Reflect – App for recording and connecting notes, ideas and contacts | Hacker News Reader

Reflect – App for recording and connecting notes, ideas and contacts

reflect.app

152 pointsgardenfelder86 comments

Woah, cool to see Reflect on HN.

I started Reflect a few years ago. We're building it as a lifestyle company. There's only four of us. We bootstrapped for a while, and then did a $1m crowdfund. Now our goal is to get to profitability, and we're half-way there.

Product wise, our goal is to make something beautiful, fast, secure - that just works out the box. We're end-to-encrypted, which I think this crowd will appreciate.

Happy to answer any questions.

What happens if you go out of business?

Then you can export your notes to HTML or Markdown.

With all metadata? In a machine-parseable format? How easy is it to export notes right now?

We have all of the above. Export anytime. It's part of our company values.

https://reflect.academy/492a5b05bc2b4538ac6d1c08c971070d

Excellent excellent. It’s now officially on my radar.

That's good of course. I'd also like to suggest you promise to release the code under an open source license should you cease operations.

NotePlan is severless

Your product claims to be end to end encrypted. Since it is closed source, do you plan on providing any proof via a third-party security audit?

We only ask because we have been burned in the past. For the existence of encryption to comfort a security savvy crowd, we often need to see that it was implemented correctly, as there are far too many ways of getting it wrong than there are of getting it right. I would not worry about it too much, though. Once the product is successful you can go back and rethink, like Zoom did. Sad, but true.

Yup, audit details are here: https://reflect.academy/security-and-encryption

This looks very similar to mem.ai — how are you differentiating yourself?

Previous user of both, but have opted to pay for Reflect, after Mem added AI features before adding a dark mode.

Any notes app that doesn't give a dark mode to their customers as high priority, no matter how cool, is not listening to their customers.

Alex has been obsessed with customer feedback, answering support emails, and on discord, and it shows. Reflect is beautiful, fast and super secure.

Mem has the twitter bot, which is really cool!

> We're end-to-encrypted, which I think this crowd will appreciate.

Yes, we do! Just curios why this doesn't currently include files and images? Some of the most sensitive info in my notes is inside PDF, e.g. contracts.

> "We do not end-to-end encrypt things like files or images you upload" https://reflect.academy/security-and-encryption

For years I’ve been pouring through all the apps/platforms like this, but after being burned too many times I am (incredibly) reluctant to tie my second brain to a box that will lock itself unless I pay. Even if it’s just an interface, it’s too disruptive when my whole workflow is upended by a service getting bought/shutting down/“upgrading” to break old features/increases fees.

I see a “free trial”. That plus the landing page not mentioning open source, a permanent license, or common/interchangeable formats bounced me immediately, despite what I’m sure are some great capabilities that folks put a lot of time and work into. Maybe I’m missing something? Is that kind of app not sustainable so we don’t see them, or do I just not know where to look?

I totally agree. In fact, that's the entire reason we didn't raise venture capital, because that would have forced an 'exit' (which typically means an acquihire/getting shut down). I'm sick of seeing otherwise good businesses ruined because they raised VC without a good reason to.

Our goals are modest, we're just trying to create a sustainable business. We're currently half-way towards profitability, and are on track to be profitable by the end of the year.

Regarding export formats, you can always export your notes into markdown or HTML so you shouldn't feel too locked in.

That's great to hear, but if someone offers you a substantial chunk of change I'd hate to get proficient at software that will stop working in 60 days.

On-boarding to new tools has a cost.

Agreed. And tired of them being hacked into, deciding to change their pricing model, retiring the product, etc. no replacement for good old note taking and using your noggin’.

I also felt this way (jumping from tool to tool) until I found Obsidian, which is just sugar on top of markdown files and normal folders: https://obsidian.md

Another vote for Obsidian. I pay for the app even though I don't have to.

Great piece of tech. I really like using it.

Same. Although paying for Sync makes mobile workable. But the combo of the base too, available plugins, and a large, active community combine to be among the best of the various capture tools out there.

I’ve really enjoyed Logseq and found the structure to better match how I think and structure notes.

That it has a less rabid community and plug-ins than Obsidian is also a plus imo.

