NodePad: LLM-aided graph based note-taking and brainstorming tool | Hacker News Reader

NodePad: LLM-aided graph based note-taking and brainstorming tool

nodepad.space

85 pointsbeshrkayali44 comments

Here's a similar project that was done awhile ago

And another - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MIfhunAwZew

These folks have been working on this for quite awhile.

Another one like this is 'loom' https://github.com/socketteer/loom which was used in the research of the simulators essay https://generative.ink/posts/simulators/

Great read! thanks for this.

Pretty cool! The branches i got back from my prompt felt a bit too concrete, though. My prompt probably sucked, but sub-node felt .. off. It just wrapped my prompt.

Love the idea though, will explore again in the future

In the video, the actual demo starts at 2:20

Nice! There is probably a whole space of applications that help users effectively prompt engineer a workflow with a UI

To skip the LLM explanation, start watching the video at 1:45. The product description starts around 2:14.

for what it's worth as someone who uses mind mapping tools daily for brainstorming this seemed pretty intuitive to me. I was up and running mapping something out pretty quickly. I wasn't sure what the brain and detective icon were so I just clicked them and found out

I wish "Click It and Find Out" was the default behavior for more people.

That’s how I learned most software on my machine when I was younger pre internet at home.

This is very cool! I'd really like something like this for local models to integrate with Obsidian

Nice! I just started building something very similar on top of React Flow last weekend.

This is really cool and quite fun to use! I very much enjoy having all the information on one screen and pair with an LLM to brainstorm and test ideas.

I'm wondering if there is any way of running this locally, against my own models?

The idea is sound but will surely be done by the MS and Googles of the world - even Dropbox will get in on this with paper.

The execution is bad. I could add notes but nothing else really happened.

A local version of this would be great, I've been wanting to organize my prompts and conversations in a mind mapping type way.

But to be blunt, I have zero interest in a web version.

But, what is this?

Check website, no real text, just a video.

Ok, fine.

Video opens with an explanation of LLMs.

Close video after a bit. Still don't know what this is or what it brings to the table. I'm not going to sit through a long video to figure it out.

Indeed.

If people need to watch a video just to get an idea of what your software does or how it can be useful - it's broken by design.

Heya, maker here.

I understand your frustration and and sorry for the lack of clarity. Let me provide you with a brief explanation of what this is all about.

NodePad is really a simple experiment. The purpose of is to tackle the issue of inconsistent responses in Language Models (LLMs) and explore potential solutions through the user interface (UI).(hence the video, I understand though that it wasn't exactly helpful :) )

The tool itself is quite straightforward. It allows you to express your thoughts rapidly by typing them into the input field at the top. Once you've entered your thoughts, you can then further develop or question them individually using the brainstorming feature. You may connect them visually or just download the cancas as a markdown file.

without watching the video that sounds .... not straightforward. It sounds like you've dupliacted a chatGPT interface and then... i dunno added a way to draw lines between answers?

The elevator pitch for this really needs work. Like Maybe a simple screenshot of the result + a description of the bits that aren't obvious from that would be helpful on the site.

hopefully constructive suggestions:

> NodePad is a simple LLM-assisted brainstorming experiment designed to help you quickly capture ideas, expand on them, question them, and organize them visually!

a) don't care if it's LLM assisted. and only geeks know what LLM means. I care if it's going to intelligently help me b) "x is a brainstorming experiment" means that x is a brainstorming experiment NOT that x is an experiment that helps you brainstorm. These are very different things. I think you mean "NotePad is an experiment that uses AI to help you brainstorm" c) organize them visually could mean literally anything with a visual component. You gotta give me more words or a screenshot.

> without watching the video that sounds .... not straightforward. It sounds like you've dupliacted a chatGPT interface and then... i dunno added a way to draw lines between answers?

IDK, if someone did just that, I'd happily pay for it - especially if those answers and lines formed a DAG, offering a nice interface to fork and merge conversations.

Thanks, agreed makes a lot more sense to present it this way. I think I was trying to explain a lot of ideas I had while working on this to a point where things became either redundant of not helpful. I'll adjust the about section.

