Show HN: Emery – Personal productivity workspace | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Emery – Personal productivity workspace

emery.to

261 pointschernobai176 comments

We're building an app that helps people manage their schedule, tasks and notes all in one place.

The goal is to create a workspace, where people can manage their various priorities, both personal and professional, see a single schedule combined of all their calendars and manage their days without switching between multiple apps.

At the moment we've implemented Google calendar synchronisation, basic tasks and notes. Also Emery has some things we really wanted to see in other apps – private notes for meetings, categories that can be used to group tasks/notes/meetings together, weekly productivity reports.

Happy to hear any feedback and answer any questions!

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The number one thing I care about in such a product, and it's make or break, is 'where is my data, how is it stored, what do I do when you disappear'. (And you disappearing of course includes a 'successful exit', congrats, but there's at least a 50% chance of an 'incredible journey' blog post to follow.)

Since it's not mentioned anywhere, I assume I don't own it. It's all in your database in AWS or wherever, maybe there's some export that's about 60% complete in a sort of workable format. But it's not going to be usable 'plaintext' on disk, parseable with other tools, and usable even if the Emery app stops being updated/disappears.

This. 100%.

Because of this, I've come to distrust any offering that's not self-hosted on my homeserver. Sounds drastic, but I've been burned too often. The quality I get from this is significantly lower, the amount of work I need to put in is much more, and though often fun it's not always at convenient times and sometimes I hate it. But I'm fairly confident that all my data, be it email, cal, notes, pictures, whatnot, will still be accessible 3 years or 10 years from now. Some things from 10 years ago I dearly miss, and I don't want that to happen again.

While I generally want control of my data too, I think if the small team has to prioritise creating final APIs (on a data model that probably still in flux) and export functions for the 1% of users who might end up using that… OR… building features and trying to find a product that has market fit and that people like to use and find valuable.. I hope they choose the later. People are less likely to try out (let alone choose) a product based on export functions than they are actual productivity functionality. Well done on the launch it looks really exciting!

Sure, but this here is "Hacker News". We are the 1% that you are talking about.

Export functions wouldn't convince me though. Those can disappear och be broken or miss things, which I wouldn't only notice when it's too late.

I sadly agree. While I love seeing products like this, I always hesitate to fully embrace them because it would have a major impact to my day and I don't want surprises there.

That's a very valid concern. Given how often it was expressed in this topic, looks like we need to find a way to accommodate it (e.g. export option). We'll think about it, thanks!

I'll suggest something along the lines of Bitwarden (also Vaultwarden).

Even though I self-host Vaultwarden, I pay the yearly subscription to BW.

This could also tackle the “right to access” aka “right to export” in the EU GDPR.

Lovely design & product.

Suggestion: answer the question “how is this different from just using your normal calendar” to plan your day. Because lots of calendars have ToDo / Tasks functionality, and you can simply block out time on your main calendar - instead of using this app.

EDIT: also, I see lots of reference how not using this app is harder because “No overview. It's all scattered across multiple apps”. Is that really a problem? I use 2 emails (1 work, 1 personal); however, I only maintain 1 calendar / todo (my work calendar). It seems like introducing a new app is introducing something that will cause more scatter (as opposed to my current setup today).

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I think the main thing comes from this point:

> however, I only maintain 1 calendar / todo (my work calendar).

What I've found, personally, is that having multiple e-mails is fine. I don't need to check them every five minutes anyway. But I don't want to have my work anything on my personal phone (because I don't want it remotely managed), nor my personal stuff on my work email (say I need to schedule an interview for a new job).

I'm sure quite a lot of people are in the same situation.

My personal best experience was when I was using a personal mac for work, and I could have all my calendars combined in basic macOS calendar app, and emails in the mail app. Everything worked so well, and it's something I miss terribly since I've moved to Linux.

Thanks for all the suggestions!

One thing that makes Emery different from normal calendars is that you can group things together with collections. For example, you can add project-related tasks, meetings and notes in one collection. Or group together tasks, meetings and notes that relate to your boss, a peer, a direct report.

Not necessarily apple to apple, but I use Amazing Marvin [1], which allows similar type of configuration, and more. (It's kind of application where 10 different configuration would come out from 10 different people...)

The pricing is high-end, but there's one time option (which I opted couple years ago and paid itself, pretty much!) and optionally usable offline for most features.

[1]: https://amazingmarvin.com/

The demo screenshot has a quote attached that says "Perfection is the enemy of good", and then below on the page it says "Your quest for the perfect productivity app ends here"

There's an optional feature that you can put in selected message, and that seems to be the placeholder text they are using.

In some way, that illustrates the app very well, as I've had to adjust many thing along the way figuring out what works and not, rather than getting it perfect right away...

Wow, this looks interesting

8$ a month. LOL.

