GrugNotes

A tool for text: simple, fast, self-organizing notes. #buildinpublic made by canoe builder grug @keizo

[GrugNotes @GrugNotes]

@htmx_org I mean great minds…

[GrugNotes @GrugNotes]

@NotionHQ Sure I’m fine with that, just send me all the people that just want a notes app. And we can be best bros!

[GrugNotes @GrugNotes]

Wait what is this lol.

[Notion @NotionHQ]

Meet Grug.

Grug is a “Caveman Designer” Custom Agent that our team turns to for blunt, anti-complexity product/design feedback.

Basically: “complexity bad, make simple, make button look like button.”

Here’s what Grug said about a recent All Hands.

[GrugNotes @GrugNotes]

@rheum_ai @usgraphics @NotionHQ True true

[GrugNotes @GrugNotes]

@atx_scott_h @ishverduzco @NotionHQ What! That’s crazy

[GrugNotes @GrugNotes]

@htmx_org ai influencer 🙌

[GrugNotes @GrugNotes]

I’m a millennial, yes a lot of tech is trash. But still believe you can have both. Grug Notes is made for life off a screen.

[Rushi @rushicrypto]

I genuinely think a lot of millennials are reaching the same conclusion at the same time.

We grew up watching technology make life better every year. Cell phones. iPods. Smartphones. An app for everything. It felt like the future was arriving right in front of us, and we couldn’t wait for what came next.

Then somewhere along the way, it changed.

Everything became a subscription. Social media became algorithms. Every day feels like another once-in-a-lifetime event. The things that were supposed to save us time somehow ended up demanding more of our attention than ever.

We were sold convenience.

What we got was a world that feels faster, louder, more expensive, and somehow less human.

And that’s why so many people I know dream about a completely different life now. Not more technology. Not more optimization.

Just a quiet job, a flip phone, a small town, and a place where life feels real again.

[GrugNotes @GrugNotes]

Grug Notes

[Patrick Skinner - edu/acc @PSkinnerTech]

Hot take: obsidian is a terrible form factor for an AI 2nd brain.

GBrain is functionally best option, but non-technical users can’t reconcile that they can’t “see” what the AI knows.

Very soon, something like @nessielabs will become the top 2nd brain option.

[GrugNotes @GrugNotes]

@thsottiaux @jxnlco Where do old chats go? There are lots I can’t find. Better persistence of sessions over time.

[GrugNotes @GrugNotes]

Everyone wants to be this. But no one is quite doing it right.

[Nathan Baschez @nbaschez]

Thing that should exist but (i think?) doesn't:

- Shared company brain that you connect to any agent
- Nice UI for viewing pages
- Permissions / suggest changes mode
- Versioning
- Works with company SSO / RBAC
- Also bundles connectors to tools

Is this a thing?

[GrugNotes @GrugNotes]

@OfficialLoganK in the ai studio billing — there is no breakdown of the spend by model, or it looks like there is, but it’s broken…

[GrugNotes @GrugNotes]

Bro needs a canoe

[Tiago Forte @fortelabs]

I think the main thing AI has taught me, through all the time savings it brings, is that I’m not a very interesting person

Faced with a surplus of free time, I realize I don’t really have hobbies besides content consumption

I’m forced to conclude that I don’t have very deep friendships, and am not a core member of any particular community

I’m not very cultured, I’m finding, and don’t have abiding interests in art or literature or history or much that isn’t directly related to my work

I have a work-centric life, in other words. AI pulls back the curtain on just how impoverished such an existence is, by disabusing me of its necessity

Given the freedom I’ve always said I wanted, I’m at a loss as to what to do with it, except plow myself even harder into work, thus exacerbating the lesson

There’s nothing more confronting to humans than freedom

[GrugNotes @GrugNotes]

Should I grab my laptop in the car, my agents are not running rn 😭

[GrugNotes @GrugNotes]

@TheRabbitPy Yah I mean we write English. Models write assembly or byte code

[GrugNotes @GrugNotes]

Is Elon right, we all going back to assembly. 😱

[Jarred Sumner @jarredsumner]

@theo I agree

Who knows maybe Bun will be in some yet-to-be-written language next year. Or maybe Bun will simultaneously be in Java, in Cobol, in Ruby, and Python all at the same time, for fun. Like doom or bad apple

[GrugNotes @GrugNotes]

I’m getting excited about my iOS app.

[GrugNotes @GrugNotes]

Wild. I guess ai doesn’t really need everything.

[Ankit Gupta @agupta]

based on day 1 of looking at this feature i suspect i will never open it again, as has been the case for essentially every google ai product recently.

it highlighted 20 TODOs for today, a saturday, including: a bunch of spam-looking emails as "needing response", reminding me to unbox a package at my door, and alerting me of 4 monthly autopay payments (emails iv never opened in the history of my gmail)

the only useful action was to wish a friend happy birthday which was buried in the middle

[GrugNotes @GrugNotes]

lol grug

[Simon Smith @_simonsmith]

My head is spinning from Google I/O. It leads me to a request for OpenAI and Anthropic: Please avoid sprawl. Just give me a single powerful agentic tool like Codex or Cowork through which I can do everything.

I don't want to have to think about whether to use Spark or Antigravity or AI Studio, or Flow or Pomelli or Pics. I accept that these may meet the needs of different users, and Google knows how to run a killer business. But personally, I just want one interface to rule them all, and am willing to pay for that simplicity.

I can't imagine true AGI needs all these surfaces.

[GrugNotes @GrugNotes]

Yah 😕

[Lisan al Gaib @scaling01]

GPT-5.5-medium has lower end-to-end latency, uses less tokens and is overall smarter and cheaper than Gemini 3.5 Flash

it might genuinely be over for anyone not named OpenAI or Anthropic

[GrugNotes @GrugNotes]

Disappoint