[HN Gopher] Show HN: New Enso - first public beta
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Show HN: New Enso - first public beta
Enso is a writing tool that helps you enter a state of flow by
separating writing from editing and thus making it harder for you
to edit yourself - https://enso.sonnet.io/ After 6 years and 2
million words of daily writing I feel like I've learned enough to
make Enso simpler and more accessible. Related thread:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38025073
Author : rpastuszak
Score : 207 points
Date : 2025-06-30 11:02 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (untested.sonnet.io)
(TXT) w3m dump (untested.sonnet.io)
| dgfitz wrote:
| Looks really neat. Took me a few minutes to figure out what it
| was. A description above the fold (or here!) would be great.
| rpastuszak wrote:
| Added a link to the article, thank you!
| dkdbejwi383 wrote:
| It's a note taking app, for anyone else wondering.
| webstrand wrote:
| Yeah had me confused, product link is
| <https://enso.sonnet.io/>. Apparently only for mac.
|
| Not to be confused with Ensso, maker of fountain pens
| <https://www.ensso.com/>.
| johnisgood wrote:
| > You can't select or edit text, but you can download and
| review it once you're done.
|
| What? Damn.
| brassattax wrote:
| Also not to be confused with Enso Analytics
| https://ensoanalytics.com/ which is also software for Mac
| (and Windows and Linux)
| Nzen wrote:
| Not just for macintosh, there is a link [0] for windows, too.
| Ah, but it 'ran out' of units, so just a limited beta.
|
| [0] https://sonnet.gumroad.com/l/dbiyvs
| smusamashah wrote:
| I dont know what Enso is. This page doesn't tell it in first few
| paragraphs. I wasn't to homepage of this website. That also
| mentions Enso but without a link. There is a link to roadmap but
| that doesn't answer this question either. Please describe what
| Enso is in few lines in a easily discoverable place.
| owebmaster wrote:
| Yeah the article is quite bad for the uninitiated but it seems
| that is how he talks to its own community. Looks like a text
| editor
| xipho wrote:
| But yet I lurked longer than many of other product pages I land
| on to _think_ about what might be going on thanks to the nature
| of graphics and the non-standard non-bootstrap template
| approach.
|
| Sometimes providing TLDR means you are providing a way for
| people to instantly ignore you without further thought. Maybe
| there is a desire to engage people who think.
| rpastuszak wrote:
| Author here: https://enso.sonnet.io
|
| Thanks for the feedback, most of my usual readers know about
| Enso and it seems I forgot to leave my little bubble when
| writing this post!
| tomhow wrote:
| We added that subheading text from your website to the text
| of this post, to make it easier for people to understand what
| it is.
|
| If you want it changed further, you're welcome to email us at
| hn@ycombinator.com.
| rpastuszak wrote:
| It looks great, thank you.
| gyomu wrote:
| This is an interesting one.
|
| On one hand it's hard to disagree with the statement "it should
| be clear what your product does in a single glance". In fact
| there's a whole meta that's been developed around this, with
| well established common wisdom on how to structure your landing
| page to quickly frame value to prospective users, call them to
| action, etc.
|
| On the other hand it's kind of fun to stumble upon something
| and feel like you missed the beginning of the conversation, and
| to figure things out piece by piece based on context.
|
| I was also confused when loading this website but it led me to
| trying the app and it was kind of fun.
|
| Sometimes the most optimized, clearest path isn't necessarily
| the preferable one.
| rpastuszak wrote:
| > Sometimes the most optimized, clearest path isn't
| necessarily the preferable one.
|
| Untested is my playground/a place where I "work with the
| garage door up", so generally I allow myself for more
| flexibility, especially since this post is more of a devlog
| entry than a one-glance product page (that would be
| https://enso.sonnet.io). That said, I had a break from
| writing, so ended up putting too much content in one place,
| which made it harder to edit.
|
| What's going to happen in the next few months is this: I'll
| post more dev/design-log style posts on untested.sonnet.io,
| then extract some of this information into the product page.
|
| I'm glad that you had some fun with the app!
| dr_kretyn wrote:
| Same. I even came to comments to see if anyone has actually
| written what this is. And, unfortunately, still little. Most
| people just comment "great stuff". After a few minutes I'm
| still to learn what this thing is and why does anyone care that
| it's in beta public.