I like the "Cancel in one click" message, and the drag-and-drop UI from tasks to calendar (plus Google Calendar sync), but I couldn't easily find (and still haven't found):

-What platforms are supported (it looks like MacOS from the demo video, but I couldn't find whether there is an iPad or iOS app, or whether it supports Windows and Android; access and syncing to a mobile device is very important from my perspective as a user)

-Whether it's possible to "Get started" without using the Google sign-on; I typically avoid using Google to sign in, and prefer traditional registration with an email and password

-A clear and straightforward Privacy Policy, which would be a plus. You have one linked at https://emery.to/privacy/ , where you did write that users have the right to: "Restrict the processing of their Data. Users have the right, under certain circumstances, to restrict the processing of their Data. In this case, the Owner will not process their Data for any purpose other than storing it. [...] Have their Personal Data deleted or otherwise removed. Users have the right, under certain circumstances, to obtain the erasure of their Data from the Owner." The "under certain circumstances" seems vague, and I'm unsure what that means in practice.

However, you have to scroll down quite a bit, and I'm not comfortable with the use of Google Analytics. I'm not necessarily against using the app just due to privacy reasons (though other users might be), but I wish I could find out in advance of signing up, how much data collection I could opt out of before signing up.

- At the moment it's a web app for desktop browsers. Looks like we should be more clear on that on the landing page

- We're planning to introduce other login methods such as classic emails later this week.

- You're right, we have to be more clear and give more flexibility on the data collection front.

It looks nice, but, but, but... Are there plans for a desktop version, ideally something that could work without an internet connection? I fail to see why an app like this would require a server to be involved other than just at the moment of syncing between devices. And even then just to negotiate a handshake. If syncing is the only justification, having such a subscription fee seems unreasonable to me as a potential customer. And I don't even need sync.

We're planning to introduce a desktop app with offline mode a bit later.

Regarding syncing – it'll still be required for syncing between devices and Google calendar integration. Google calendar sync is being done on backend as it's the most stable way from our experience.

Thanks for the snappy reply!

Warms my heart to see startups still catering to us web/app-averse "luddites".

I'm in no position to question your business model - I don't know your situation as a company, but $7/mo seems a little steep for me. But it's understandable that costs are higher early on. Do you think prices might drop later on, assuming your product is successful? Or when you have more of a feature suite to segment into different plans?

I quite like Bitwarden's model of having a limited free version, an "enthusiast" model with a few extra features nerd especially might like, such as yubikey support. That's $1/mo. Then they have various business facing plans with higher cost and enterprise features.

We're thinking about introducing more accessible pricing models in the future, especially given the interest from student audience.

Given, that we're building this project in our free time with no investments, we want to get to a point where we can focus solely on Emery. That's why we're starting with a bit of a steep pricing.

Is it a purpose-built desktop app or is it just the web version stuffed into an Electron container (like Slack)?

It'll be an Electron-based app

This is a solution to a core problem of mine. My current workflow is to create/edit a google doc or quip doc for all of my notes/todos/daily planning. The price point is reasonable, and is something I would pay for as part of my personal "productivity" software budget which includes tools such as Jetbrains/grammarly/overleaf etc.

However you are too fast to make me enter my credit card info. It's 2022, can't I at least play with the app to see if it's what I want? Demo for a day? Create just one page of notes?

As it stands the landing page was not enough to get me over the hump to put in my credit card info. I somehow can't get back to the landing page now that I started the signup flow.

my 2 cents:

1. Give people a free demo so they can get their data into the system.

2. After the trial period, let them export the data out if they want (don't make the credit card request seem like a ransom request).

Personally, I’d expect to lose access to data if I stopped paying for it. As a good practice, the company could make it read only for some time before archiving it (what happens if I sign up again!).

Archival storage is so cheap these days that it doesn’t make sense to delete customer data unless they ask, or you are in B2B.

That's actually how we do it. Once your trial ends, we switch the account to a read-only mode.

Just give me the trial without the cc then :)

-- I'm not going to sign up for something - especially something I put my credit card into - till I can find an about page that shows me who is behind the company and a little bit about their background & experience - otherwise I would have signed up --

It amazes me how many software products launch these days without an about page.

Why would anyone buy into a new product if they don’t know at least a little bit about who is behind it?

It should be the most important page on the site behind maybe the pricing and contact/support page.

Makes sense, we'll add a little bit background about ourselves.

I’ve tried a lot of apps like this over the years. Two main things I’ve struggled with with all of them:

1) none seem to handle multiple calendars well. I have a personal calendar, a work calendar, and a side project calendar, I want them all to be independent, have tasks blocked out on them, etc, but still be aware of each other. So for example, I want to schedule a doctor’s appointment on my personal and have my other calendars mirror that time block, but scrub the details/make it generic. Super specific idea obviously, but if I don’t have it I have so much manual overhead aligning everything that I just give up and do it by hand.

