this, social pressure around
| doing work and working faster.
| aranibatta wrote:
| I can't say we haven't heard that. Surprisingly, it's usually
| more of a TL or most Senior Eng who seems to like those
| presence features. A lot less cat herding across apps for them.
|
| We have less traction with PMs. Most of the feedback from them
| implies they like being bombarded with Slack notifications even
| if they say they don't.
| jbaczuk wrote:
| I'm not sure this would be useful to me, because I don't switch
| between various projects that would benefit from different tab
| groups, but sounds like it could be useful! Good luck.
| keshav55 wrote:
| This is amazing
| decide1000 wrote:
| Is there a Linux version?
| aranibatta wrote:
| Not yet, in the pipeline. Depending on your distro (Ubuntu and
| Fedora) have users through Wine.
| idoh wrote:
| What's the story around getting into YC in 2019 and then
| launching in '24? I'm guessing there were some interesting pivots
| along the way ...
| lele0108 wrote:
| You are right. We came in letting hosts open experience stores
| in Airbnbs (try on an Oculus at a hosts home). Difficult to
| attribute our sales so we moved on.
|
| COVID hit and we had the itch to look at the browser in a
| different light. Building a browser seemed intimidating...but
| it was quarantine. Long story short, built a few different
| ideas and here we are :)
| Harmohit wrote:
| Building a browser does seem intimidating! What technical
| considerations made you finally take it seriously? Any advice
| for folks trying to do the same or taking on another
| intimidating project?
| lele0108 wrote:
| Started just by building Chromium and Brave and poking
| around in there and making small changes.
|
| Chromium is huge but has terrific documentation (once you
| find the current copy) and Google hosted code search.
| Digging through crbug.com often helped point us in the
| right direction.
|
| 2 unlocks that made us confident to pursue this project:
|
| 1) Repeatable way of patching Chromium and keeping up with
| upstream changes 2) Writing UI in web technology instead of
| C++ Views toolkit.
| aranibatta wrote:
| You can actually check out all the material from the pivots
| inside the app. There's a walkthrough in the Getting Started
| space when you first set up.
| jerrygenser wrote:
| I spent a little time googling around but even wayback machine is
| only showing results in 2024 for the domain.
|
| Was there a different project that was being worked on
| previously? Or is this the only product being launched since YC
| S19?
| aranibatta wrote:
| Previous projects of ours include: sail.online nototo.app
|
| This is the first one with real traction and retention, so it's
| the first time we started to share on HN. Wanted to make sure
| it was GA and not a waitlist before we came here
| TIPSIO wrote:
| The feature for sending messaging and posting comments to a tab
| is some pretty clever and creative UX. Seriously next level
| future stuff and congrats for just coming up with the concept.
|
| I like that it's all timeline based. For my use case, we
| currently use Front email thread and then link to a Shared
| Dropbox where we post everything (including links to like a
| Google Doc or webpage). I think having chronological bookmarks
| like you do would be clearly better. I also know many people who
| use Google Groups and Google Doc to document progress too --
| which I think would be insane / nightmare but teams do it. You
| all definitely would solve that automatically.
|
| Couple other notes:
|
| - Whenever I screenshare with a team or others I see 1000
| bookmarks or tabs on their browser. I could not imagine the
| nightmare of how that would impact my workflow or the timeline.
| Trusting AI to clean stuff up or hunt is not for me.
|
| - I can tell you all have been heads down blitzing (dog in video,
| phone ringing in background of another) but I think a separate
| "Solutions" page where you tackle specific examples would be nice
| to see or browse.
|
| - Maybe too much or not really your goal, but right now need some
| sort of client integration for an outside person. I can't imagine
| giving access to a client on a whim and training them on this.
| Instead, maybe automatic email integration where their emails
| show up in the timeline and can respond directly from there.
| Would produce a really great timeline for where things left off
| and when things are being communicated. Being able to sub-comment
| and share files/updates/things on Front on email threads is one
| of the most killer features for productivity and a team. Mixing
| this with what you all have could be even more next level. Again
| though, might not be the goal.
