Show HN: ThinkPost – split-panel note taking & brainstorming app for devs

Nice idea and the site looks well done! Congrats on launching this. I played around the site a bit and with the different panels.. a few thoughts/questions...

THOUGHTS

1. Target: Is the market for enterprise/work or for consumer/personal use or does it not matter? Similar question for people, is it more for people who need diagrams in combination with notes and if so, are these mostly technical people who could author both the notes / diagrams and for non-technical people who would read/consume them?

2. All-In-One: The inevitable question/concern on a tool that combines many things into one, is that, it being good but not great at any one thing. This is something I'm also dealing with on one my projects. How do you address this concern?

3. Limitations: Are there any limitations with the note taking, or the diagramming capabilities compared to specialized products / apps like Joplin, UpNote, Bear, or Draw.io ?

QUESTIONS

1. Tab: Is a "tab" analogous to a "note" in other apps?

2. Panels: Are all the panels linked to a tab and is there a limit to the panels?

3. Folders: I didn't quite get it, but how are multiple notes organized into 1 collection?

4. Diagrams: Do you have an example of a sophisticated diagram made with your app?

I use diagramming quite often, but it's mostly for work purposes for technical software architecture diagrams, which I eventually embed into other wiki pages and/or git readmes. For personal use at home, I can't remember the last time I had to diagram anything. The first thing that comes to mind is how does the diagramming compare to something more specialized like draw.io. I can definitely see potential in this for work purposes.

All the Best!

Congrats on building and sharing something you find useful! Sincerely.

But: split-panel layout is merely one of myriad features in Obsidian. Serious note-takers typically have a long list of UX and non-functional requirements, which require serious investment and/or a robust community & ecosystem. So I think you've got your work cut out for you to make a solo project in this space appealing to even a small minority. And that's before the "Might run ads later" kicker.

Dinky Dog [1] author here. I really like the split-pane idea!

You can only write as much in a single flowchart node, so tools where you can only draw lack a place for extended notes.

Also it's a great way to illustrate written points. I can see this being used e.g. in classrooms. Theory on the left, examples on the right.

Great work!

---

[1] https://dinky.dog/?q=about-9315ba924c9d16e632145116d69ae72a

Well done on launching :)

But I'm having some major GUI issues:

1. Icon-Button-Click-Area: Click on the STAR (Panel Type) I can only activate it via putting the mouse cursor at the left bottom of icon/button. Putting my cursor RIGHT on top in the middle does not activate it.

2. Panel-Split: Not sure if its related to 1, but I could only ever managed to figure out how to split my left horizontally plane once. Trying to split the right panel also like this, proved to be impossible (for me)

3. Sluggish-Feel: This could def be related to 1, but there seems to be a general delay between action(if it fires) and visual feedback

Suggestions:

  * Re-look at GUI and make it more predictable/familiar in terms of interaction 
  (click-area, feedback,speed)

  * Templates-For-Tab: Would be nice when creating a new tab, I could pre-select from a few templates, silly examples follows:

   - 4 box splits),
   - 2 vertical splits,
   - 3-splits (image, code, text)

b) GUI-Feedback: Just to make it feel more responsive.

c) Use-Cases: I do like the free-form-thinking with wide constraints ntoe taking idea. I can even see it being used for: WebToon-Layouts, Storyboards, User-Testing, Use-Cases etc.

Again Congrats On Launching ! It's 90% of the challenge !

EDIT: Google Chrome Linux

Hi everyone, Thank you all for your votes, ideas, thoughts, comments and really appreciate your inputs! After a successful MVP launch on the frontpage yesterday, there were many takeaways, - I will be fixing core issues in the app those were met by the users. - Will be repositioning beyond developers, dropping "developers" tag, because I have received requests to facilitate onboarding from non developers, i.e wider technical community as well (also outlined by some of the comments here). - Will be improving the platform and prioritize development considering the direction I want to take from now on. - Rethink/User Testing UX/UI for frictions - More reach-outs to/onboarding potential customers while repositioning.