2) they are all dogshit slow (not sure about this one, haven’t tried it). The combo of electron apps and what I guess is just calendar synchronization latency makes them have surprise ux patterns and overall just shitty experience in general.

A third thing is that I really enjoy planning my life with a kanban, and executing my day from a todo list (scheduled). That’s hard to nail.

Last: my notes live separately (as most people’s do I’ve seen anecdotally).

I hope someone can really succeed in this space because time blocking is so powerful, but nothing has fit my lifestyle quite right yet unfortunately.

> So for example, I want to schedule a doctor’s appointment on my personal and have my other calendars mirror that time block, but scrub the details/make it generic. Super specific idea obviously

Actually not that specific at all! I know a lot of people have at least the work/personal schedule split, and personally I have the additional side project one the same as you, which I bet is pretty common among people putting on this very website.

I also know a lot of people have other arrangements they'd like. Partially out trans people jump to mind. And I'd like my personal contacts to know what my side project life is up to but not vice versa, which is probably not standard but I doubt I'm alone.

So I think customizable ways to separate your life and who is able to see it is not really a niche feature at all, and just a commonly missing one.

>none seem to handle multiple calendars well. I have a personal calendar, a work calendar, and a side project calendar, I want them all to be independent, have tasks blocked out on them, etc, but still be aware of each other. So for example, I want to schedule a doctor’s appointment on my personal and have my other calendars mirror that time block, but scrub the details/make it generic. Super specific idea obviously, but if I don’t have it I have so much manual overhead aligning everything that I just give up and do it by hand.

YES, THIS! Managing personal, family, and work calendars is a nightmare. So much double handling.

How does "Planning you life with a Kan ban and executing your day from a todo list (scheduled)" look?

Is a scheduled todo list basically just a todo list with times attached? A little like time blocking?

How does your Kanban fit into that?

Try this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HmvZObOoIhg&ab_channel=Bette...

Regarding the first point – that's something I'd like to have personally as I have to manage multiple calendars. We'll come there at some point for sure.

The second point – just give us a go :)

Thanks for typing it out. Number 1 is also something I would looove to have. Thought about implementing something myself often enough (as we creatives/programmers do), but well ...

cron (recently acquired by Notion) does 1 well

see: https://cron.com/changelog/2022-05-09-automatic-event-blocki...

clockwise also does a good job of syncing personal and work calendar - i wouldn't be able to manage my schedule without it.

https://www.getclockwise.com/

I use reclaim.ai to do the calendar sync. It works pretty well, worth a look.

Oh shit this looks wonderful, I’ll have to give it a shot

What happens if I try this, come to depend on it, and you shut down for some (probably very good) reason? Will I be able to keep using it, or does it die with your severs?

Well, even if it comes to that, we'll shut it down in an ethical way – allow some time to transfer the data and add some data export options.

However, we personally use it every day and want to keep it alive even for a small user base. And of course, we hope to achieve more than this and build a decent and successful product.

Congratulations on shipping. Looks great!

From my limited experience in this space: any two users typically have very different needs and want to see very different features (mobile? desktop app? themes? integrations? offline?) before they would feel comfortable making the jump.

So my hunch (although I hope you prove me wrong!) is that getting serious growth requires creating a lot of little features and getting all of them right. I found the prospect of this exhausting when I took a crack at it years ago.

On that basis, my feedback is that it would be great if you all decide what you want this app to be. If you want it to perfectly scratch your itch, that would be a wonderful thing, and I think you would see steady growth in a niche market. If you want it to grow massively, long-term I think it needs to be some kind of platform with a killer edge.

For example, I think Obsidian falls in the platform category. Its killer edge is a great UI over plain markdown notes just stored on disk, and it's also a platform for all kinds of extensions on top.

Also: charge more! [1]

[1]: https://www.google.com/search?q=patio11+charge+more

You are absolutely right, as someone also working in this space, I found it too fragmented to generate significant revenue [0]. Even in this current HN discussion, there are many people asking for various features like desktop and mobile support, source code integration etc. Figuring out a way to help solve all of everyone's problems will leave you doing nothing well, and I say this from personal experience.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32313370

That's very true. Launching a basic MVP is getting harder and harder nowadays as the entire space is much more developed.

This looks good. I am really trying to be better about staying on task with things, but I think like a lot of people I tend to have ADHD tendencies that seem to have worsened with the pandemic, which can make it hard to track progress. I’m going to give this a go and see if it helps. Thanks!

I'm trying to optimize my setup which is rather clunky with Todoist, Fantastical and Notion and thought that this might be the killer. No other calendars than google made me hit the cancel button straight away tho.

Idea seemed good but even if exchange calendar would be there, it still is a bit too rough (from a 5min session) in terms of features/UI to warrant this cost. With the plethora of similar apps, if you'd up the price to the full $14/month, I'd be amazed if this will become a big thing.

