As a kid in the late 1980s, my dad got me a PC (an Olivetti IBM clone to be precise).
I distinctly remember that there were separate apps for spreadsheets (Lotus 1-2-3 [0]), charts (Harvard Graphics [1]) and word processing (Chi Writer [2]).
And now we just have a basic office suite for free in one website.
If folks like this kind of thing, I discovered https://bento.page/ from a HN post and have been using it off and on for the past few months. It has a much larger featureset but is specifically focused on presentations (for now!). Unlike this project, the editor and content embed themselves in an html file, so you aren't dependent on the host site existing to serve the editor.
Maybe I'm a 2026 luddite but I can't bring myself to read about let alone try using products whose landing page is such a cookie cutter AI design. At least put some effort in to sand off the horrible unnecessary gloss and choose different fonts, colour schemes and layouts from every other project.
I am gradually becoming resigned to the fact that I'll have to get over this prejudice, though I'm not sure how I will.
I agree with you, but it is so funny that three years ago, a website that look like this would probably make the front page for its excellent design alone. Now, it gives off similar energy to a wix website.
Landing pages are always a proxy for quality. Quality in implementation, quality in domain knowledge, in communication…
At a time when building such a page was hard, it communicated quality in implementation. Now it fakes that, and that is deceptive and therefore met with negative reviews reaction.
You are right, then again: I think three years ago someone would have commented about the gloss in the background as well (saying that it’s unhelpful, distracting and resource intensive).
it's a fair criticism though. learning and eventually relying on new tools is an investment. it helps to know the developer is invested too, not just moonlighting.
Not only the design but the text. Like it says so much and so little at the same time and constantly repeats the same cliches like "the file is the app" or "the api is the x". Unmemorable, unfocused and boring is what it comes across. I know devs don't care about marketing copy but it does make a difference on how you're presenting your app to first time potential users.
same, i've been using it extensively and it's very convenient having the ability to let Codex/ClaudeCode generate a whole deck, and then do the last edits myself in the browser.
Why not just get your agent to write LaTeX? Use the beamer template and get a much more professional, customisable, git-commitable and transferable presentation.
I'm intrigued about the "Trip Planner" being a top-level app. Only tried it in a very surface level way, but the recent trips I've planned (Ottawa for 6 people, Cancun for ~20) have ended up as an ugly mishmash of spreadsheets + google maps saved locations list + random chatgpt sessions.
It feels like there's an unmet need there for managing something more flexible than a minute by minute itinerary, maybe like a list of must-do and want-do activities and dining options, with the system able to figure out what is open when and has other constraints like the weather, costs, what activities pair well together, which group members some things are more or less suited to, what the contact details are for things like a private tour, etc etc.
Open street map servers aren't really meant to be used in end user applications. They are primarily to support the editing of the map data. Usage like this should be with a provider like Mapbox, or your own supplied tiles.
Yeah, the concept and execution are really impressive but lack of any import is a real blocker I think. Especially in case of spreadsheets - quite often they are not started from scratch, but require previous data or data from other sources etc.
I’m waiting until somebody vibe code a proper desktop apps to provide more diversity than MS vs Open Office. just like I see options blossomed in the “Creative Suite” field.
But maybe I’m just one of those who don’t like web office apps and/or google docs related workflows.
can I do a PR for live collaboration? to be transparent, I'm going to use my own project puter.js for webrtc, but the project is open-source (https://github.com/HeyPuter/puter)
I was musing on something like this. There is non zero chance that some US administration disables GSuite / Office365 for all of us living in shithole countries.
The only bug I found is that the presentation previews in dark mode have the text as black on a dark background, when it should be white (matching the canvas text).
As a kid in the late 1980s, my dad got me a PC (an Olivetti IBM clone to be precise).
I distinctly remember that there were separate apps for spreadsheets (Lotus 1-2-3 [0]), charts (Harvard Graphics [1]) and word processing (Chi Writer [2]).
And now we just have a basic office suite for free in one website.
0 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lotus_1-2-3
1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvard_Graphics
2 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ChiWriter
If folks like this kind of thing, I discovered https://bento.page/ from a HN post and have been using it off and on for the past few months. It has a much larger featureset but is specifically focused on presentations (for now!). Unlike this project, the editor and content embed themselves in an html file, so you aren't dependent on the host site existing to serve the editor.
> https://bento.page/
Maybe I'm a 2026 luddite but I can't bring myself to read about let alone try using products whose landing page is such a cookie cutter AI design. At least put some effort in to sand off the horrible unnecessary gloss and choose different fonts, colour schemes and layouts from every other project.
I am gradually becoming resigned to the fact that I'll have to get over this prejudice, though I'm not sure how I will.
I agree with you, but it is so funny that three years ago, a website that look like this would probably make the front page for its excellent design alone. Now, it gives off similar energy to a wix website.
Landing pages are always a proxy for quality. Quality in implementation, quality in domain knowledge, in communication…
At a time when building such a page was hard, it communicated quality in implementation. Now it fakes that, and that is deceptive and therefore met with negative reviews reaction.
I find it completely logical.
You are right, then again: I think three years ago someone would have commented about the gloss in the background as well (saying that it’s unhelpful, distracting and resource intensive).
That and the "The boring deck is dead. One file killed it."
It makes me kinda tense up - I've become almost allergic to it. Kinda interesting really.
it's a fair criticism though. learning and eventually relying on new tools is an investment. it helps to know the developer is invested too, not just moonlighting.