Thanks everyone! Keep your votes, comments coming, I'm very active on HN, ill be responding to them anytime.

As someone who regularly brainstorms using Excalidraw for drawing and Bear for words, this is pretty much perfect for me. I couldn't get Obsidian to fit my brain for most of my use cases.

Nice work! Please let me give you money so I don't see ads.

nice work.

I can definitely see a use for this already

> Many note-taking apps today single-paged have high-think-threshold [...] You have to think before you write in them, so not a good option for quick ideas.

Yes. Very much so. I often resort to pen and paper because I want to get down a more free form idea and I often feel very constrained by a note taking platform. I feel like this one is different in that way.

Is there an easy way to embed something from one pane into another? When I have a "drawing" pane I can export the image to svg or png and then import on the "text" pane, but I would love to just send the image over the wall with one click. Maybe its already in there and I'm missing it?

good move to not require signup/signin to give it a go, i would have otherwise just bounced entirely. Def. the kind of tool where that is possible.

> Many note-taking apps today single-paged have high-think-threshold (windows notepad/apple notes have very low-think-threshold), you have to think before you write in them, so not a good option for quick ideas.

It's good that you are identifying competitors / alternative solutions; but "thinking before writing in them" is not a pain i think most users would connect with, nor is your platform in any way changing this dynamic of interaction. So it feels like a reach.

The UI looks good, but there are some UX frustrations. to me this overall does too much - there are too many things. It's good they are tucked away in menus but it is overthought to the point of being overwhelming. But...could possibly be addressed via different progressive disclosure.

I can see how/why you might use it. but for me it is not the right "it". It's also not "for devs" in the way you maybe want it to be as a platform. That all but kills it for me. I don't think that as a premise has a market.

Also, the split panel as a design decision feels constraining. Who are you to tell me how to use your software? And with them being the same objects it just feels redundant or like I'm expected to type with the left and right hands separately. But with a different start state and maybe using two different panels you could create more 'ah-ha".

I would lean into making this like a jsfiddle where it's low friction to generate things and share it with others. That can be a great starting point, and help give direction to the product.

Have you seen Eraser?

https://www.eraser.io/

Great idea, and great execution of it! I mostly use a text file to get my thoughts down while building but I can see myself using something like this. My only feedback would be to maybe not use the Gemini AI icon for "Switching Panel Type", my feeling is that there are more expressive icons for such actions.

Kudos on the "try without login" option.-

+1000

Dark mode in Firefox MacOS has a lot of issues. Makes it seem like an afterthought.

I love the idea of this. I'm unsure how to use it to my advantage though. An explainer video would go a long way I think.

Dang congrats!

I had a very similar idea for going on a decade now , but never got around to working on it until a few weeks ago. Now I'm demotivated.

What'll the pricing be? I don't want to get hooked and then have some sort of crisis if/when I can't afford it.

Is it able to collapse blocks/bullets and/or zoom in like Workflowy?

would you mind including a video of the product. Or a video of you using it to do your work.

Good one

Nice project. I played with it for a little while, and while I found some issues like the code blocks inserted with `/` not automatically sizing to fit the content, and showing an alert() when switching panel types even when a panel hasn't been edited, I think it works pretty well for how ambitious of an app it is.

I like being able to do things side by side. However, I think perhaps the tabs should be within each split. It also should be geared towards quickly opening and closing things. A low entropy split view will result in space being taken up by stuff that isn't relevant. This is why the split view in Visual Studio Code works pretty well. It's like a browser where the tabs are constantly changing - not like Excel where you delete tabs but don't close them and they're persisted across sessions including the order of the tabs. (Actually, Excel has a split view but it works because you can quickly change which tab is open in each split, so it's relevant to the task at hand.)

> Many note-taking apps today single-paged have high-think-threshold

Like Notion and Obsidian? I find them to be simple to use if you don't use their advanced features.

> I'm personally a massive user of my app.

It's because you're testing your own app.