> without watching the video that sounds .... not straightforward

Have you considered.... watching the video?

have you considered... considering the context of my response?

the discussion i was responding to was about the contents of the page PRIOR to watching the video so the comments were made as feedback based on what a reader sees BEFORE watching the video.

Watching the video would have a) polluted the honest feedback about what a user saw when encountering the page and trying to decide if watching the video was worth the time b) been !@@#$!@ irrelevant to the discussion of what one thinks BEFORE watching the video.

I feel like you may be overreacting and also missed a bit:

OP: > Video opens with an explanation of LLMs.

You really need to work on concisely getting to the point. There’s a good idea here.

I think you want to say something like “NodePad is an AI brainstorming partner. It can contribute to ideation by contributing ‘nodes’ to a thought-cloud, that develop or question your ideas, helping you explore and clarify your thinking”

Thank you for this. Makes a lot of sense this way. I think I got way too much into unnecessary details.

Might this conversation be an example of the type of thing that you are ultimately trying to address here? Like, could it qualify as a valid use case for using such a tool (if people were serious enough about the topic)?

It seems to me that intuition plays a heavy role here.

I think you’re very interested in why you think the chat interface to LLMs is not great, and why you think your model might be better. But you don’t need people to follow that chain of reasoning for them to see the place you ended up as being interesting.

Show, don’t tell. And start with what the tool does, before you explain why it does it that way.

Love the advice and the tone it was delivered in!

When did you start this tool before ChatGPT3/4, or after?

Feels like it was started before LLMs, and now this pitch is just trying to incorporate them after the fact, as opposed to rethinking your thing from a deeper level, now that the world has changed.

Seems like you have a unique skillset in having some mental machinery to view the world in your 2D grid/node based paradigm. If text brainstorming was your use case, I think ChatGPT has killed that. If I'm gonna visually brainstorm I'm gonna use pen and paper, and if I'm going to be on my computer doing text brainstorming I'm gonna use ChatGPT. I don't think the lines provide enough value (chat GPT does bullet points well and can also generate graph viz)

Is there some end-product your tool could produce that users want, and LLMs can be used to help make those? Or can you take more advantage of your 2D + grid/node based tool to provide something more than an obscure text editing experience? For example, perhaps using mathematical distance as a first class citizen, adding physics, et cetera (I have no idea what would be useful, just that perhaps there are some "magical" things that a node tool could do that a text/chat interface will never come close to)

No, the opposite actually. GPT4 enabled this.

We actually submitted a patent on this exact idea (using hierarchical list centric design for ideation with LLMs)

Maybe not as non obvious as we thought! :)

Your original Thoughtpad.space seemed way simpler for laptop trackpad usage and could easily double click to delete and single click to reorient the items etc. why the change?

https://nitter.kavin.rocks/mskayyali/status/1647291385198804...

Heya, the grid had some limitations as I was re-evaluating some features. Tried to keep things simple here as well. Where did you find the complexity in the new one on a laptop?

The video is less then four minutes long, is that too much for you?

"The content is not suitable for brainstorming or question generation"

Okay, well apparently asking for a list of semaglutide distributors is thoughtcrime

Prompt: "Looking for a list of semaglutide distributors" fails

Prompt: "Semaglutide" fails

The content restrictions seem overly restrictive.

very - to the point where its not really usable, look into it guys

Thanks for this. Can you provide examples? I'm still working on adjusting that.

Why would a text tool have any content restrictions? It's ridiculous. Microsoft Word, Google Docs, Notepad, vim, etc. do not prevent me from writing about anything.

If I want to mind-map political joke ideas or brainstorm adult toy names that's my business.

I can't even use this tool to brainstorm about the pros and cons of different content restriction systems, the irony.

It appears to mark anything remotely related to "destruction" as restricted content. Or rather, you can clean a phrase by using the word "saint".

Won't work: How should a demolitions expert expect to be treated by an architect? Works: How should a saint expect to be treated by an architect? (silly questions I know, just to make the point)

UI functionality seems broken on firefox 113

I am on same on Ubunutu 23.01 and seems fine. ff 113.01 fwiw

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