Show HN: I built a website that generates fake users for an idea (notionsmith.ai)

Technically it doesn't have to be a product: it works with book ideas for example.

It's based on GPT 3.5 and uses chain of thought to model a target market, personalities, etc. In the process of building this out I got a really great model of how to tease creativity out of LLMs.

Once you generate a user you can also chat with them, and they'll imagine their use of whatever you're building in as much detail as possible.

You can try things like:

- "a product that only exists in a state of non-existence and disintegrates into nothingness when perceived"

- "a wet sock that is always wet"

- "a mirror of Hacker News translated into pig latin"

- "a web browser that replaces the term 'AI' with a poop emoji"

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I get a lot of feedback asking how you can trust what the model says, but I've theorized that what LLMs perceive a product as is what most web users will when they first discover what you're building.

If it doesn't align with what you're actually building, it's a sign you'll need to address a certain degree of misunderstanding when people first hear about what you're building.

I'm building a set of tools similar to this one: the next one I have in mind is one that helps you name things. Rather than coming up with a name, it teaches you how to name something for a given domain ("how to name your YC focused SaaS product that's targeted at doctors" for example)