Show HN: Revise – An AI Editor for Documents (revise.io)
I started building this 10 months ago, largely using agentic coding tools. I've stayed very involved in the code base and architecture, and have never moved faster in my life as a dev.
The word processor engine and rendering layer are all built from scratch - the only 3rd party library I used was the excellent Y.js for the CRDT stack.
Would love some feedback!
46 comments
[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 72.3 ms ] threadI do a decent amount of writing on my blog and for work so I was thinking, "why doesn't this product appeal to me?"
I think I'm hesitant to spent yet another monthly subscription on something. I get decent mileage just copying and pasting sections into Claude so it's hard to justify another $8 a month on another tool.
I also do a decent amount of my editing in raw markdown files and apply styling almost as a post-process. Part of the problem is that I'm always pasting documents into corporate portals (Confluence, Wiki's, Google Docs) and they don't always copy formatting in the way I'd expect. So I just write raw text and format it after paste.
Why don't you use your local open source llm, without the interaction of big models? I mean, more work, but you don't need to pay your cut to them. Just asking.
So, thoughts on a non-AI lightweight word processor.
I want to give kudos to two things:
1. It took you 10 months to build this. This is focused product development and craftsmanship which is very different from Vibe coding something. So let this be a reminder to all the "I can vibe code this or that in a weekend". Good products / experiences take time.
2. You've pursued building something in a space that anyone would normally dismiss right away: "Why would anyone use this? Google Docs/ Word etc already does this" or "MSFT / GOOG will destroy you". Good on you for picking something that is hard and building it well. I actually had this idea and almost built it but dismissed it myself for the same reasons as above. So reminder again for the builders in the back: Doesn't matter if there is a 800lb gorilla building this, if you can execute it better go for it.
Kudos!
1. How does the AI read your document? have you exposed a JSON/XML?
2. How is AI generating edits over the document?
3. How are big documents presented to AI? Was minimizing token consumption a goal?
Fantastic work, btw!
How do you know? There isn't a git repo that one can see the history of, he could have coded this in one weekend and used the rest of the time doing noncoding activities. Also, he could have made the entire thing by prompting without any hands on coding at all. The fact that it is a web app with a SaaS platform (the thing that LLM-assisted coding is the best at) doesn't inspire confidence.
Have you also considered using a solution like OnlyOffice for your product? Or a "Notion-like" lib such as Tiptap or PlateJS?
I wanted to build something canvas-based, so that eliminated most of these options. I also just wanted full control of that part of my stack... it's the core product after all. There are several TipTap/ProseMirror wrappers out there already.
You should share yours though, would be interested to see
I also don't object to paying for something I find useful or valuable. But I really hate subscription-ware.
But I'm a local-first privacy-focused user and only by self-hosting a tool am I comfortable using it.
So for me this tool is also a no-go.
I think we can do much better.
The workflow of copy to chatgpt and getting feedback is just the first step, and honestly not that useful.
What I would love to see is a tool that makes my writing and thinking clearer.
Does this sentence makes sense? Does the conclusion I am reaching follows from what I am saying? Is this period useful or I am just repeating something I already said? Can I re-arrange my wording to make my point clear? Are my wording actually clear? Or am I not making sense?
Can I re-arrange my essay so that it is simpler to follow?
Bugs I found:
- <tab> when in a 3rd-level indented list loses focus
- Double-click and drag gesture does not extend text selection
- Selection highlight is offset for indented paragraphs. If you select a range you can see the highlight incorrectly extended into the right-hand margin.
- Inconsistent repro: had some cases where select -> delete -> cmd-z would not fully restore my removed text (this could be my mistake)
- Toggling list style of a single indented list item can un-indent entire list, removing hierarchy; I would expect toggling to eventually return me to my original state.
- Frustration: cannot set range of indented list to ordered list without affecting all adjacent list items
- Frustration: cannot resize table rows vertically
- Frustration: on macOS, ctrl-a selects all, where the platform native behavior would be to move selection to the start of the current paragraph. ctrl-e should move selection to the end of the current paragraph, but does nothing. (macOS silently supports readline/emacs style keybinds for text editing)
You asked for feedback though.
There are chat apps that basically incorporate all the features of this editor so I am not really sure who is this for.
If this is for writing, in order to make it amazing I would personally focus on using models that are either built for that or fine-tuned specifically for writing.
Otherwise, what is the point?
Notion can do the same, perhaps more.
It’d be very cool to have a “remove signs of AI writing” feature (based on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Signs_of_AI_writing) - wishing you great success reinventing this space for the new era!