YHK - yet another hacker news clone

I've been at software engineering for about 44 years now... Grew up with it, which was unusual when I started, and I was always good about getting into the zone and doing things. The career started small, small company, then back office, the dot com startups, then smaller companies again after the bust, a non-profit, and eventually YouTube (Google at the time, but just barely) and Meta (just Facebook when I was there).

When I hit the startups, and later big tech, it was no longer enough to just be an engineer, to have drive, to be good, you had to be organized, you had to follow through, get stuff done, and that's where the task systems started. Twenty-five over the years (and yes, I've actually counted), from Moleskine notebooks with Getting Things Done, evernote (remember evernote?), bug trackers, todoist, asana, google keep, among others.

When I managed on the Facebook News Feed, I got into gantt charts (for me and my team), spreadsheets, OmniPlan... I remember apologizing to my director for being so disorganized (because I felt I was making a mess of it), and he told me that I was the most organized engineer he knew.

That was because I was doing all of the work in the background, the trimming, the sorting, the reviews, but it was just so much work. Which was why I changed from system to system. Each time it built up, and I had to spend more time looking at things I couldn't or didn't get done, when I was rushed and couldn't put time into today's review, it would pile up, and then using it was so much work that I would start taking mini-notes, just emailing myself a few things to do the next day.

That's actually the thesis of the app (but not where it started), that if I could just have a few things to do emailed to me each day, I could get it done.

This app actually started when I described my previous startup failures into a Claude web session, and it repeated back to me what I had just said. My previous failures were because I spent too much time building the stuff I needed, and not building what I was supposed to be building.

I decided that the app would email me three things to do every day (which matches best practices for attention), but that the day was always yours to decide. We won't overload you, but you can add more, if you're feeling up to it, or cut back, and we never shame and try our best not to nag (I often only finish two). If we get it wrong, you can tell us, and we'll re-rank it once a day, or you can set it manually, and if you do, we never override that choice. The web app is live, and native for both platforms is coming. In the meantime, on Android, you can use gestures to quick launch into the voice input so saving a task is only a gesture away (e.g. double-tap the back of a Pixel, double-press the power button on Motorola).

Now let's talk about the dirty parts. I used AI to help me build this. Anthropic models mostly, and the brains of the app come from Anthropic models (I like the quality, I like the privacy, absolutely no training on customer data, and the stance of the company). This app is not some one-shot wonder where I asked frontier models to build a task system and then I put it on a server to show you.

I have prompts for the various features (e.g. ranking, generating suggestions, task extractions), I have eval sets of task lists (not anyone's real tasks, but constructed from patterns in my tasks, or the tasks of testers who allowed me to fix the problems they were having), with the three I expect to come out. I store the eval outputs, and re-test whenever I add a new rule to a prompt, or whenever testing a new model version. The great thing about having this eval set is that it catches when I get it wrong. When I introspect a failed run, sometimes it's because I need to tune a prompt, but sometimes it's because I missed something in my own ranking.

I did the same thing with my infrastructure as well, so this time, instead of setting up servers, and building login systems, and managing databases, I built on Vercel (git push to serving Next.js), Neon (hosted postgres).

I started getting emails mailed to me by mid-June, but started getting usable suggestions on June 26, and I've been using it every morning since. I wanted it to be easy to get started, and easy to use, so the input handles mess (you can add multiple tasks in the same run-on sentence, and a friend who helped me test it just pasted his entire obsidian todo list in wholesale to get started).

I wanted to make sure that anyone could try it out, so I built a trial feature that uses the real in-app ranking with a list of items you provide.

If you want to try the service, there's a free 14-day trial (card required), and then it's $99/year or $9.99/month after that (plus sales tax). We warn you seven days before your card is charged and if you cancel, you keep access through the term (either the trial, or our last paid period). Online, through settings -> billing, no email, no call.

I really hope you'll try it out. If you do, please tell me if we did a good job picking out your day.

https://3anddoneapp.com/try