If someone from todoist is reading this thread, please take note how awesome a drag-and-drop todo-list to calendar functionality can work!

It's still early days for us and we consider our current tasks, notes and events as very basic at the moment. Just want to see if the concept works at all for other people as it works for us. There is a long road ahead to get to the full functionality we envision.

A page or FAQ of supported integrations would be helpful. For example, I am told that I can “See events from all your calendars in one place.”. However, I have no idea which calendars are supported. My employer uses Office 365, I use Google Calendar for personal events, my partner shares iOS calendar with me. Is this all supported? If more of these integrations were documented $7 may be a great value proposition. If these types of integrations aren’t supported this appears like a fairly easy app to host serverlessly in AWS with some Lambdas and DynamoDB and $7/mo seems high to me.

idk why hosting costs should factor into your value consideration. obviously if this doesn't support any calendars then there's no utility there, but i can't imagine being more eager to pay for something because it seems like it's expensive to host.

We'll add information about supported providers, thanks!

Just to reply here – at the moment we support Google Calendars only.

This, with emails, unified inbox, snooze emails, templates and for linux.

-> Shut up and take my money

Isn't that pretty much mozilla thunderbird?

While nice, this feels like an app that I’d pay for one (on the order of $20-30, and then use forever. $7 a month for a glorified task list feels like too much for me.

I also kind of expect myself to forget about the existence of the app in less than two weeks (kind of a recurring pattern with any productivity tool), and I don’t want a subscription like that kept open because I’m either too lazy to cancel it, or I’ve forgotten to do so.

People payed $7.99/m for Evernote and $39/y for rememberthemilk. OP don't get discouraged when someone is not in your price/value target.

They don’t have to, but having another datum on your list of ‘people who see your product and what they think’ might be helpful :)

Very few people did, which is why they are in the state they are in.

I completely agree. If they had a slick desktop and mobile app I'd be willing to pay a few dozen dollars for it, one time.

Also, it's scary to think about losing access to the app at the center of your life, and the data associated with it.

I think I'll stick with a cobbled together Obsidian setup that accomplishes 80% of this functionality.

Would love to hear a description of your Obsidian approach, plugins, etc. I am brand new to it but it looks promising.

This looks great!

I've seen no mention of Plan [0] in these comments. It's the only other all-in-one todo->dayplanner that I know of that comes close to this; but their UI is in Angular and the whole thing feels like it got left behind a bit. Might be an interesting case study to compare to.

[0]: https://getplan.co/

I would love to see more integrated workspace tools. Combining calendar, notes, todo is a good start. But i my needs are from source material to documents and presentations. I use currently vscode for this need using (common-) markdown as preferred notes format and lately using csv for tabular data and excalidraw for visual notes. As a teacher and working in different research projects i work mostly with external partners, so everybody brings his own tools and data formats...

I like it because i can open a lot of files within the same application (pdf's, images, excel), unfortunately some formats need an external viewer (word, eml). I try to gather all data to my project folders. With every other notetaking tool i have to switch between a lot of different applications, because my notes are mostly based on other documents, communication or internet research (text, image, video, audio).

---

Some of the plugins and integrated applications i use:

- Vscode has todo applications that can gather all '- [ ] Todo's and add them to the sidebar, so i have an overview of all my project's.

- I use Marp (with some markdown-it plugins) to generate presentations from my markdown files (building the files). Using Pandoc i can convert them to Word/PDF files (based on templates). Pandoc can also convert some formats to markdown.

- I can download most websites and integrate it into my notes for offline (and future) reading using MarkDownload. I wrote a script that downloads linked images. github.com/jely2002/youtube-dl-gui is good to download integrated videos.

- I use syncthing to sync the data across my NAS, desktop and notebook.

---

What i am missing:

- Viewers for file formats that are not yet supported (currently word & eml).

- Collaborative editing of notes (github or similar is a possible solution with it's web editor)

- Realtime collaborative editing (currently i can copy to another editor, edupad.ch)

- Sync my meetings (date-time) i write down in markdown into my calendar (course-planning). I'm currently working on a ical generator for that reason, also to share calendar data to students or partners.

- Integrating my bookmarks into the work process would be good as well.

---

edit: fix layout

There is no way to deny cookie consent.

I don’t believe it’s required if they’re not being collected for marketing and tracking g reasons. Not sure what theirs are for tho anyway.

It's the principle as much as anything else. The site works without trackers so why not just have a button? Why be so hostile to users?

I like the concept, but the lack of a great mobile interface (either responsive web or app) is a real deal breaker. Signed up for the trial but will cancel, would love to hear from you again once the mobile side is ready to go.

Well, given the amount of interest in mobile apps here, we'll think about prioritising it higher on our list.

NotePlan (Apple-ecosystem only) is pretty awesome for this: https://noteplan.co, though their new pricing plan is ridiculous (current subscribers unaffected).

