Show HN: I built an AI calendar to help you get stuff done – feedback wanted | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: I built an AI calendar to help you get stuff done – feedback wanted

running4-m.github.io

13 pointsRunning4M17 comments

If you have any questions, feel free to leave a comment! For additional information, click the link provided. I decided to present the extra details on a webpage because it’s easier to organize and format the information in a way that’s clear and more digestible.

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Some immediate feedback – if you want to ask people to spend their time in your app for feedback, make it easy for them and ask specific questions.

I'm curious enough to click the link and have a look. I'll even leave a comment (as evidenced by this note), but I'm not curious enough to read through a wall of text, and make some vague 3-7 day time commitment.

If you want people to be engaged and spend time learning this tool and providing feedback, reach out to friends. Strangers online are unlikely to care enough to get past the first sentence of that landing page.

Thanks for the feedback, I really appreciate it! Not sure if you've heard of Pieter Levels, but I watch some of his seminars, and he often talks about how with friends or family, you can end up hyping each other up. I guess that’s why I wanted to get opinions from strangers this time—I've had past experiences where people close to me (and myself) got too excited about an idea, only for it to fail. I figured getting feedback from people who don’t know me might be more straightforward.

I totally get the long paragraph thing—it’s been pointed out to me by one of my family members that it’s a bit much, and I understand not everyone wants to read through all of it. I just thought it’d be better to provide more info than less, but yeah, looking back, I should probably trim it down a bit. Thanks again for the comment!

Good luck finding testers.

I understand the concern with getting feedback from friends and family, you definitely want to avoid getting into a bubble. One thing you can try – don't ask for feedback, ask for complaints.

If you ask for negative feedback you're more likely to get useful information from them. Even better if you can be specific about what you're after. Questions might be something like: 'During the first five minutes when you were setting up events, what did you find confusing?'

Thanks for the advice, I really appreciate it! I totally see your point about asking for complaints instead of just feedback—people are often more honest when they can point out what's not working. I’ll definitely try asking more specific questions as you suggested. I guess next time I do something like this, I'll know what I could have done better.

Thanks again for your feedback, and for giving it a try—that’s all I can really ask for. Happy New Year!

This is not a valid Show HN, it should be available without signing up and at least have some screenshots or some content rather than simply asking people to test it (test what? I don't even see what I'm supposed to be testing).

Thanks for the feedback! The reason for the sign-up is to give you a more personalized experience, like being able to create your own events and get AI-generated responses specific to your entries. After signing up, you'll land on the main calendar page where you can start adding your events and interacting with the AI.

The description.html page you saw is just meant to give a quick overview of what the project is about and what it can do. I appreciate you pointing this out, and I'll definitely think about adding more screenshots and content to make things clearer!

If you’re uncomfortable providing your email or just want to explore the site quickly, feel free to use a fake email to browse around. If you decide to try the trial after checking things out, that would be fantastic! If not, I still appreciate you taking the time to explore the site. Thank you!

It's a good idea to show a preview of a tool/site when there is more effort required during/post sign up. Some screenshots (or loom video) will be super helpful to understand what folks are signing up for.

Yeah, I don’t know why I didn’t think of that—it would have been such a smart idea and made everything a lot clearer! For some reason, I focused on adding a help page inside the website to answer any questions, but I didn’t think about how it looks for people who haven’t signed up yet and are just trying to figure out what the site is about. On the help page, I did include some images and stuff, but now that you mention it, a Loom video would’ve been way better. It probably would’ve also saved me from having to write so much text trying to explain things.

Thanks for pointing that out—definitely something I’ll keep in mind going forward!

I enjoy planning my calendar. (Really). Dont let AI take that pleasure! Of course other people may like AI to do that.

Yeah, don’t worry you can still plan your own calendar here! The AI just helps with getting the tasks you’ve planned done by giving you a starting point. Personally, I also think planning my own calendar is super helpful since I know my capabilities and how many tasks I can realistically handle in a day. Thanks for sharing your thoughts!

Who do you consider to be your target audience? Who's your client?

Honestly, this might sound a bit cliché, but I think it’s for anyone, really. Most people have something going on in their daily lives where a bit of extra help could go a long way—whether it’s school, work, or hobbies. That’s kind of the idea: just a normal calendar with some added features that could be useful for anyone.

That said, if I were to focus on a specific group, like students or professionals, I’m not entirely sure yet. The concept isn’t fully fleshed out, so I’d love any suggestions—especially if anything about the idea feels unclear. I haven’t thought much about the target audience; I’ve mostly just been building the idea as I go. But thanks for asking—it’s actually a great question and something I should definitely think more about!

Sorry but even keeping aside the poor presentation (as others have pointed out), the functionality itself is not clear at all.

I read the "What This AI Calendar Does" three times over and I'm still at a loss. Is this a test to recognize AI slop?

Yeah sorry for the big paragraph in that initial page. I just did not want to leave anything out, which funnily enough resulted in me making silly mistakes.

Thanks for the comment! Essentially, when you sign up, you get access to a calendar where you can add tasks or events for the upcoming week. On the day of the event, the AI generates a response based on the task you created, giving you a starting point for when it’s time to work on it. If you'd like to modify the response, you can just chat with the AI. I thought this idea would be helpful since I often add tasks to my own calendar but struggle with procrastination. Having that extra push to get started seemed like a good way to help people get things done faster.

Of course, this is still a work in progress, and I’m definitely open to suggestions or feature ideas. Thanks again for your feedback, and if you have any more questions, feel free to ask!

Framed in a slightly less condescending way: what kind of prompts are you sending the AI about my events?

How does it give me a starting point for "Fix bug tickets that came in over holidays" or "run to trader joe's to pick up groceries"? If this isn't a good use case for it, what kind of events are?

Yeah, totally get it. I know some of my family members use their calendars for tasks like those, but personally, I just use Notepad or the Notes app on my phone. For me, I often use the calendar to write down more work-related tasks, like 'start essay on the risks of obesity' or other essays I need to work on. Or maybe tasks like 'prepare for presentation' or 'need to revise for test on biology create notes'.

The main reason I suggested creating tasks that might need help generating content is based on my own experience with ChatGPT. I mostly used it for summaries, idea generation, coding help, and brainstorming ideas. I know some people also use it for casual conversations, but my focus was on those more practical use cases.

To make this process easier, I’ve added a dropdown menu when setting up events, which includes prompts for things like summaries, brainstorming, and learning help. However, in the actual dropdown, there are more than three options, as having just three can be limiting. You can select one of these prompts, and based on your event title and optional description, the AI will generate content tailored specifically to your task.

If you have any more questions please ask!

Gotcha. This is a helpful explanation. Thanks!

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