|
| Congrats and best of luck! Big fan of people trying to tackle PM
| stuff and think you all are doing a great job.
| lele0108 wrote:
| Great idea for creating some specific videos for engineers,
| designers, etc.
|
| Browsers are interesting since they can do almost anything but
| "you can do anything you want!" is intimidating for many new
| users.
|
| We've given e-mail thought and it's certainly a door we are
| considering as we keep on building. Has anyone built a browser
| without thinking about an email client? :P
| webappguy wrote:
| Integrating an AI tab organizer of which they're very few and
| the chrome one is essentially garbage, would make this a
| definite purchase for me. The AI should organize my own tabs
| and the ones I share
| aranibatta wrote:
| yup, that's Muddy. One of our users described it as a self
| healing slack channel with tab groups.
| toddmorey wrote:
| Question: What were the technical requirements that necessitated
| a custom browser? That would really sink adoption for my team.
| Any plans to have a lite version that can work inside your
| favorite browser (even if plugin is required)?
|
| Idea: your privacy section only talks about cookies and ads, but
| all my privacy questions were around the AI features that would
| use all our team's messages and work across apps as context.
| Would definitely cover that piece.
| aranibatta wrote:
| Most of the stuff we do that people seem to really like can't
| be technically or physically done inside of another browser's
| tab unfortunately. Chrome extensions are too limiting as well.
| We started off as a chrome extension inside of our previous
| company, and hit a wall pretty quickly.
|
| For the LLM calls, the one's you currently see are patching
| calls to a variety of model providers. As long as they hold
| their end of the TOS you should be fine. Everything else is
| happening locally.
|
| We will launch a self-host option for Muddy. Cool features like
| hosting the servers and build process yourself, custom icon and
| skin on the app, and other internal rules you can set up. Let
| me know if that's of interest.
| yohannparis wrote:
| An integration with current chat system (Slack, Teams, etc.)
| would be neat. Changing where the work happens is a big ask in my
| opinion.
| TIPSIO wrote:
| I can't really imagine how integration with them would work.
|
| I don't want to speak for the Muddy people, but I wager they
| probably think chat app is kind of miserable experience. This
| instead tries to have a superior offering of something cleaner,
| easier to visualize where things are, and then move that
| "slack/teams" type convo to specific comments and tasks.
| aranibatta wrote:
| Yeah, unfortunately there's no real way to deliver on a
| consumer experience on top of another browser. Craziest
| implementation I can think of is writing a MacOS app that's a
| wrapper, but obvious distribution/compatibility issues there.
| nikunjk wrote:
| Congrats on the launch - seems like a neat product. A few
| questions: 1) It seems like you iterated on a bunch of ideas that
| landed in this - what were some interesting features that the
| team was really interested in that you ended up killing? 2) What
| were the most non-intuitive hard technical challenges? 3) Have
| you successfully ended up having someone give up on Slack to use
| this?
| lele0108 wrote:
| 1. Spatial canvas based browser (we called it Sail). Had people
| who loved it but their team refused to learn it. Spatial tools
| are just incredibly niche and difficult to get started (besides
| Google Maps).
|
| 2. Auto updating across Mac and Windows (in 2024!!). Google
| Omaha is hard to setup, Sparkle is jank on Windows. Throw in
| binary delta support and it's an oof.
|
| 3. Our team builds Muddy on Muddy and ditched Slack when
| product got stable. Few other beta users and their companies as
| well. Slack is super sticky and has some terrific workflows,
| but more "quality" conversations today happen natively in apps
| and almost all apps have commenting functionality. Just easier
| to talk next to the context. So a lot of Slack convo's become
| "where is X" and we think Muddy will stop the need for those
| questions all-together.
| mike_hearn wrote:
| Yeah auto update on Windows is a mess. One way to get it is
| to use MSIX, in which case Windows will delta update your app
| for you, even when it's not running (Chrome style) but
| without the need for special servers. Unfortunately old
| Windows versions have a lot of bugs. My company sells a
| product that makes all that easy to deal with and works
| around the bugs but it was a hard slog to get it all working
| well.
