19 ms·
Launch HN: Zenfetch (YC W23) – Turn notes/browser history into an AI assistant
Hey everyone! Akash and Gabe here from Zenfetch (https://www.zenfetch.com https://www.zenfetch.com) - a Chrome extension that transforms your saved web browsing into a personal chatGPT and search engine. Here’s a demo video: https://www.loom.com/share/abe9d40dc82545a482be55b631f9bf2a?sid=53fb1432-0c59-4c08-93aa-3b3184363cc3 https://www.loom.com/share/abe9d40dc82545a482be55b631f9bf2a?...
How it works: (1) Optionally import your existing saved web browsing through one of our integrations or through a URL CSV import. (2) Click the Zenfetch icon in a tab to save any PDF, YouTube video, note, article, email, forum post, etc. Zenfetch can save almost anything across the internet. (3) Zenfetch indexes the text or transcript and adds that information to your personal knowledge assistant. This is done on your computer so you don’t have to worry about paywalls, logins, etc. (4) Use the dashboard or side panel to search your knowledge or chat with your personal knowledge assistant.
We built Zenfetch to solve our personal problem: we were reading tons of content but using little to none of the information. While searching for solutions, we found that most tools were good at storing information but not at retrieving it. We even found that search functionalities on existing read-later tools got worse the more content we saved.
A few examples of how our users use Zenfetch: “What was that article I read on the new nuclear fusion company?”, “Analyze this strategy based on the Lenny Rachitsky article I read”, “Summarize Karpathys video introducing LLMs”, “Which research papers mentioned the increase in carbon emissions?”, “Compile the different perspectives I’ve read on climate change”, and more.
Zenfetch is free for the first 14 days and then costs $14.99/mo (No credit card needed for the trial).
We’d love for you to try it out and let us know what we can do to improve your experience! While we only work on Chromium-based browsers right now, we’re actively working on browser compatibility and integrations. Let us know which ones to prioritize!
- lawxls 3y ago'GPT assistant' is now associated with OpenAI's GPTs for me. Very confusing.
- gabev 3y agoThat's fair. We've considered a few other terms such as "personal AI," "browsing copilot," "personal knowledge assistant." Do any of these feel more intuitive?
- rex123 3y agoEdit: changed to say AI now
- verdverm 3y agoOpenAI just got denied on their Trademark for GPT There are many other GPTs from outside OpenAI, such that GPT is the contemporary Escalator
- toomuchtodo 3y agoHow does this compare to something like Rem [1] [2]? [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38787892 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38787892 [2] https://github.com/jasonjmcghee/rem https://github.com/jasonjmcghee/rem
- rex123 3y agoHey, good question. Rem and it's closed source competitor Rewind capture everything on your screen. Zenfetch only captures information that you explicitly add to Zenfetch. We've found that using a curated approach as opposed to capturing everything allows us to do two things: 1. Return much higher quality answers than Rem/Rewind as the information we store are items you thought were important at some point. 2. Allow us to help you remember that information with proactive features like our recap emails.
- breadchris 3y agoI have been building something similar [1] with the goal to make it easy to save and share things you find. I will not use SaaS for saving content anymore as I find myself wanting to build larger compositions of work and dealing with APIs just isn't it. Maybe the SaaS works today, but you will always end up wanting a plaintext, offline-first experience. [1] https://github.com/justshare-io/justshare https://github.com/justshare-io/justshare
- rex123 3y agoThis looks cool! A few notes on our approach to Zenfetch: 1. We're not trying to become your personal knowledge management solution, we want to be the layer on top that helps you retrieve and use the knowledge you've stored. 2. The biggest reason we don't do this locally is we've found hosted models are much more powerful for the knowledge retrieval and synthesis use cases. However. we do hope to move more local over time.
- breadchris 3y agoDepending on who your market is (sales leads, researchers, developers) it may not make sense to support local/OSS. Posting this on hn will always bring a bearded dev, me, into the comments to rant about the way things should be, but this doesn't always reflect the path to product success. Right now your tool is too general, find a use case and crush it. Find some inspiration from this ext: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/workona-spaces-tab-manage/ailcmbgekjpnablpdkmaaccecekgdhlh https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/workona-spaces-tab...
- rex123 3y agoThanks for the thoughts. I actually use Workona and love it haha
- moneywoes 3y agodoes this have ml to search data?
- travelton 3y agoVery cool! Index my Google Email, Drive, and Calendar. "Find the receipt for that TV I bought from Best Buy 7 years ago."
- rex123 3y agoThanks! Right now don't have automatic integrations for those yet but we do allow you to individually save emails and docs. Full integrations and sync for Drive and Email coming soon!
