[HN Gopher] Show HN: Tomoshibi - A writing app where your words ...
___________________________________________________________________
Show HN: Tomoshibi - A writing app where your words fade by
firelight
I spent ten years trying to write a novel. Every time I sat down,
I'd write a sentence, decide it wasn't good enough, and rewrite it.
The problem wasn't discipline -- it was that I could always see
what I'd written and go back to change it. I tried other
approaches. Apps that delete your words when you stop typing --
they fight fear with fear. That just made me panic. I wanted the
opposite: not punishment, but permission. "Tomoshibi" is Japanese
for a small light in the dark -- just enough to see what's in front
of you. You write on a dark screen. Older lines fade, but not when
you hit return. They fade when you start writing again. If you
pause, they wait. You can edit the current line and one line back
-- enough to fix a typo, not enough to spiral. The one-line-back
rule also catches my own practical issue: Japanese IME often fires
an accidental newline on kanji confirmation. Everything is saved.
There's a separate reader view for going back through what you've
written. Tomoshibi is for writing over months, not just one
session. When you come back, your last sentence appears as an
epigraph -- as if it always belonged there. No account, no server,
no build step. Your writing stays in your browser's local storage
-- export anytime as .txt. Vanilla HTML/CSS/ES modules. Try it in
your browser. A native Mac app (built with Tauri) with file system
integration is coming to the store. I've been writing on it for
two months. https://tomoshibi.in-hakumei.com/app/
Author : hakumei
Score : 20 points
Date : 2026-02-28 17:12 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (tomoshibi.in-hakumei.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (tomoshibi.in-hakumei.com)
| oscarcp wrote:
| I must say, I find the experience curious to say the least. It
| prompted me to write something, and I immediately got frustrated
| that my text was gone, followed by a feeling of "well, it was
| ephemeral anyway" and then finding the reader mode and say "hmmm,
| does that take away from the experience?". In any case, I might
| come back to this every now and then, nice work.
| Lvl999Noob wrote:
| I noticed a major problem. If I just keep writing in a single
| paragraph, the lines don't disappear. I was expecting it to
| automatically start fading the text once it reached 3-4 lines. As
| it is, I am afraid of adding new paragraphs because then I would
| 'lose' what I already wrote.
|
| Edit: adding, it's also surprisingly... slow? I noticed some lag
| as I moved my mouse around. I don't know if it's because of the
| website or my browser (firefox) or my OS (Ubuntu) but I don't
| believe there's any reason for lag here so something should be
| fixed.
|
| My autocorrect also didn't work. I did get the red squiggles on a
| misspelling but no suggestions on right click. Again, not sure if
| it's something wrong with the website or something with my setup
| (it works fine on other sites).
| hakumei wrote:
| Thanks for the detailed feedback.
|
| You're right about the fading -- if you keep writing in one
| long block, lines stay. I write in short paragraphs myself, so
| I hadn't noticed. I'll think about how to handle this better.
|
| On losing text: lines don't fade the moment you hit return.
| They wait until you start typing again. I found that fading on
| return alone left the screen empty at exactly the moment I
| needed to think.
|
| The lag on Firefox/Ubuntu is something I'd like to look into --
| I haven't tested on that environment. The autocorrect issue is
| likely a browser limitation, but I'll see if there's a
| workaround.
| exochrono wrote:
| Is it just me or is it weird to promote a writing app with an
| obviously LLM-written post.
| hakumei wrote:
| To clarify, I write the posts myself, carefully thinking
| through and refining the content. Since I'm Japanese and not a
| native English speaker, I use AI to assist with translation.
| Falimonda wrote:
| Fun! I came up with a similar concept - except you can only type
| in one word at a time. It discourages self-editing while also not
| being as extreme as exploding text.
|
| https://flow.voxos.ai/
| hakumei wrote:
| That's an interesting constraint. I also like that the blurred
| words stay visible -- I can see how much I've written in real
| time. Thanks for sharing.
| livestories wrote:
| How do I save?
| hakumei wrote:
| Everything is saved automatically to your browser's local
| storage. To export as .txt, open the Read Back screen from the
| top right and tap the Share button. Note: the Read Back button
| only appears after you've written something.
| BalinKing wrote:
| chinamini, Ri Ben Yu nobaziyondeitaritsukuTi noHan Zi toJia Ming
| gaarukotoniQi dukimashitaga, soregaPu Duan desuka?Pu haRi Ben Yu
| gaXia Shou desuga, Ri Ben Yu deitaritsukuTi noZi gaamariShi
| wareteinaitoWen itakotogaarudakedesu. demo, yahariShi Jian
| nisouziyanaidesuka?
| hakumei wrote:
| You're right. Italic is rarely used in Japanese, and it seems
| the English styling was inadvertently applied to the Japanese
| text as well. I'll fix it right away.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2026-02-28 23:01 UTC)