|
| Sparkle on Mac is great though.
| aranibatta wrote:
| check the timestamp:
| https://x.com/SlackHQ/status/367835012315357184
| pkiv wrote:
| Congrats on the launch!! Collaborative browsing is something I've
| been looking for a few use cases of mine. Excited to try it out.
| sonicanatidae wrote:
| Is there a listing of what data is sent back to your servers and
| how that data is stored/handled?
|
| I work in a secure environment. I like the idea of this app, but
| leakage is a huge factor for my teams.
|
| That aside, I've already downloaded a copy and plan to try it out
| in a non-secure environment. The concepts here look like a great
| idea. GL and thanks!
| aranibatta wrote:
| Nothing sophisticated right now unfortunately. But we're
| planning on releasing a version where all servers, models, and
| build CI for the app are self-managed. Let me know if that's of
| interest.
| NayamAmarshe wrote:
| Looks very interesting. The chat feature almost looks like a good
| slack alternative.
|
| I can imagine this being useful to organization where your chats
| and your work are in the same window.
| aranibatta wrote:
| That's the general idea. We found that if you break down the
| average team's project slack channels, it's a bunch of urls and
| threads about them. Just wanted to make that experience simple!
| verdverm wrote:
| You can use Slack & Discord from browser tabs. That's how I
| roll
|
| One Chrome window for
|
| - work (slack, jenkins, bitbucket)
|
| - personal (discord, gmail, twitter, HN)
|
| - open source (github, docs, projects)
|
| Each one is a mental box and are kept separate
| zuhayeer wrote:
| Congrats on the launch! Awesome to see this release as an early
| user who was able to check it out. The shared workspaces and
| shared browser windows with context in place has been incredible
| for collaborating with folks. We have our Figma design, Notion
| doc, and Gitlab MR all in the same space so we don't have to go
| searching for each one independently or have them cross-linked to
| each other.
| alexkern wrote:
| Congrats on the launch! One of the positive byproducts of the
| open web platform is that products like this are possible. Much
| of what I share in other communication tools are links to things
| on the web, but sharing ends up forcing a context switch cost on
| both my end and the receiving end. Love that Muddy is exploring
| this problem space since I haven't felt like other neue-browsers
| have gone far enough in making browsing itself a more
| collaborative and in-context experience.
| dvaun wrote:
| This is super neat. I would love to use this in a team setting if
| I could convince the org to pay for it.
|
| I saw in another comment that it's a patched version of Chromium.
| Are you using CDP for underlying communication?
| kisonecat wrote:
| Totally evokes the good memories I have of "Google Wave" as a way
| for folks to collaborate on rich documents. Super cool.
| aranibatta wrote:
| Google Wave for the web has been one of the more popular ways
| to describe Muddy. I didn't see it at first, but I'll take it
| :)
| gaudystead wrote:
| Google Wave was the first thing that came to mind for me as
| well. RIP
|
| That being said, this looks like a nice spiritual successor to
| it!
| oaktowner wrote:
| I came here to say this -- couldn't agree more. Very positive
| feelings and this nails it (and adds some stuff, too).
| mschrage wrote:
| Love this and am tremendously impressed by this team's
| persistence. Congrats on the launch!
| kingzulu wrote:
| The unsubscribe link in your welcome email is broken. It isn't a
| link.
| aranibatta wrote:
| Ty for the catch, correcting now. Seems to be for the invite
| and update emails?
| kingzulu wrote:
| The unsubscribe link in your welcome email is not a link, it is
| just text.
| psuedo_uuh wrote:
| I already have too many tabs open, can you imagine how many would
| be open on a shared browser?
