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Hi HN - Shortwave co-founder here. We’ve built a full-featured email client over the last couple of years, just in time for the rise of LLMs. We’ve added quite

by jwngr 4y ago

Hi HN - Shortwave co-founder here. We’ve built a full-featured email client over the last couple of years, just in time for the rise of LLMs. We’ve added quite a few features (and are working on many more) that use LLMs to save you time. I’m most excited about Smart Summaries — they’ll read and then summarize (even from a different language) long newsletters & those huge threads you just don’t want to wade through. We’ve got a long way to go, so please do leave us feedback if you have it. Shortwave is much of the early Firebase team, and HN really helped us building that product :) Thanks in advance!

joshspankit 4y ago
I like many others have a hard stop at sending our entire inbox to a third party. Is there any way you’ll be able to provide the same functionality to local users or are you married to using cloud functions?
felixg3 4y ago
Why are you calling it an email client? It is obviously not. It is a proprietary front-end for Gmail, which is not even remotely the same.
- baxtr 4y ago
  80% of all emails are gmail? So yeah technically you’re right but actually they are.
- yieldcrv 4y ago
  They done angered the Big Email lobby
skilled 4y ago
So the best you could do in a few years is implement the OpenAI API to summarise a bunch of text or did I read that wrong?
- canadianfella 4y ago
  [dead]
- Aeolun 4y ago
  I think the client took a few years, and they’ve now quickly added some AI related features.
smusamashah 4y ago
Why are you focusing on being AI driven now? Shortwave has been great already. This seems more like an attempt to capture some crowd via current AI hype. I don't know but it may also work in reverse giving a sense of less privacy or something.
- jwngr 4y ago
  I go into this a bit more in our blog post from today [1], but we believe LLMs are going to transform how we interact with email. Yes, you still need a solid inbox with labels and contacts and push notifications and everything else that email clients like Shortwave offer. And we will continue to iterate on and nail that experience. But these new tools allow us to push the boundaries of what can be done with email, and we intend to do just that. [1] https://www.shortwave.com/blog/ai-email-summaries/ https://www.shortwave.com/blog/ai-email-summaries/
light_hue_1 4y ago
This is a good idea executed terribly badly. There's no world in which I would agree for my inbox to be sent to OpenAI. Literally people's most private messages, and even privileged conversations, are being shared with a 3rd party. One with no track record, no audits, not much in the way of controls. Hard pass. There will be a breach of OpenAI one day. The only question is if it's your emails that will be leaked.
- Aeolun 4y ago
  This works only with Gmail, so the people using already agreed to have someone rifle through their mails. What is one more?
- ElijahLynn 4y ago
  Same: I was about to sign up then said, "oh wait, hell no, I'm not giving access to this company to ALL of my emails". Google/Alphabet has access and that is enough for now.
emptysongglass 4y ago
I would have prioritized shipping a real client to Android users instead of an LLM first. There have been promises of upgrading the experience forever and the web wrapper has seen few and far improvements in I want to say two years now.
- jwngr 4y ago
  You're right. We're a small team of 10 people [1] and we have to ruthlessly prioritize. Gmail on web and iOS are our primary platforms right now. Our Android app is in beta and will be for longer. In the meantime, are improving the PWA experience. We just shipped a brand new inbox last week that has much better support for the Android PWA - finally fixes the back button issue we heard a lot about! I know it's not a native app, but that's not practical for our team right now. It will be eventually though. [1] https://www.shortwave.com/about/ https://www.shortwave.com/about/

by jwngr 4y ago

joshspankit 4y ago

I like many others have a hard stop at sending our entire inbox to a third party. Is there any way you’ll be able to provide the same functionality to local users or are you married to using cloud functions?

felixg3 4y ago

Why are you calling it an email client? It is obviously not. It is a proprietary front-end for Gmail, which is not even remotely the same.

baxtr 4y ago
80% of all emails are gmail? So yeah technically you’re right but actually they are.
yieldcrv 4y ago
They done angered the Big Email lobby

skilled 4y ago

So the best you could do in a few years is implement the OpenAI API to summarise a bunch of text or did I read that wrong?

canadianfella 4y ago
[dead]
Aeolun 4y ago
I think the client took a few years, and they’ve now quickly added some AI related features.

smusamashah 4y ago

Why are you focusing on being AI driven now? Shortwave has been great already. This seems more like an attempt to capture some crowd via current AI hype. I don't know but it may also work in reverse giving a sense of less privacy or something.

jwngr 4y ago
I go into this a bit more in our blog post from today [1], but we believe LLMs are going to transform how we interact with email. Yes, you still need a solid inbox with labels and contacts and push notifications and everything else that email clients like Shortwave offer. And we will continue to iterate on and nail that experience. But these new tools allow us to push the boundaries of what can be done with email, and we intend to do just that. [1] https://www.shortwave.com/blog/ai-email-summaries/ https://www.shortwave.com/blog/ai-email-summaries/

light_hue_1 4y ago

This is a good idea executed terribly badly. There's no world in which I would agree for my inbox to be sent to OpenAI. Literally people's most private messages, and even privileged conversations, are being shared with a 3rd party. One with no track record, no audits, not much in the way of controls. Hard pass. There will be a breach of OpenAI one day. The only question is if it's your emails that will be leaked.

Aeolun 4y ago
This works only with Gmail, so the people using already agreed to have someone rifle through their mails. What is one more?
ElijahLynn 4y ago
Same: I was about to sign up then said, "oh wait, hell no, I'm not giving access to this company to ALL of my emails". Google/Alphabet has access and that is enough for now.

emptysongglass 4y ago

I would have prioritized shipping a real client to Android users instead of an LLM first. There have been promises of upgrading the experience forever and the web wrapper has seen few and far improvements in I want to say two years now.

jwngr 4y ago
You're right. We're a small team of 10 people [1] and we have to ruthlessly prioritize. Gmail on web and iOS are our primary platforms right now. Our Android app is in beta and will be for longer. In the meantime, are improving the PWA experience. We just shipped a brand new inbox last week that has much better support for the Android PWA - finally fixes the back button issue we heard a lot about! I know it's not a native app, but that's not practical for our team right now. It will be eventually though. [1] https://www.shortwave.com/about/ https://www.shortwave.com/about/