| _elf wrote:
| I've always felt that the best part of writing on a computer is
| the ability to edit while you write, however, I also understand
| that doesn't work at all for a lot of people, so I think this app
| is neat even though I personally wouldn't use it.
| bayindirh wrote:
| Sometimes forcing yourself "not to edit" allows you to bring
| out things which are hard to catch and hide in the nooks and
| crannies of your mind.
|
| Brain dumping also works the same way. You write whatever you
| have in your mind, without even correcting spelling errors. It
| really brings out things you don't know they are there and
| bothering you or taking space.
|
| You should at least try once. Takes an hour or so.
|
| I also use a similar method for drafting my blog posts if I
| have the idea, but can't bring out the rest of the text.
| jkmcf wrote:
| I've always felt the best part of writing on a computer is
| legibility :)
| d-lowl wrote:
| Although, I don't think that Enso as a whole will work for me (I
| have a very different approach to writting); I love the idea of
| the coffee shop mode. Want to implement something like this for
| Obsidian now.
| tkgally wrote:
| I like that idea, too.
|
| When I'm at home, I do most of my writing now with voice input.
| Would somebody please invent a sound cancellation device that
| will enable me to talk to my devices in coffee shops and on
| public transportation without being heard by others?
| dabbz wrote:
| I know I've seen a handful of them no idea if they're real or
| not though:
|
| https://metadox.pro/ https://gethushme.com/
| achairapart wrote:
| This might be useful for a whole browser coffee shop mode:
|
| https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/obfuscator/
| sam1r wrote:
| To the OP: Great product, at least can you update the description
| text to guide newcomers with some user persona.
|
| We don't know what it is based on the description, so even the
| simplest "Try xyz" or even some goal would help us discover what
| it is.
| sam1r wrote:
| Just trying to maximize your efforts... to optimize for first-
| time user usability, unveil to yourself regular use cases for
| your users, etc.
| rpastuszak wrote:
| Yeah, to be frank, this was intended to be more of a devlog
| entry for the people who already know my work/follow me on
| untested and I didn't expect any responses on HN. Still,
| that's a big lesson for me, I shouldn't have made that
| assumption posting here. People have been really kind and
| responsive in my experience.
|
| I think this is also a problem of framing.
| rpastuszak wrote:
| Thanks!
|
| I've collected a lot of high quality feedback over the years*,
| plus have defined user personas/problem areas (examples:
| writers, developers, neurospicy folk, people working on their
| mental health through journalling/expressive writing,
| YouTubers, video essay creators, ...).
|
| Over the next few weeks/months I will continue writing/thinking
| about those on untested.sonnet.io (working with the garage door
| up, so to speak).
|
| Then, once I come up with more terse/clear ways of expressing
| this -- I'll put it on the product page
| (https://enso.sonnet.io)
|
| * thanks to relying on an email link over analytics in the app
| jhardcastle wrote:
| > Note: if you remove the Edit menu and call it Write, MacOs
| won't add its AI crap to your settings.
|
| Good to know.
| ricokatayama wrote:
| I laughed at the Keanu pun gonna try
| rpastuszak wrote:
| It's neither a beta, nor an alpha, more Keanu than Hasselhoff.
| Hence, it's Enso sigma!
| mellosouls wrote:
| Appears to be Apple only, for anybody spending time on the page
| trying to work out what it's about.
| hmlwilliams wrote:
| There is a PWA at https://write.sonnet.io/
| rpastuszak wrote:
| Thanks, just bear in mind that the PWA differs from the app
| and will not be actively developed. I'm planning to maintain
| it and keep it free.
| yapyap wrote:
| Oh this is gonna be terrible for me, I love it
| rpastuszak wrote:
| It's great if you want to "think aloud but with your mouth
| shut". I wrote 7k words with it just thinking through a
| problem. The exact word count is meaningless of course -- my
| main point is that it was really easy to just sit and think
| with it, without editing myself. I used the Coffeeshop mode for
| a large chunk of that (plus some Aphex Twin)
| varun_chopra wrote:
| Oh man, I saw this once but forgot the name. Tried Googling,
| asked some LLMs--but alas, couldn't find it again. Even an HN
| search didn't turn up anything useful.