The files are all stored locally in plain text. There's a growing plugin ecosystem as well.

There are some mildly annoying, long-outstanding bugs like ordered lists not re-ordering as expected, but overall it's a very good app.

Is desktop app native or electron?

Will mobile apps be native or web view?

I currently use Tick Tick which has a lot of overlap with Emery. The main reason I love it is that it is SUPER snappy.

We don't have a desktop app at the moment, just a web app for desktop browsers. Planning to introduce an electron-based app later on.

Technical stack for mobile apps is still an open question. Want to get the desktop app right first as most people we talked to prefer to use computers to organise their days.

Despite using web stack, speed of the ui is one of the things we're proud of.

Electron or any other web tech makes it a no go for me. For me at least it’s not possible to get a desktop app right if it’s not native.

There are better alternatives to Electron.

The more I see these agenda/to-do lists/productivity apps, the more I feel I am missing something.

What is wrong with just using... your agenda? And if stuff needs to be broken down into little tasks.... out them in the tasks app.

Why buy a complicated piece of software, if the aforementioned apps are already on your phone, for free. Also, bonus: these apps synchronize between iPhone and Mac seamlessly.

I love it. It's simple and easy. Yes, I'd prefer to have a desktop app, but whatever - I can figure that out myself. Just having the day view + tasks in one screen really helps me.

My one niggle: it'd be useful to have a keystroke I can use to the task I'm typing in a collection. But it's tiny and I can definitely do without for now.

For the calendars, I have regular ical calendars on nextcloud and apple. I have only one google calendar I have to access.

It's hard to be as good a calendar on the mac as BusyCal so I'm not suggesting you go that far, but I do need solid multicalendar support.

As someone deeply in love with Omnifocus, this feels like a step backward for me. Omnifocus has several features that Emery does not, and the only thing Emery has that Omnifocus does not is a dedicated notes space that isn't tied to tasks, but I'd rather use Omnifocus+a more feature rich notes app than use Emery.

If you'd like a bit of product advice...each of the verticals you're building on (calendar, tasks, and notes) are packed with competitors and feature rich. I don't think you can offer a better product by creating an all-in-one solution. At best, you can help customers with no solution today, but you're banking on their lack of awareness of their options in the space at that point, and that's a bad strategy.

If you want to be successful in the productivity space, I think it's far, FAR more prudent to focus on one of these areas (calendar, email, or notes) and get really REALLY good at it by serving a particular workflow or customer segment that doesn't have a tailored solution.

Though maybe you just built something you want to use yourself and are operating this as a side project. If so...god speed.

Well, we started to build it for ourselves and our own needs. It all started from my personal experience being an Engineering Manager at Bumble where I had to manage multiple priorities/projects and go through 40+ meetings a week. Then we opened for the public access and started to see some interest from other people.

Anyway, you're right, it's a long road ahead of us if we want to be competitive on this market.

That surprises me. As an EM myself, I don't see this keeping up with my task load. I assumed this was targeted at junior ICs who may not have their workflow figured out yet. I wish you luck.

Welp, I had to cancel almost immediately because it was more complicated an improvement over Google calendar than I wanted. I tried to leave decent feedback when I cancelled, hope it helps. Keep it up.

Thanks for the feedback!

$9/month sounds cheap, but so did all the other things I've subscribed to. This is just another thing I have to pay someone else every month for, and I'm tired of that shit.

For $9/yr I might be willing.

Me too. Too many subscriptions all over the place. I cancelled all of them except my mobile phone and internet plans last month.

OP have you considered a pure yearly plan of say $20/yr?

-- They have a yearly plan - it's $54 - a reasonable yearly plan price imo - that said - their pricing page is extremely unclear and needs some work --

It's absolutely too much.

-- phew! glad the arbiter of product pricing has finally weighed in - now we know - do you mind going through everything else I pay for to confirm it's not "absolutely too much" for the value I'm deriving? --

This isn't reddit - you have to go back.

-- I was just meeting you where you stood buddy - maybe you should take a skim of the HN guidelines and refresh yourself? - Your comment history shows you might need a re-education on them - (as did I) --

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Love it! Reminds me of Daystack (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4045527) in a very positive way.

Thanks!

Hey look! Org-mode for mortals! /s

Snark aside, this looks really pretty. Something that would probably be a killer feature for a lot of people: the ability to attach an email to a task or a calendar item.

Another killer feature: the ability to actually sync your org notes.

I usually use git for this

Nice looking app and landing page. Well done on the launch.

I am probably not a buyer of this product, because I don't find switching apps enough of a pain point. Happy to use Gmail and notion ... for now.

Thanks for the comment anyway!

I really like the “Cancel with 1 click” part on the front page. I haven’t tried Emery yet but easy cancellation and you being so open about it makes it attractive for me to give it a try!