- xpe 3y agoSo at present one needs to export a Google doc as PDF first? But then it won't have a stable URL, seems to me. Is there a way to upload (e.g. drag and drop -or- using a local folder) a PDF directly?
- dre_bot 3y agoI'm good chief.
- geepytee 3y agoI used to be the guy who would save cool websites I stumble across so I could 'read them later'. Lol, ya right. Fast forward to today, I've been using Zenfetch for a few months now. Basically, everything I read, or wish I had the time to read / watch (they support Youtube too) gets saved on my Zenfetch library. Being able to ask for summaries of stuff you are browsing in real time is great for picking up new knowledge. Chatting with your entire library with 1,500+ saved articles and drawing correlations between different subjects + never forgetting anything, is next level. Don't be the 'bookmarking this for later' guy.
- ilrwbwrkhv 3y agoReading is marinating. Summary is a taster. A lot of people conjoin the two but eventually people will get smarter and understand they are not the same.
- dougSF70 3y agoInteresting. Just for context Autonomy (now part of HP) built this cool app called Kenjin back in the 90s it used Bayesian inference applied to your browsing session to suggest content.
- gabev 3y agoThat's awesome! We haven't explored content discovery too much right now, since we're more focused on re-discovery of content you've already saved. As a statistician by training, I appreciate how the traditional inference techniques were helpful way before LLMs became mainstream for these tasks :)
- jeeshan 3y agoWhen will this be available on safari?
- gabev 3y agoIt's part of the roadmap, likely releasing in Q2 Is that your browser of choice?
- eitland 3y agoSafari is my current everyday browser, but anything that isn't based on almost anything modern that isn't tainted by the chrome should be fine. Just like IE 6 I refuse to touch it if I can at all prevent it. (Feel free to join in folks. We can do this, IE was much better entrenched at its worst.)
- gabev 3y agoUnderstood. We should have specified that Zenfetch works on chromium based browsers which include Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Arc, Opera, etc. Hear you on the safari request and we will definitely expedite that release
- georgespencer 3y agoWould love to try this (have a less sophisticated pre-LLM approach running locally), and also use Safari as my main browser. Instant paying customer for Safari, right here. Also find myself having a pretty severe allergic reaction to websites (Gem is a recent example) roadblocking anything but Chrome (seemingly both because of their web app literally not functioning properly in Safari, and their browser extension being Chrome-only): a) essentially forcing me to use Chrome for one task, whilst deal with password management in two places, etc., and b) giving me the nagging worry that the design of the app or extension might contravene some non-technical standard imposed by Apple which Google does not honor…
- gabev 3y agoCompletely understand and we definitely want to support more browsers including Safari. The process for exporting chromium based extensions to safari is not super straightforward (HN Community please prove me wrong!), though glad to hear it's a priority
- fudged71 3y agoIt’s interesting. How do you see this comparing to Pocket, Readwise, and Dewey? I think many Read Later apps will add AI search on top
- rex123 3y agoGreat question. A couple ways we see ourselves differentiating: 1. We're adding more and more integrations to become your knowledge assistant over your entire knowledge not just what you read online. This includes your notes, content, emails, etc. 2. We're working on doing more than just search over your knowledge. Many of our users use us to brainstorm topics for new content, compare and contrast perspectives across articles, or even create first drafts of content. 3. We're implementing features soon that will allow our model to create a "preference graph" for each user so that overtime the responses get more and more personalized to what you're looking for.
- _andrei_ 3y agoReadwise's Reader is the best annotation tool, they integrated the great highlighting UX of Reflect, but also did a decent job on how you then manage what you highlight. I don't want to click two buttons to ingest an url into both Zenfetch and Readwise, are you planning an integration / open API?
- rex123 3y agoI actually use Readwise as well! For a workaround I imported all the URLs from Readwise into Zenfetch but a full Readwise integration is on the roadmap.
- _andrei_ 3y agoAnd can we opt out of the extension injecting things into pages? I don't want your summary, Kagi does it for me without tainting the page, I don't want to chat about this page, I don't want anything but to send this page into kind of a bookmark place, and you to scrape it and give me a smart search.
- squirrel 3y agoI’m using zenfetch intensely for research using my own work (hundreds of podcast episodes and blog/forum posts) and others’ (books, articles, and more). Results so far are largely excellent, with the occasional bug fixed quickly. RAG as a service is tremendously beneficial and zenfetch means you don’t have to roll your own.
- dakshgupta 3y agoCan I manually add notes too? I have been looking for something exactly like this.