|
| So glad to come across it again!
| rpastuszak wrote:
| Good to know :)
|
| At least my https://meat-gpt.sonnet.io gets indexed well,
| including 100s of AI websites who webscraped it and
| hallucinated product descriptions.
| iNic wrote:
| Very nice, I've been wanting to build something like this myself
| but haven't gotten to it. The coffee shop mode is great! My
| biggest feature request would be changing the font and cursor.
| The blinking cursor is both distracting and unnecessary as you
| should assume that you are at the end anyway (since you shouldn't
| edit)!
| rpastuszak wrote:
| noted, thanks!
|
| I'm VERY conservative with adding new UI elements, especially
| those introducing new possible sources of distractions, so I
| might hide it behind a bunch of menus. That said, I've spent
| ages yak shaving / working on those problems already :)
| ryanianian wrote:
| I really want a fixed-width font. I know most people dislike
| writing prose with monospace fonts. But I'm a developer, and
| proportional fonts always feel wrong.
| tecleandor wrote:
| Well, talk to a script writer, they only write on Courier
| typeface
| jlarks32 wrote:
| Just want to say beautiful website and product. Enso looks well
| designed. And your "digital garden" is gorgeous as well.
| pedsmoreira wrote:
| Very interesting take on writing
| urig wrote:
| I appreciate the artistic and programming skills of the developer
| but not the "cleverness" and "quirkiness" of their announcement
| post. It took me too long to figure out that this is some sort of
| distraction-less writing app only for iOS and so of no value to
| me. Less snappy memes, more empathy for me as a visitor, please.
| endymion-light wrote:
| i love this
| nilirl wrote:
| I didn't understand what this was from the link posted; why
| choose cute over clear?
|
| But when I clicked around I found what the app was and I liked
| it. Here the cuteness was charming. Great work!
| rubyfan wrote:
| reminded me of _why
| desireco42 wrote:
| Excellent!
|
| I made something similar inspired by this few times in the past.
|
| I think this is already quite perfect, ambient music I can
| provide myself.
|
| While I did thought of new features, they are really not needed.
| I especially like coffee shop mode. I often feel self conscious
| about things I am writing, so hiding text is fantastic.
| _0xdd wrote:
| Got excited for a second, I thought this was about HENkaku Enso
| [1] for the PS Vita.
|
| [1] https://enso.henkaku.xyz/
| ModernMech wrote:
| I thought it was about this: https://ensoanalytics.com
|
| Enso it pretty overloaded as name for tech things.
| Chris2048 wrote:
| Yep, thought it was going to be about Humanized Enso
|
| https://signalvnoise.com/posts/228-humanized-enso
| fermigier wrote:
| I thought for a second that it was about the Enso
| programming language (https://modeling-languages.com/enso-
| dont-design-your-program...) :)
| bodge5000 wrote:
| Turns out there's a lot of Enso's, my first thought was
| the looper
| (https://www.audiodamage.com/products/ad049-enso)
| b0a04gl wrote:
| imo it's more of a thinking constraint journaling tbh.. friction
| like edit lock, coffee noise, fullscreen etc just makes me stop
| editing while thinking lol not letting me kill the raw draft
| midway.. more tools shud do this subtractive ux
| binary132 wrote:
| Unfortunate naming collision with Enso Analytics (formerly Luna
| compiler).
| gavmor wrote:
| Now if only someone would invent a tool to do the opposite. I
| have _too easy_ a time of forgetting what I wrote, and penning
| new lines in obliviousness. It 's a habit from many years of
| stream-of-consciousness writing a la _The Artist 's Way_ and
| https://750words.com.
|
| The hard thing, I find, is structuring text so that each
| paragraph has a purpose in relation to the others. I was once
| taught this in school, but I haven't kept up with my practice.
|
| So, maybe a tool that takes previous paragraphs and--contrariwise
| to letting them recede into obscurity--shoves them repeatedly in
| my face?
|
| Anyway, very elegant and pleasant. Like a foggy quayside cafe.
| rpastuszak wrote:
| Haha, I'm actually working on that too! Currently experimenting
| with a graph based editor.
|
| Also, you might like The Fieldstone Method (Weinberg).
|
| PS. Andy Matuschak's notes: http://notes.andymatuschak.org have
| some good tips on a similar subject. (My "digital garden" is
| more of a choose your own adventure book, I'm not married to a
| single methodology, but I appreciate much of their work)
| sorcerer-mar wrote:
| Is this for non-fiction/business writing?
|
| If so, I recommend looking at Barbara Minto's Pyramid
| Principle.
