I built something weird

“You don’t learn by thinking about it. You learn by doing.” — Paul Graham

Reid Hoffman said that if you’re not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you’ve launched too late. I hope I launched early enough, because I’m slightly embarrassed.

This idea came to me when I was engaged in one of my favorite pastimes: filling in an IRS form. I couldn’t remember the EIN of my company, and I thought to myself: ‘Wouldn’t it be cool to get a suggestion with this data, even when you’re writing on a PDF?’. At that moment, my imagination was running wild, and I thought I hit the jackpot of ideas.

Fastforward one month and here I am, second-guessing myself two weeks after launch. The feedback I got so far ranges from indifference to mild encouragement. So what I would like to achieve with this post isn’t sales, but clarity.

Enter Foretype

The name is Foretype, and it gives you smart text completions anywhere you type on the web. It’s helping me write this post and it feels like I have a writing assistant. In a way, it’s like Grammarly, but doesn’t judge your every second word. Instead, it learns your writing style and provides relevant suggestions of what you might say next.

Here’s the product demo:

You can add your own context too, like the topic of your newsletter, or the style you’d like to use in your writing. For example, I just added the context “style: gangsta” and It's giving me words to say that are kinda hood. Those words in italic you just read were suggested by Foretype. It can also sing ‘I will survive’, by Gloria Gaynor. Even if you don’t find it useful, I’m sure you can have fun with it, like I did while building it.

It works on Google Chrome, Brave, Arc, Chromium, and other Chromium-based browsers. If you use Edge, it might not let you sign in for some reason I have yet to discover. But you deserve it for using Edge.

How it works

You start typing and, if the Gods of AI listen to you, you’ll get a suggestion in a cute, little floating box. This can get pretty annoying, so I added a manual mode with which you can choose when to summon them and when to have them shut up. If you find the suggestion useful enough to accept it, just press tab and Foretype will insert it where you’re writing.

Here’s the 30 secs guide for you:

• Autosuggest: suggestions pop up as you type, like ChatGPT haunted your keyboard in a summer night.

• Manual mode: suggestions only appear if you press Shift + CMD on Mac, or Shift + Ctrl on Windows. If you’re on Linux, I don’t know. Have your cat step on your keyboard and hope for the best. Also, go out and touch some grass.

Technically, it can work on any website, but so far I’ve only tested it on these ones.

Works:

• Gmail

• Substack

• Linkedin (pretty useful to write you’re humbled about something)

• X

• Notion

Doesn’t work:

• Google Docs

• Reddit

Might or might not work:

• Rest of the web

Available plans

The current version of Foretype offers a free plan and only a free plan. It’s enough to try it and see if it has a quantum of utility for you. It uses a basic AI model that knows better than just autocompleting ‘I hope you’re doing well’ on Gmail.

The custom context feature is only available on the premium plan, and it will be readily available if at least 10 people reply to this email with an enthusiastic ‘take my f*cking money’.

In a nutshell:

Free plan

• Basic usage limits (12 suggestions per day)

• Basic AI models

• No custom context items

Premium plan

• Generous usage limits (80 suggestions per day)

• Smarter AI models

• Up to 10 context items

• Priority support (I will lose sleep for you if need be)

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Where’s the link?

If you’ve read up until here, you might even have a sliver of curiosity. So here you are, here’s the link to my fancy landing page. If you give it a shot, be warned it’s in beta, or, in other words, if you shake it a little bit, it may refuse to cooperate.

If you do try it, I don’t want you to tell me it’s a great idea or that you love it. I want you to speak with your behavior. If I see you use it every day, and even ask me to ship the premium plan, then you won’t need to tell me anything else. I will do my best to make you happy.

However, in case you find this amusing at best, but of little use for any practical matter, then say so. Tell me: ‘Alejandro, just stop. This isn’t going anywhere.’ I prefer to fail fast than wasting time on a subpar idea. Actually, I’d be truly thankful if you reply to this email speaking your mind.

Try it and roast me, or use it and delight me.

There, thanks for coming to my TED Talk.

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If you try it, here’s what you should know

• You can only trigger suggestions after writing at least 30 characters.

• The daily usage limits reset at 00:00 GMT, no matter where you’re based.

• It doesn’t work on input fields or search bars.