- rex123 3y agoYep you can! We support adding notes form Google Docs and Notion. You can also upload PDFs. Are your notes in a different format?
- m1117 3y agoThere's a nice tool called Glasp
- kazuki_ 3y agoThanks for mentioning Glasp :)
- jordanab 3y agoLooks great! At first glance, this appears to be the service I've been searching for. I'm currently using raindrop to bookmark items I intend to read later, but its search and recollection functionality leaves much to be desired. I'm definitely going to give it a try. However, for it to become a permanent part of my routine, it would need a Safari browser extension and an iOS app (compatible with both iPhone and iPad) to allow easy sharing and saving of content from within other apps. Stuff that Raindrop supports. Additionally, is there an API available so that I can manually script or route content from currently unsupported sources?
- rex123 3y agoThanks for the feedback! We're working on making our extension cross-browser compatible. For the iOS experience, what's the highest priority for you: being able to save things from iOS or access chat/other functionality? No API just yet, but if there's an integration you're looking for let us know and we will prioritize that. Thanks!
- ninjaa 3y agoThis is pretty awesome. Memex world
- rex123 3y agoThank you! Vannevar Bush is a huge inspiration for us
- giovannibonetti 3y agoThis reminds of Rewind [1]. I'm not affiliated to them in anyway, but I have been using their product for a few months and finding it quite useful. Their approach of screenshotting everything and saving it locally is more convenient for me, at least. [1] https://www.rewind.ai/ https://www.rewind.ai/
- gabev 3y agoThanks, we actually used Rewind in the past. We simply found that there were things we didn't want in our first brain, let alone in our second brain. That's why we've taken a curated content approach. Rewind captures everything, while Zenfetch only stores the content you've explicitly saved to signal there is value. I don't need to be reminded of the accidental clickbait article I've opened :)
- moneywoes 3y agodoesn’t that run locally as well?
- giovannibonetti 3y agoI think the data capture, compression and storage is, but the AI part isn't. If I understood it correctly, the latter is done by sending data to ChatGPT.
- miller_joe 3y agoI’ve been using this for a few weeks. I converted to a paying customer. I’ve imported some but not yet all of my bookmarks. I’ve been collecting bookmarks in Evernote and now obsidian for about a decade. I try to add as many tags as I hope will allow me to find an article again later. It’s often many months before I need to find something. My success rate at remembering a term from the title or the right tag is not great. I’ve been pretty impressed with zenfetch’s ability to search and find exactly what I was looking for. And this doesn’t even scratch the surface of what it can do when you want it to synthesize answers from many articles for you. They’re also working on indexing your saved tweets which I’m excited about. It’s a giant pain to try to find liked tweets.
- rex123 3y agoThanks! Saved tweets is our next integration : )
- felipefar 3y agoDoes this have the hallucination problems that LLMs show? Do you offer any protection against that?
- gabev 3y agoWe do use the standard hallucination checks to make sure the final generated answer is rooted in the retrieved context. It is an ongoing effort to ensure truly factual answers and this is one of our top priorities :)
- squirrel 3y agoFor my primary usage, suggesting topics and ideas based on what I've written and read, hallucinations are harmless -- if zenfetch suggests a silly or baseless idea, I just ignore it look at the other nine. So yes, but it doesn't really matter for me.
- tetsu2024 3y agoI am pretty sure this is what Microsoft is trying to do.
- chb 3y agoPerhaps I’m not understanding how this stores data, but how do I retrieve source material after I give it to the app? Eg. Let’s say I adopt Zenfetch, and start using it as the sole place where I keep bookmarks. Then, something happens such that I want to retrieve that original, principal, bookmark data. How do I go about retrieving/exporting that?
- gabev 3y agoWe will enable an export data option soon where you can download a list of the bookmarks you saved to Zenfetch. Our goal is not to become a vendor lock-in play. Instead, Zenfetch is a layer on top of your knowledge base goaled on helping you activate information that you forgot about. If you're referring to being able to revisit bookmarks: from the dashboard, you can click on any of the articles to see the original article Let me know if more clarity is needed
- moneywoes 3y agojust a list of urls or the actual content?
- gabev 3y agoZenfetch will capture the actual content of those URLs (assuming they still exist and are accessible from your browser)
- rvdginste 3y agoNot the original poster, but still not clear to me. Say I mark a page that contains really usable information. For some reason, 2 months later that page goes offline because the domain was not renewed (or whatever). Some time after that happened, I need that information. Will I still be able to see the original content, or not? Similar thing, I mark a page. The author updates the url with different content 2 months later. Some time after that happened, I need that information. Will I still be able to see the original content, or will I just find the new updated content? I guess the question is: is a snapshot taken from the actual content at the time I mark it as interesting and can that snapshot be shown, or not?