Has been great seeing so much iteration in this space.

https://logseq.com/

The only missing feature imo is the availability of plugins on the mobile app

Or native Apps without 200 GB chrome browser bloat.

That's the tool I am trying out now. Have you found anything neat that you really like about it? I chose it for the backlinks and because it is not trying to lock me in to a vendor.

And what if I put all your data in a SQLite file the app uses, which you could theoretically, just use yourself?

I found Twos to be a great tool for capturing and remembering things. It's fast, free, and available on most platforms. I love that they listen and prioritize user feedbacks (!!). Also, the development is very much active. If you wanna know more, it's https://www.TwosApp.com?code=nino/

Happy Twosday! :)

Logseq seems like the way to go at the moment for not putting your eggs in someone else's basket.

Reflect looks pretty nice, the convenience of a turnkey solution is attractive, and so is clearing a security audit, however, a licensed self-host solution might be appealing if open-sourcing isn't on the horizon.

I've been a reflect user since the beta, paid and then stopped.

Switched to mem (never paid them) and really liked the quickness with which I can just "dump" my brain into mem. But their are not customer focused, and seeing that they kept piling on VC money, felt wrong to me.

Then a friend suggested that I try Reflect again, I think after they added tasks, and I resubscribed and couldn't be happier. But I was, when they added whisper voice notes, and then implemented AI features, and then upgraded to GPT-4!

The customer attention is top notch, the interface was recently re-designed by the designer of tailwind UI, James.

It's a joy to use, super fast, stupid simple.

“Super fast”… it’s Electron

The same is true for Obsidian, an application that is constantly praised by its users for the speed with which it works, even with thousands of notes and files in it.

wait, gpt-4... that means they feed your notes to openai? whats end to end encryption and all the privacy claims good for then?

Obsidian: https://obsidian.md has been the best free (for personal use) 'second brain' app I've used so far.

What's better about reflect?

I use and really like Obsidian, but there is something about the UX that is often making me come back to Apple Notes: it feels easier/faster to create new notes, retrieve them and search in Apple Notes.

There’s too many considerations: “What should I name this note?” “What should I link this note to?” “What folder should this be under?”

W/ my obsidian setup, the note's name equalst its headline and I don't do a ton of linking for the sake of linking. I like to pick folders of broad realms or topics. But the act of creating a new note is no different than most tools, except maybe for Notes or Keep where you just hit plus and throw them pretty much in the same stack.

Hard agree. This type of app looks awesome in theory, but also makes me want to really organize my thoughts, make sure the tags are not too redundant, and think about how to merge with my previous notes (a lot of which is on paper). Then the perceived work involved for using such an app just for taking spontaneous notes become way too much.

I've tried many second-brain note apps, including Obsidian. What drew me to Reflect (away from Obsidian) was full functionality out of the box without the need for plugins. Some may like plugins, but for me, I got tired of having to update one or more plugins almost every time I opened the app. I shouldn't have to have plugins for what I consider core features. Reflect is fully functional without any plugins to update (or get compromised or stop getting updated). Plus, the design team is super thoughtful about what they incorporate. In my mind, they are just opinionated enough to make good calls and not bloat the program.

People who are obsessed with second-brain tools often accomplish the least because they are preoccupied with optimizing the perfect setup. Notes.app FTW

Apple notes cannot even link to a different note. There's a lot of middle ground between linked Markdown notes and the dogmatic "build a second brain" stuff.

For what it’s worth, Apple Notes can link between notes. Share, copy link, paste into another note.

It could definitely be a bit more fluid though. I imagine shortcuts could help achieve that.

Hookmark app, which gives a shortcut to copy the formatted link, is all you need to link between notes in AN. They should release the mobile version soon, it's been in the works for some time.

And they never stick to one app long enough to get the benefits. Constantly switching, looking for better and faster. I switched to index cards, and honestly, I don't miss digital FOMO.

I'm also on team Notes.app, but i honestly never got very good at consistent organized note taking.

