Show HN: Nudges.fyi – simple, unmissable reminders via phone/text/email (nudges.fyi)
Here's how it works: you create a nudge that's set to trigger at a given date and time, and the app phones you, texts you, or emails you (or all three) at the right moment. Nudges can trigger on a schedule, so something like "call me about monthly bills for the next month on the last day of every month" is quite easy to set up. It also works well (sample size 1, admittedly) as a supplement to a more robust GTD system. I use Things for almost everything, but my most important reminders are set up as nudges.
I've worked on this on and off for the last month or so and I think it's ready for a Show HN. There's likely some rough edges in there so I wouldn't use it for anything _critical_ just yet (let me know if you see anything that looks buggy!). I cut a lot of scope in order to release an initial version quickly; here's a list of things I'm considering adding to the app in the near future:
- Implement something analogous to Pagerduty: create nudges that repeatedly nag you (with something like an escalation policy) until you acknowledge them
- More notification channels: get nudges on Telegram, WhatsApp, Slack, etc.
- Families (or teams, possibly) share a namespace and can send nudges to each other
- Nudges that collect a response: possibly for polls, a daily diary entry, or habit tracker
- Incoming and outgoing webhooks
- Snooze a nudge so it re-triggers in X minutes
In any case, I'm looking for feedback from the HN community here: is this something you would use?
TL;DR: schedule reminders for yourself via phone call, text message, and/or email
(PS: the free plan doesn't allow call/SMS nudges because I'm a bit wary of spam, but if you'd like to give this a shot and can't [or don't want to] subscribe to a paid plan at this point, send me an email at tim@nudges.fyi for a 1-month code)
55 comments
[ 0.39 ms ] story [ 143 ms ] threadIn addition, I'd encourage you to give the app a shot using the NUDGESHN promo code (3 months free on the pro plan); I'd love feedback on more than just the pricing page!
Since email is just as good (get phone notifications of it!) I can see a lot of people sticking on free because of this.
I'm building something in the same space [0], the landing page is outdated but the version in my head is similar to your idea, as a mobile app in Flutter with a Rust backend API, and Twilio for the SMS, calling, and emailing.
And good for you for cutting scope and just launching! That's what I did a few weeks ago, I built a site in 24 hours, launched it on HN and Reddit, and got 20k visitors in a 48 hour span after launching [1] because I was tired of procrastinating launching products. I also got a lot of really good feedback from the launches, so now I'm learning that launching early and often is key to iterative development.
Don't worry about the pricing by the way. I'm going to make my app cost $20 a month simply to weed out people who won't take habit formation seriously. Those that want to buy it will buy it and those that won't, well, they're not really worth caring about since they're not your customers anyway.
[0] https://getartemis.app
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33303269
This took a bit longer than your project (initial commit on Oct 16, I just checked), but I still cut a ton of stuff I'm excited about building. How are you managing scope for your project?
Regarding pricing, I haven't really given it too much thought yet, and the current numbers are essentially just placeholders. Thanks for the feedback, and good luck with your project!
I decided to release them often and let my family drive the development direction. I quickly understood that having the ability to (usually) switch lights on and off was more important that the dashboard about how far from home I was when biking from the office.
My instinct would be to get rid of this granularity and automatically notify every contact method that a user has set up. I might even require more than one at signup.
The problem that most people who’d use this kind of thing have isn’t missing reminders as much as ignoring them.
Think about a broader target audience of e.g. people who set 10 morning alarms scheduled one minute apart. You could nudge them at the set time and then again every X minutes afterward until they mark the task as completed, only allowing one snooze per task.
I mean...nothing? If someone is determined not to do something, that can't really be helped.
What you can help is the out of sight, out of mind problem - "got it, I need to do this..." followed by four hours of totally unrelated Wikipedia deep-dives, after which the reminder is forgotten.
To anyone who wants to give the phone call/text messaging features a shot asap, you can use the code NUDGESHN for 3 months free on a Pro plan.
For the record, the free plan doesn't include any call/text credits at the moment because I'm worried about my phone provider disabling my account over spam if I allow this for free accounts.
You can include a magic link in the notification so the user can manage it without an account.
Thanks for the feedback ... I'm still not convinced because of spam concerns, but I'm definitely going to give this more thought!
I've also thought of a To Do app that has statistics of how long you've ignored/snoozed items, to shock people like me who's procrastinated things like learning French for probably 5+ years now...
That would certainly better than something like Chrome on Android, where, on every load of a site I like to visit, it (the browser, not the site, because the site doesn't have such gimmicks) popped up a dialog that says "Put this site on your home screen for quick access.". I went into settings to see if there's a "Shut the fuck up you moron" toggle, couldn't find it, went back to the site, "Put this site on your home screen for quick access."
I've been using my own version, completely terminal-based, for more than a year now and it has changed my life. I'm a lot like your wife; other systems haven't worked for me. This does, because I do look at all my SMS messages every day and dismiss them. Todoist's alerts just didn't do the job, and other systems didn't either.
I almost certainly would have had a product out in this area months ago but my attention has been going to crypto-related projects! I have the start of a Django-based UI nudge-like product now. I've been working on it in the background, partly in case none of my crypto stuff works out, and partly just to learn web UI development.
I'm not sure where my project will go now that yours is out, but congratulations on getting it out there, and good luck! (Now I'm thinking I might just open source my terminal version, and drop the django one. Techies could use the terminal version by getting their own twilio accounts...)
Insurances want / will pay big money for systems that get people to take their medicine (less sick people).
Look into it and good luck!