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Pyramid-Principle-Logic-Writing-Think...
| teucris wrote:
| Fantastic work. This is great example of how good execution is
| what really matters - not just good ideas. I'm sure I'm not the
| only one who had an idea similar to this at some point - mine was
| called "nanowriter" and was meant for NanoWriMo (RIP)[0] but I
| lacked the coding ability and executive function to actually make
| it.l at the time. Enso is gorgeous and... exists, and therefore
| is infinitely better.
|
| 0: https://storyempire.com/2025/04/28/nanowrimo-closing-what-
| we...
| layer8 wrote:
| This has its uses. However, I tend to use writing for reasoning
| about stuff, where you can't keep everything relevant in your
| head simultaneously, and then it's pretty crucial to be able to
| read what you wrote, even if you have no need to edit it.
| fitsumbelay wrote:
| pretty great work and exploring the OP/author's work is a major
| Monday morning pleasure
| grantmuller wrote:
| rpastuszak's work is a consistent source of inspiration and
| fun. It's what I wanted the web to become.
| lowwave wrote:
| Very nice! Looks like OmmWriter. Is it open source?
| mycocola wrote:
| Interesting tool. I do something similar when I think it's
| important to focus on just getting the words out: I close my
| eyes, or look away from the screen.
| Fuzzy1000 wrote:
| Very playful website - I love it.
| rbanffy wrote:
| For a second I thought it was the Enso analytics tool I worked
| with for a short while (as in "migrating away from it"). I'm glad
| it's not.
| handedness wrote:
| Longtime Enso user here. Your update to query interest in a Linux
| version has given me hope. The last thing someone actively trying
| to avoid distraction needs is an open browser window!
| nine_k wrote:
| Consider this: cat > ~/my-notes.txt <<EOF
| Type here anything you want. To save and finish, type:
| EOF
|
| Zero software to install, no editing except maybe backspace, no
| selection, no spellchecking, no formatting, no distractions on
| the screen.
| Velorivox wrote:
| This reminds me of
| https://github.com/maebert/themostdangerouswritingapp
| maebert wrote:
| Thanks for the shoutout!
|
| I think it's funny that it's very similar to enso in many ways,
| but also the complete opposite: enso is calm, mindful,
| soothing. MDWa is hectic, terrifying, sadistic. Funny how a
| tiny difference produces products that look almost the same,
| and feel completely different.
|
| huge props to rafal for creating enso, personally really love
| it
| spookie wrote:
| Reminds me of Apostrophe actually.
|
| https://flathub.org/apps/org.gnome.gitlab.somas.Apostrophe
| WD-42 wrote:
| Looks a lot like
| https://flathub.org/apps/org.gnome.gitlab.somas.Apostrophe for
| anyone on Linux
| pdabbadabba wrote:
| These seem likely different concepts to me. Apostrophe is a
| nice looking markdown editor. Enso is a minimalist writing tool
| (I hesitate to call it an 'editor') designed to facilitate a
| certain kind of writing by hiding text that has already been
| written and preventing the user from editing it. The focus here
| seems to be getting the writer to just get the words out and
| then use a (presumably) different tool to format and edit
| later.
| WD-42 wrote:
| Apostrophe does the same thing, it's just not really shown on
| the store page. It provides both distraction free and
| Hemingway modes. Hemingway mode doesn't let you use
| backspace!
| pdabbadabba wrote:
| That's great to know! I'll have to give it a try.
| whirlwin wrote:
| The imagery on the spalsh page reminds me of Moomin.
|
| Nevertheless looking forward to following this project!
| xandrius wrote:
| The name brought me back to the PS Vita hacking times, I thought
| it would be something to jailbreak the PS5 or the switch 2. A bit
| disappointed :(
| opan wrote:
| I clicked for the same reason, haha.
| seabass wrote:
| Huge kudos for omitting analytics tracking for an app like this.
| Your reasoning totally resonated with me, and I hope more app
| devs follow suit!
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