My workflow is mostly:

If it's important i use my "first brain". I tend to be great at remembering stuff, which is probably also why i never really got into note taking. And yes, i still remember most phone numbers from my childhood, despite 99% of them having been out of use for a couple of decades by now :D

If i'm at my desk there is always pen & paper next to my keyboard, and anything "short term" gets noted there. That would mostly be meeting notes, questions (for meetings), and high level architecture sketches that will then go into a drawing tool at some point.

Anything else lives in Notes.app, but not as complex notes, but rather just a short sentence or link to an article on the web.

I also use the Apple Reading List for interesting articles i intend to read, but much like Pocket it is more a place where links go to die. I very rarely ever read anything i put there, so maybe i should just stop doing that :)

I have tried pretty much every "modern" note taking tool out there, including RocketBook (yes, physical), but none of them ever really "clicked" with me. Notes.app gets the job done, works well across different platforms, and integrates well into every platform i use.

I've been really happy with Logseq. It has a similar interface to Reflect by the looks of it, but it saves to the local file system in plain text (markdown-ish) format. They have sync now, but roll your own sync via git is also very feasible. Obsidian is similar but I like the 'outliner' 'Roam like' apps that can infer relationships via blocks and indentation.

Logseq is well done. I ended up using it for about a month but then went to Obsidian -- I ended up realizing I like to use outliner mode for certain types of notes, but found Obsidian to be better for straight writing. There's an outliner plugin for Obsidian that gets you close-ish to Logseq and other outlners, but I ended up detuning its settings to just make bulleted lists better. Totally recommend checking out Logseq though, it's good software.

Yeah agree Obsidian is better for long form. You can change the enter key behaviour so on it's own it doesn't create a new block, but small blocks works better for my note taking style.

So is this like obsidian but without a free version? What’s the difference from obsidian?

I used Reflect when this was in Beta and free and liked the experience.

However most of what you get from this, you can get from Obsidian as well. Despite that Obsidian never stuck for me while Reflect kinda did.

These days I am back to Bear since it's free, native, fast and editing experience is top notch and I never found much use of bidirectional links.

It really has to be some kind of behavioural trait that makes some of us try every notes app out there.

I've been using Roam but seems like development is stalled. I'm mostly happy with it as is but I see a lot more people talking about Obsidian, wonder what I'm missing.

Roam was slow as hell when I tried it. And there have been reports of terrible behaviour from their founder that I don't want to condone, so don't use it in principle.

People are wow’d by the features of Obsidian however it comes at a significant cost of usability. I love using Bear too and btw they are supporting backlinks with 2.0 which just hit public beta.

Also Obsidian weirds me out that they will not have a third-party security audit + give full access to plugins. Bear had Cossack Labs help implement their E2EE which is great for peace of mind.

Props to Reflect for their security audit too. I will be keeping an eye on how they progress.

It seems very interesting.

I'm just trying it out on mobile Android and the experience is horrible.

All I can do is to edit the text but I can't navigate anywhere else unless I activate desktop mode on chrome, at which point the sidebars open but all text is so tiny ai have to zoom all the time and despite that I can't add new graphs and import my stuff from workflowy because the select box renders outside the viewport and I can't choose the import file format.

I'll give it another try once they get out of the "everybody has iPhones" bubble

I'm a long-time Reflect user, the progress in the last 12 months alone has been enormous.

- The web app is super snappy, works well offline on long-haul flights, and notes are end-to-end encrypted.

- I backup my notes weekly on Monday mornings by downloading the raw JSON file and storing it in safe cloud storage.

- The UX is a pleasure to use, and each new feature is added thoughtfully and seems an obvious addition once implemented.

Nice. I'd be super interested in deeper AI integrations for note taking apps, to help you reach certain goals, e.g.:

- calorie counting or diets: just write down what you ate, and it should be good enough to compute calories, macros etc.

- gym logging: write down when you went to the gym and what you did, and it should give you tips, help you maintain your routine and other helpful things

I love this! You should be able to do both of these today - we let you save custom prompt templates.

I'd be more interested in the ability to implement such in a way that respects privacy and customizing per folder/note/line. A difficult task given how many are just relying on OpenAI as-is.

There are apps that already do this, and don't need any AI. MyFitnessPal for example does calorie counts by scanning a product's bar code and looking at the user-specified intake amount.