Not only the design but the text. Like it says so much and so little at the same time and constantly repeats the same cliches like "the file is the app" or "the api is the x". Unmemorable, unfocused and boring is what it comes across. I know devs don't care about marketing copy but it does make a difference on how you're presenting your app to first time potential users.
same, i've been using it extensively and it's very convenient having the ability to let Codex/ClaudeCode generate a whole deck, and then do the last edits myself in the browser.
There’s also https://github.com/nathanvy/singlebook which looks like the same philosophy but for documents.
Tell Claude or whatever to read https://tinylittleoffice.com/llms.txt and it will then be able to generate URLs that render documents.
Here's a deck I had it generate about how the URL format works: https://bit.ly/4yRBc1v
thank you, this explains much better, so it's kinda like https://bento.page/
As seen on HN about three months ago, with +1000pts and +230cmnts: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49008211
Why not just get your agent to write LaTeX? Use the beamer template and get a much more professional, customisable, git-commitable and transferable presentation.
Then why not typst? Much faster to render and far more ergonomic/human-understandable when you eventually have to touch something inside.
Or typst, did that with my CV.
You inspired me to knock together a LaTeX version of the same pattern - lets you drop LaTeX in the URL so you can link to the rendered version.
https://tools.simonwillison.net/latex
> you inspired me to prompt an agent to slop something together
Who cares?
why are you being a jerk on HN?
I'm intrigued about the "Trip Planner" being a top-level app. Only tried it in a very surface level way, but the recent trips I've planned (Ottawa for 6 people, Cancun for ~20) have ended up as an ugly mishmash of spreadsheets + google maps saved locations list + random chatgpt sessions.
It feels like there's an unmet need there for managing something more flexible than a minute by minute itinerary, maybe like a list of must-do and want-do activities and dining options, with the system able to figure out what is open when and has other constraints like the weather, costs, what activities pair well together, which group members some things are more or less suited to, what the contact details are for things like a private tour, etc etc.
FYI, I see the story behind this is given by the co-founder at:
https://aboard.com/introducing-tinylittleoffice-com/
It seems they had the idea originally 6 years ago and did versions of it, but
> We moved on, and sadly, those sites fell off the web, and the old links all broke.
The advent of AI being able to reverse engineer anything will lead to an age of open source software being the expectation.
More like open prompts, so you don't have to trust "foreign" code.
FYI: OpenStreetMap seems to be blocking the site with a 403 error (suggesting maybe it's pulling too much data from OSM's servers?): https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Blocked_tiles
Open street map servers aren't really meant to be used in end user applications. They are primarily to support the editing of the map data. Usage like this should be with a provider like Mapbox, or your own supplied tiles.
reminds me to TiddlyWiki that saves to itself [0][1]
[0] https://tiddlywiki.com
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TiddlyWiki
Is there no way to open saved documents? Like it won't open a .csv, .txt or .ics file for example?
Yeah, the concept and execution are really impressive but lack of any import is a real blocker I think. Especially in case of spreadsheets - quite often they are not started from scratch, but require previous data or data from other sources etc.
That gap surprised me too. But I couldn't find any way to open a saved document. I think it is just based on the URL.
The word processor is buggy. When switching between touch typing and swiping the cursor ends up in the middle of words.
To be honest, it looks amazing, but it would be great if there is a guide or like a "how to" cause I'm not sure how to use it.
I’m waiting until somebody vibe code a proper desktop apps to provide more diversity than MS vs Open Office. just like I see options blossomed in the “Creative Suite” field.
But maybe I’m just one of those who don’t like web office apps and/or google docs related workflows.
Here you go https://getartcraft.com/
can I do a PR for live collaboration? to be transparent, I'm going to use my own project puter.js for webrtc, but the project is open-source (https://github.com/HeyPuter/puter)
I like stuff like this. Have you considered real time collaboration? Your not to far off from this with something like web sockets.
Edit: realized it looks like the data is stored in the url, which is a neat approach but I guess its not really that close.
It's entirely possible to update the URL in browser without reloading the page.
Permalinks are needed to share documents, which would be something like a link shortener, with the target updating as the document is updated.
Do "office suite" really need to be http app ?? Such hackers friendly trend...
This is absolutely lovely, well done!
> free office suite where your document is inside the link and easy to share
How is it easy to share megabytes encoded in a link?
this is really great, just went through the categories and it is really useful to someone who work like me
The Animator app is nice and simple, I would like to have something like it as a standalone app.
I was musing on something like this. There is non zero chance that some US administration disables GSuite / Office365 for all of us living in shithole countries.
There's always OpenOffice, LibreOffice and friends.
What?
https://www.tomshardware.com/software/the-netherlands-is-rol...
What was the recent site here on HN that let you do this but with signs and QR codes?
This is really cool. I made a remix using semantic HTML https://hashpage.dev/#z.lVndj9y2EX_PXzHYAA1Q7K3OjhGktqzi7Nh1...
I'd wish LibreOffice would have collab-editing by default for everything, as an option.
This is so well done!
The only bug I found is that the presentation previews in dark mode have the text as black on a dark background, when it should be white (matching the canvas text).
If you add a PDF annotation to this, it’d cover 100% of my (admittedly generic) needs. I know how big of an ask that can (used to?) be.
Putting a PDF into the URL is not entirely impossible, but comes with serious limitations %)
I guess the PDF wouldn't have to be stored in the application/URL? Just a tool to load it, fill+annotate+sign it and export back to disk.
The specialty of all apps here is that the entire document is in the URL.
It's a great idea, but this limits the size of the serialized document to 2048 kiB for Chrome, and 64 kiB for Firefox.
so... the worst possible way to provide the functionality in question
and the functionality has been available already for decades. solved problems, kiddos