This is a very interesting idea. In addition to calendar syncing via Google Calendar, it would be great to have calendar and task syncing via CalDAV and notes syncing via IMAP.

this is cloud-based website, is there an android/ios app or desktop app for that? when I saw 'app' I always thought about phone apps or desktop apps these days.

Yeah, that can be confusing. At the moment it's a web app only.

Looks great, an “email sign up for updates” would be valuable as I’d give this a go once you announce an iOS mobile app. As it stands I’ll have no way to know when that happens.

Good idea, we'll think about adding it to the landing. Thanks!

This reminds me of Microsoft Outlook. I havent used it in a long while but they used have a "front page" where you could get a good overview like this.

Saw the gif on the homepage, was excited, then saw I need to share all data with you and can't just download the software for running locally or self hosting.

That I need to put everything on your systems means I don't want to use it for myself and can't use it for work. That's a shame, but I guess the upside is that I can stop distracting myself with looking into a shiny new productivity tool and get back to work.

Edit: and I see in other comments you don't even have your own account system but one is required to create a Google account first. This product isn't for hackers but for management.

I actually prefer it if people use OpenID providers like Google vs rolling their own account management and authentication.

But you still need to roll your own authentication, the only thing you outsource is the actual page where you enter the password or click on forgot password. Your application doesn't magically know that jupp0r shouldn't have access to my documents or isn't an administrator or something, you still need to build each of those boundaries, and now it's more complicated because it can be from any number of third parties. (I audit stuff like this for a living; not once has an external login page helped, and it's significantly harder to audit because you have extra complexity going on with signatures and scopes instead of a regular hash check in a table, not to mention never being allowed to test said third party.)

Not so long ago the general opinion was that this centralization to google/facebook logins wasn't a good thing. I wonder if it's just you or if the general opinion is going in the direction of convenience for the 99% rather than prioritizing security, privacy, and availability...

You need to roll your own authorization, authentication is provided by the third party provider. Of course you need to check and verify that users authenticated correctly against the third party provider. I don’t have to tell you this as you do this for a living, but saving having to implement half of the oauth flow is a good thing, right?

This seems very good.

1. This looks like Notion, which is good. Notion succeeded by being pretty.

2. It feels...I don't know the way to say it, but the appropriately level of solid (I don't accidentally drag and drop stuff), fast, and just easy to use. No non-modal mix of commands and typing makes entering information frustrating. It feels like typing into Notepad. It's frustration-free.

3. I would like if the dashboard showed unscheduled tasks (as a collapsible section at the very bottom, below Completed.)

4. I have TODOs of the form "Deploy XYZ" and ideally they would be "Deploy XYZ - https://github.com/foo/bar/pull/1337" -- but this adds a lot of clutter to the task list. If there were a way to add details or attach notes to tasks, that would be helpful. (It would also add clutter, so be careful. Just a "Details" link next to "Schedule" and the tags might work. Make it open a note on the right, perhaps?)

5. The "Schedule" link below each item makes me think I haven't scheduled the item, but I have. It should say "Today" (when I'm looking at today on the dashboard).

6. The importing of calendars scared me as it populated a giant list, including my coworkers calendars that I've subscribed to (but have set to not display), but turned out fine. Only the ones I have set to display in Google Calendar display in Emery by default. The import UX maaaaybe could be better / less aggressive, but it works.

7. The dichotomy between "schedule this for today" and "add this to a specific time on my calendar" still exists, and frustrates me, but the ability to sort the tasks helps.

8. It's good that this is opinionated. Stay focused and reject most feature requests, including mine.

9. You got me to enter my credit card before I even got to play around with it. That's impressive, but you are definitely cutting your top-of-funnel with that requirement. (Maybe it pays off by increasing conversion at the free trial->paid step, or maybe you only want true believers at the beginning, but the payment form would usually have turned me away.)

10. Can I export my data? In seven days, am I going to have to manually copy-and-paste all my notes and outstanding TODOs back into my old system if I decide this isn't for me? This risk also makes me hesitant to go all-in during the trial period. (An export wouldn't fully solve this, since I'd then have a messy JSON file or something to deal with, but I'd feel a little better about it.)

After using it all morning:

11. "Done" tasks on the dashboard should be moved to a collapsible section same as they are in the Collections view.

12. The workflow for setting the collection for an existing task is: 1. Click "Collection", 2. Click the collection name on the popup, 3. Click outside the popup. This is nice if I want to add things to multiple collections, but I don't, so step 3 is a minor annoyance.

I do want to repeat 4: three column display on a laptop screen means moderately-long task names are multi-line. :-(

I see my "5" is already implemented. Nice!

Wow! Thanks for the well-structured feedback, that's extremely helpful!

Given it's early days, it would be good to give people who sign up for a year now more of a discount than "until we launch properly".