- sankeerth 3y agoHey Akash & Gade, Whom do you think is the ideal ICP for Zenfetch?
- rex123 3y agoHey great question. We consider the following a good fit for us: - In terms of role, we’ve found prosumers (specifically content creators) get a lot of value out of being able to take their previous writing/research and generate new ideas or rough drafts - People whose job relies on collecting a lot of information such as founders, consultants, coaches, etc. have also been power users - Finally anyone who tends to consume a lot of content whether it’s videos, blogs, newsletters, or books has found value in being able to quickly find the source or context for the idea they were thinking of
- obaid 3y agoVery interesting product. How is this compared to https://save.day https://save.day?
- shaunkoh 3y agoSafari support would be great. Any chance of a self hosted version?
- CaptainFever 3y agoI second the self hosted version if possible, perhaps with a 7B model! My main concerns are privacy and control.
- rex123 3y agoWe're actively thinking through ways to support a local version. Most of our users prefer being able to access the best models but seems like Mistral will have something comparable soon.
- anonzzzies 3y agoAs I split 80/20 between mobile and desktop browsing; any ideas on a mobile version?
- rex123 3y agoWe’re actively working on a way to save from mobile but chat from mobile will take a bit longer
- singhuler 3y agoAre there any plans to releasing a desktop app? It would be nice to combine the current use case with a "chat with my documents/pdfs" flavor as well.
- squirrel 3y agoGabe/Akash will tell you their plans I'm sure, but I'm already using it to import PDFs and other documents via the web, so I don't feel the need for anything on the desktop. (A local version would be stupendous for client confidentiality, but I'm not holding my breath for that.)
- rex123 3y agoCouldn’t have said it better myself! We do want to support a local version in the future as local models get better. However today you can upload PDFs. If there’s any other file types you want to upload let us know!
- shaunkoh 3y agoCould it work with bookmarklet as like what pinboard did? Also any support for importing from pinboard archives?
- rex123 3y agoHaven’t considered bookmarklet, what would that make better for you? Also you can import a CSV of URLs today if Pinboard has an export option
- whereistejas 3y agoThis is a super interesting demo. Adding articles to Zenfetch separately every time, seems quite inconvenient. Allowing users to sync articles from different RSS feeds (say Newsblur), or their reading app libraries (such as Omnivore/Pocket) seems like a good solution to this problem. Great job!
- rex123 3y agoThank you! We actually do have a few integration options already including Pocket. We also allow you to import a CSV of URLs. More integrations coming soon!
- chrisfrantz 3y agoOh nice! Glad to see this launched, congrats to the Zenfetch team, been following for a while :)
- rex123 3y agoThank you!
- thehamkercat 3y agoWhat about privacy? Why is no one here talking about privacy?
- gabev 3y agoThanks for bringing this up, as privacy is one of (if not THE) highest priorities for us. Happy to answer any questions you have, here are some preliminary notes that might be helpful: 1. We don't sell your data. Our business model is subscription based and we have DPAs with model providers to ensure none of that data is used for training 2. All data you explicitly save to zenfetch is encrypted in transit and at rest. In the future, we'd like to move to a local-first platform where the data storage and processing takes place on your own machine
- thehamkercat 3y ago> and at rest. What did you mean by this? The data (articles which users save) you store remains encrypted?
- gabev 3y agoCorrect. The database provider we use encrypts all customer data at-rest by default using AES-256 to secure all volume (disk) data.
- thehamkercat 3y agoHow do you access the articles then? (For sending to OpenAi)
- replwoacause 3y agoInterested in this answer as well gabev
- jzig 3y agoHi Gabe, I used to work with you when you interned at APL on BSP! I'm glad to see you are doing great things and wish you the best of luck. This is an interesting product that I think has a lot of promise as a "pensieve" a la Harry Potter. Let me know when you start hiring :)
- gabev 3y agoWoah, super cool to hear from ya! Been a minute since the APL days though I still have fond memories of my time there. Big fan of the Pensieve analogy, maybe we'll throw that in the landing page lol
- ilrwbwrkhv 3y agoNo. A pensieve stores memories. They don't let you ask questions. Just rewatch them.
- moneywoes 3y agowhat happens to all the imported data if ZenFetch shuts down?
- gabev 3y agoWe'll make sure to give all our users an export option so that they may get everything that's been stored.
- user764743 3y agoCan you do the same but with bookmarks instead?
- rex123 3y agoYep we have an integration that allows you to sync your bookmarks. This will grab the content from all your previous bookmarks as well as new bookmarks