Question for anyone who uses this or similar knowledge management tools. Besides a fancy interface and visualizations, what do you get?

I really want to like this tools, but I've found they all suffer from some major problems: It requires a lot of detail to capture thoughts accurately. I've always ended up in a situation where:

* I can capture the "complete picture" of my thoughts, but the notes/visualizations are basically useless. The details are missing.

* I cycle into the details, then loose track of the bigger picture.

Combine this with the fact that all of these things are basically fancy notebooks, I find they don't offer enough opinion to be useful.

Seems very similar to noteplan.co, which doesn't require logging in. (uses local or cloud storage)

Been using Reflect since last year, definitely has one of the easiest interfaces to use.

Very interesting, but $10/month is steeep pricing.

I hope you get to profitability and will be able to offer something more affordable for me (and my team).

How does this compare to Joplin (joplinapp.org)?

how do I get something like this but in VSC or Obsidian? or to come at a slightly different angle, is anyone working on a version of this sort of product that can be self-hosted?

I'd recommend exploring Obsidian. It's inherently self-hosted : it's just local markdown files (but you can sync via git or their for-pay sync service). The plugin community is large and it has some of the best extensibility going.

My suggested starting point (others' may be superior): switch to Minimal theme plus watch a few videos (search for 'my obsidian setup' and you'll find a broad range of fairly different takes on how to use and configure Obsidian, and you'll likely get a hint of the plugins available -- 'top obsidian plugins' is also a decent quick tour of what kinds of things are already available).

On balance, it took a couple of tries w/ Logseq and Obsidian and then a month of iterating and adding to Obsidian, and I had something better than what I liked about Bear, Ulysses, Craft, Spaces, Roam, Logseq, Evernote, Simplenote... I feel like I've tried them all.

You won't end up with the 100% polished experience of some of the well crafted paid apps above, but it's pretty close and the depth of features w/ extensibility is worth the delta. Obviously, this is very much based upon which features and workflows matter most, but it's been a delightful piece of software that no single other product seems to best right now.

nice, thank you. I've had Obsidian installed since its release and have been using it off and on but something about my own workflow has always kept it at quite an "almost there level" but never approaching something I'm 100% invested in.

The only reason I ask about self-hosted options would be to roll this kind of software out within a group environment.

In VSC there's Dendron and Foam available

Does it allow me to collaborate on notes with others?

Having GPT integration is a very good idea

More competition to Roam is always welcome

Let me guess: Electron?

Bingo!

I use https://ticktick.com/ for this and I'm 100% happy after years of jumping between GTD style apps (OmniFocus combined with Obsidian being a close 2nd). Todo lists, markdown notes, and a calendar. 3 critical organization apps combined in the same interface, all I need.

$10/m seems steep for this sort of thing. Premium on TickTick is $27/yr and optional.

Assuming we trust TickTick and Reflect equally and both implementations are perfect, Reflect is E2EE, whereas TickTick:

> All the databases and servers are hosted by Amazon Web Services (AWS) in the United States. We make extensive use of their built-in firewalls to protect your data against unauthorized remote access and to support continuous monitoring for potential vulnerabilities. User data, including task details, account information and payment details, are all stored and encrypted at rest.

> TickTick reserves the right to hold onto the data and not turn it over to any third parties. We will never share your data with third parties without your prior permission. Although we own the databases and all rights to the application, you retain all rights to your data.

Strictly speaking, the price difference includes a substantial security upgrade (among other things).

Meh I'm not storing sensitive information in my todo lists and notes (and my calendar is entirely uninteresting) where that threat model concerns me much.

I would certainly prefer such a feature but that's not worth paying 4.5x as much money every month. I'd rather keep sensitive notes stored on my local machine or in Bitwarden if I need remote access.

Tick tick has a free version. Reflect does not.

Discovered on twitter

https://alternativeto.net/software/reflect-notes/?license=op...

what inspires people to build software like this? there are so many good solutions already and the problem with "getting organized" is usually a lack of motivation, not a lack of available tools.

It usually starts with "I want to build some software" instead of "I want to solve a problem."

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