Is there a mobile app in the works too? I usually plan from mobile and find doing it outside of a native app clunky

It's still in planning at the moment

This is an absolutely wonderful tool and I’m going to sign up immediately.

May I ask if the data stored is encrypted?

In a similar vein, adding a voice for E2E. It's just me, but I won't consider using a tool gathering such personal information if it's not encrypted with keys I control.

Nice! Is there a way for users to export data? Similar to Notion export to Markdown and CSV.

Not at the moment, but it sounds interesting. It'll definitely help people feel more safe about their data.

Just to let you know, the privacy policy makes it sound like users can. Under "The rights of Users," it states (source: https://emery.to/privacy/): "Users have the right to receive their Data in a structured, commonly used and machine readable format and, if technically feasible, to have it transmitted to another controller without any hindrance. This provision is applicable provided that the Data is processed by automated means and that the processing is based on the User's consent, on a contract which the User is part of or on pre-contractual obligations thereof."

Maybe there is a manual option on the company's end that makes this assurance valid?

Sure, we can accommodate it manually if the need arises

Am I able to link to my own markdown docs, or do I only make notes in your closed app?

In-app notes only

i had a great planner back in the day on my palm pilot. nothing has come close.

Hi! Does Emery have an API?

No, not at the moment

Looks great, going to try it.

I wish, however, I didn't have to use Google for auth.

Asana already exists. Even for free. Is your product different enough?

For me using Asana as a personal tool wasn't really comfortable – there are no notes (at least there wasn't back then), you have to manually assign all tasks to yourself and there is no calendar integration.

Is there a tool like this but also an email inbox at the same time?

Looking forward to seeing integration with O363 in the future.

That's the most Swiss surname! Is that a coincidence?

Just a coincidence :)

one scenario I don't see covered. I have a project X. Allow me to book a couple hours against the project without deleting it from the to-do list.

That's how it works now – you can book as many time slots as you need for your tasks. From my personal experience tasks take more than a single slot quite often.

if you're not playing the meta-game, you're losing.

i use GTD and this may be just the tool i was looking for. hats off!

great landing page. will give this a shot.

Interesting, very similar to what I'm building as well: https://getartemis.app

I've done a lot of research into this calendar/tasks/notes space, how does this compare to

- Sunsama [0]

- Daybridge

- Routine [1]

- Agenda

- NotePlan

- Cron

- TickTick

and the hundreds of others out there?

I've also seen a lot of apps like this shut down over the years, such as Sunrise [2], Woven [3] and more. Personally speaking, I even hesitate to continue on my own app as well because it seems the market is saturated with the same exact idea and style, but it seems that users aren't really that attached to one company for it to generate enough revenue to keep building.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24990238

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26565629

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11676448

[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26882680

At Sunsama we address this directly in our pricing: https://help.sunsama.com/docs/pricing-manifesto

Shutting down or acquisition is the norm for calendar/task tools.

You can add Cron to your list too. They were just acquired last month by Notion. I think Cron had more traction than Sunrise/Woven too.

-- FWIW Artemis triggered my GANTT PTSD from bschool - couldn't close the window fast enough (but that's a me problem I suppose) --

Hah, I talked to some people on my email list and they said they wanted a GANTT chart tool themselves. I didn't originally mean to make it GANTT related since I've never used one myself, but it's an interesting observation.

-- It looks like a great tool! - I def wasn't pissing on it - just wanted to let you know =) --

Not another one of these... I'd be into them if they integrated with standard protocols and file formats, e.g. caldav, carddav, org-mode, etc, and at least provided an API if not integrations with various open source tools. Otherwise I'm not going to have all my important personal information locked up into a proprietary system that may shut down or may be deficient in some annoying way.

The bar for critique in a Show HN is a bit higher than harumph.

https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html

I was pretty specific about features I'd like to see and problems I could potentially run into with this product. Quite a bit more than a "harumph".

"Not another one of these" is dismissive, followed by a laundry list of things you think are important which are specific to your needs but are not specific commentary on the thing being shown, which is what Show HN is about.

My two cents. I reviewed the Show HN guidelines. With them in mind, I found the parent comment spot-on and relevant.

I agree that saying "Not another one of these" is not the nicest tone. It could be improved -- how we treat each other in this community matters a lot. But the substance is useful, and I interpret the intent as consistent with "When something isn't good, you needn't pretend that it is, but don't be gratuitously negative." per the guidelines.

Speaking to the "it's my data" theme, there is at least one additional comment, which I also find useful, asking "What happens if I try this, come to depend on it, and you shut down for some (probably very good) reason? Will I be able to keep using it, or does it die with your severs?"

I didn't like that Google is the only option to sign up. And didn't like the 7 day free trial on providing credit card process. And the price is steep.

I mostly disagree with your comment. Google sign-up is fine as a starting point for a product, I find the price is probably quite reasonable.