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| Edge has shared browser "workspaces", I use them solo to have
| different browsers for different roles. Like a workspace for
| project A, another for intranet, another for project B, ... the
| main thing about it is all your tabs are where you leave them
| and it's a bit more visually manageable than TST which I use at
| home. Basically means you can have lots of tabs open, but now
| in different windows (with different colours!).
|
| That feature is supposed to be about 'multiplayer' and has been
| so good it actually makes me want to see Muddy just because of
| how positive that 'multiplayer' has been. Weird, huh.
|
| Aside, I'm still mourning Opera Unite.
| ekhar01 wrote:
| This is so cool. Much respect. I am curious what tech stack you
| are writing this with? Is it electron or maybe lower level?
|
| It might also be cool if it could automatically import sheets or
| google docs if I were to drag a csv or .txt file in and just
| magically open the project up. I hate having to upload via google
| drive
| lele0108 wrote:
| Electron isn't meant for building a browser and has perf /
| other limitations. We went with a full Chromium backing with
| some patches to allow us to write our UI in web tech.
|
| Looking to explore such automations in the near future --
| important to us that it feels great to create new files in
| Muddy (and have Muddy do any of the busywork we are used to)
| joloooo wrote:
| This is awesome. What are your thoughts on Office365 tools and
| Muddy? We don't use Google docs and would love to have a similar
| experience. That said, I could probably manage certain teams to
| move away from our MSFT reliance with this flow.
|
| Really excited to try this out and follow along.
| csmeyer wrote:
| Curious to give this a try, how would you compare it to Arc? I
| used Arc for a while but eventually just ditched it for going
| back to chrome
|
| (Also, landing page nit, but the kerning on the H1 is pretty
| wide, and the kerning in the wordmark is a bit tight IMO.)
| csmeyer wrote:
| OK, I tried it out. First thing I did was type a website into
| the big bar at the top and got an upsell modal for an AI
| thing... I get the need to make money but this was not a good
| first experience for me
| lele0108 wrote:
| Sorry! This is a bad ranking of our search bar and "Ask
| Muddy" should not always be the first suggestion. Fixing this
| in our next update.
|
| If you hit any of the other results, it will open the site
| for you
|
| Compared to Arc -- Muddy is focused on making getting things
| done together better rather than infinite customization. It's
| a different set of tradeoffs but with a similar rethinking of
| the browsing experience.
| csmeyer wrote:
| Yeah definitely worth fixing... This seems overall rather
| thoughtfully designed but that bug hurt
| rrr_oh_man wrote:
| The demo video is excellent!
| bozhark wrote:
| This should say "data" not just ads
|
| "All your cookies and passwords are stored locally and never on
| our server. Our business model is around selling collaboration
| services and enterprise features, not ads"
| aranibatta wrote:
| You're correct. Don't really need to do anything with your data
| as well. I will change.
| aboodman wrote:
| Please stop doing this:
|
| https://i.imgur.com/2WeVGxK.png
|
| It's so frustrating. Early in your product lifecycle it should be
| painfully easy to get started and you shouldn't be worrying about
| this kind of security.
| aboodman wrote:
| I almost gave up after trying this like three times but as an
| ex browser developer really wanted to see what ya'll were up
| to. I think it's an interesting concept. But I bet you will
| lose tons of trials here.
|
| In fact it should just be google auth (not sure if I missed the
| option to do that).
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| Google auth is good to have, but local auth should _always_
| be an option. It 's not really good practice to exclude those
| who don't wish to cede control of their online life to
| Google.
| bn-l wrote:
| And if your Google account is ever blocked because you
| triggered an AI security flag, you will lose access to all
| the sites where you signed in with Google.
| theendisney wrote:
| I find the need to self-moderate at least as scary.
| Heaven forbid you say what you think with just morality
| in mind. Who even knows what is or isn't allowed in 2024?
| HeatrayEnjoyer wrote:
| That never seemed hard to figure out.
| lele0108 wrote:
| Good point, we'll fix this in the next update.
|
| p.s. fan of the work on replicache and of course chrome
| seism wrote:
| Love to see a hack week project get this far. The timeline and
| signals features look awesome, and I can't wait to give this a
| try. Hope you also have thoughts (and a business model) for more
| private, ephemeral spaces - enabling short term collaboration,
| e.g. for freelance/remote/hack work.
| causal wrote:
| Cool idea! Curious how it handles auth. Like how do you
| collaborate on a shared URL without shared credentials
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