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Show HN: Evryca – fractal thinking tool to brainstorm and organize thoughts

by efojs on 7/9/22, 9:33 AM with 36 comments

Made a tool to organize thoughts. Actually it is a mind tree, but in a more web-friendly form.

It has pivoted from what I originally started building at evryca.com.

Some years ago I got the idea of fractal conversation, instead of old-school tree/ladder-like comments. I wanted to see only comments related to the current level.

I started making "something" with fractal comments. This "something" was a project discussion platform. But it turned out that even I myself don't use it, and the idea of fractal comments stuck there unused.

And recently it dawned on me that it may be a conversation with yourself — thinking, brainstorming, taking notes, writing. So made this kind of cork/whiteboard, where one can dive into the subject and, being in the flow, write and see only related notes and rearrange them later.

I'm trying to make it flawless and add keyboard shortcuts where it's possible (Ctr+Enter to submit idea, drag-and-drop to rearrange, Esc to jump level up).

So finally I've made a tool that I use myself and will update it gradually (sorting, touch devices, ex/import (json, text), boards, more navigation with keyboard and other stuff, and login).

  • by phforms on 7/11/22, 12:35 AM

    I like the simplicity of your tool as well as the fact that no login is required to use it (although I would appreciate a backup option like saving the localStorage data as a single text file and being able to load it back).

    A few suggestions about the UI:

    Cards have no visual cue that they are stacked (I think this came up in some other replies here), so it is impossible to tell how much information can be found underneath. With books, for example, you can tell by their thickness roughly how many pages you can expect. But a general problem with digital content is that its dimensions can be infinite, especially if it is revealed/concealed interactively in a fractal-like manner as it is in your tool.

    Personally, I would feel overwhelmed quickly after taking multiple nested notes, especially if I wanted to look up a piece of information that is hidden deep inside or if I wanted to reorganize my notes (although I think this is not possible yet in your app?).

    I like that you made a breadcrumb-like navigation back to the parents - this helps a lot with orientation. But maybe also consider a more global navigation and a search tool to move more quickly between top-level notes and find notes that are deeply nested.

    I would also adjust the font-size dependent on the amount of text in a card. If you enter a lot of text, cards quickly become too cumbersome to read.

    I also think the parent card/header(?) should be differentiated much more against its child cards. I became a bit confused about which cards are clickable and which are not.

    Nonetheless, I always appreciate people who build tools that they find useful for themself and share them with others, especially if they help with thinking.

  • by BLKNSLVR on 7/11/22, 1:39 AM

    I currently use Noteself, a modification of tiddlywiki, for this kind of thing. I really like the concept you've created, but my paranoia / concern is that I can't save / copy / transport the thought-fractal I've created.

    Noteself saves its status within the browsers local storage as well, but you can save it as an HTML file to make it transportable between browsers, computers, devices.

    I'm constantly shifting between work and personal devices and need the seamless transition - which would imply either self-hosting or 'login required' model, which may not fit your roadmap (although you do mention 'login' above, and also you mention adding im/export). Understand it's in development, however, and respect for the stage you've gotten it to so far. Good work!

  • by markjspivey on 7/11/22, 2:35 AM

    I'm confused by your use of "fractal", could you expand a little bit on how your using that word in context here?

  • by plainOldText on 7/10/22, 10:15 PM

    I think it needs a better visual representation of the levels. I personally find the visual representation currently utilized to represent the fractal structure, incomprehensible.

  • by phailhaus on 7/11/22, 12:26 AM

    I think fractal designs are the way to go! My favorite notetaking app is Workflowy which does this exact thing with nested lists, and it supports boards too! One thing I would suggest is that it needs to be possible to "peek" at lower levels; it's a bit jarring to drop a card on another card and have it completely disappear. It's not immediately obvious that the card actually went "inside" the right one.

  • by epaga on 7/10/22, 11:58 PM

    This is really cool, well done. The fractal concept has always been helpful to me.

    I made a similar iPad app to this idea a while ago, called Mindscope. Kind of a fractal whiteboard / Workflowy meets Scapple. http://www.mindscopeapp.com

    Always wished I had the time to make a new version some day…

  • by barbs on 7/10/22, 10:09 PM

    Looks cool. Seems a little similar to https://kinopio.club/

  • by smallerfish on 7/10/22, 11:53 PM

    I have a similar side project, which I started to learn kotlin.js: http://the.do.zone

    My goal is to get some kind of seamless webrtc based sync going, both for multi-device use and also, maybe, for collaborative editing. Firmly committed to data not hitting any servers.

  • by 97-109-107 on 7/11/22, 1:39 PM

    Seems that people interested in this would also like [TreeSheets](https://strlen.com/treesheets/)

  • by hjkl0 on 7/12/22, 2:10 PM

    I like the fact that one of the features is “flawless”… especially since the description below refers to keyboard shortcuts.

  • by vinibrito on 7/11/22, 12:04 AM

    Really cool! I liked the "endless nesting" aspect of it, makes it feel different from a simple wiki experience.

  • by hboon on 7/11/22, 4:46 AM

    Reminds me of the excellent https://museapp.com

  • by 0xCAP on 7/10/22, 9:24 PM

    So basically, poor man's Nototo?

  • by diamondage on 7/11/22, 9:29 AM

    Nice!