I can somewhat agree with requiring a credit card on sign-up, but it does give an idea of if people are REALLY willing to pay, or just kicking the can.

Regarding Google – we're planning to introduce other methods later this week.

Regarding credit card process – that's understandable. Unfortunately, that's the most robust way we know to measure how many people would buy a subscription.

What is the primary goal? To measure how many people are willing to provide a credit card? Probably something else, right? So what is the key metric? And have you made a back-of-the-envelope estimate on the tradeoff you're making towards the key metric?

Regarding credit cards – that's precisely our goal. To see how many people would be ready to pay (or provide a credit card at least). Of course, our product is not as developed as one would expect and we're going to see many cancellations. But it provides a useful data point for us nevertheless. Then we can act on the feedback and develop the product further to lower cancellation rate.

$7 a month, that's pretty steep. How'd you come to that number for a less featureful version of Google Workspace?

The right calendar, notes and task manager is worth way more than $7 per month to many people.

For comparisons to other productivity software systems, it's actually comparable to Evernote at $7.99 USD/month, with similar functionality (except the drag-and-drop from tasks to a schedule).

In contrast, Todoist is around $4 USD/month, which matches Notion's Personal Pro plan.

> it's actually comparable to Evernote at $7.99 USD/month

No, it's not remotely comparable to a product that's had millions of customers for years and years, after basically creating this industry. Most Evernote customers pay $70/year. And for that matter, Evernote regularly has sales to get new users at $42 for the first year.

It remains comparable in absolute terms ($7 versus $7.99). Users can therefore be conditioned to think it's not that expensive. Despite its respected legacy and heavy marketing over the years, it's not exceptional enough at its current state (after its switch to Electron) to say that no other productivity app can charge around that price.

If the app had mobile apps and better privacy assurances that your calendar information and tasks won't be used in advertising, the pricing would not be outrageous at all.

Industry insiders and experts can tell you the history of who did what and when. But "comparable" is in the eye of the beholder (i.e. the potential customer). Does the customer anchor on Evernote? Maybe. Maybe not.

I tend to think "almost certainly not." I have not once thought of Evernote as an all-inclusive productivity, calendaring, and organizing tool. But that's just me.

Ah, the tired old arguing over if something is comparable or not. People. If you define something as binary (on or off), you have to set a threshold. Don't expect others to share your definition. But feel free to bicker away.

There's nothing to argue about in this case. Trust is incredibly important when you're asking people to give you their personal data. Evernote has an established track record, and this is a Show HN. Evernote is objectively better in that critical area.

> There's nothing to argue about in this case.

You realize that after this sentence, you proceed to argue your case...

Despite my poking fun at your phrasing, the remainder of your comment does make a decent argument.

We had to start somewhere, so just picked a number we're comfortable with. Getting pricing right will take some time.

Don’t lower from $7. If anything, raise it much higher.

This is as someone who also worked on a productivity app and priced it at $5/mo.

It’s a mistake you only make once. The economics will never work.

I just signed up for a trial. If it can replace my trusty notepad and paper, I can definitely justify $7 a month.

Thanks! Let us know if you have any feedback during your trial

You're just starting out, your costs can't possibly be that high. Maybe in two years you could charge $7 a month, but you're going to lose business doing it now. You also have no levers to turn to increase the price really, as anything close to $10 is nuts.

obsidian charges $10/mo just for syncing! I hope you've yelled at them too.

Obsidian is free and you can sync using whatever method you'd like. The $10 is if you want them to sync your vaults for you, all while being end-to-end encrypted. I've paid for sync since beta (I'm locked in at a lower price) and I partly do it just to support the devs making such a good product.

so why don't consider $7 as a support for Emery guys doing great all-in-one day planning tool?

gotta love random driveby pricing opinions from people who have never used the product lol

> who have never used the product lol

this is non-obvious

It's always easier to lower prices than to raise them.

This is the common "wisdom", which tends to make me skeptical.

But I do agree in the following sense. Once customers form opinions of a product and its pricing, those opinions tend to change relatively slowly. So managing expectations around pricing at launch is important.

There are many ways to tweak pricing expectations. Off the top of my head, some include: (a) "pre launch" pricing (used by Emery); (b) offering a family of products or modules or whatever, each of which is priced separately, implying that major additions will be an additional cost; (c) varying support levels; (d) varying usage levels; (e) extras such as security & encryption that enterprises will pay for; ...

Too many "Get Started" buttons IMO. If you're running a test ignore me.

$7/mo is extremely steep for something that provides a very tiny subset of features of a hundred other productivity apps out there. And there are no mobile apps?

No, mobile apps are still in planning

You can imagine my confusion, checking in to see this at the top of HN.

A great idea and a nice looking product in an important space - best of luck with it.

Yes, quite confusing! Perhaps you should consider a name change? You don't want people to confuse you with a productivity app! https://selfhelp.courts.ca.gov/name-change

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