TLDR: Curious if YC startup requests are a valid take, so I built freeform in a weekend.
Storytime: I’ve been working on a startup for a while (another context layer startup) and one night while I had One Piece playing in the background and I was going through YCs request for startups list. I was watching the videos and reading the transcripts when two of them particularly stood out to me: cloud for small apps and shareable apps. Specifically the quote “AI hasn't had its multiplayer moment yet”. I had an idea floating in my head for a collaborative app which I thought would be nice to have and haven’t seen anyone implement anything like it yet (maybe so, I live under a rock). So having a free weekend and a claude pro subscription I started building Freeform. I didn’t count how many hours it took overall but it was about ~4.5 days total. I figured I should post about it since I’m curious if YCs startup direction is… well.. market driven. Anyway, this isn’t a reflection of YCs predictions obviously but more so a loose experiment of my interpretation and implementation of said ideas.
Application: Freeform. What is it? I’d loosely describe it as an ai canva since a lot of the direct output is design driven and based on what you see. However, I think the functionality exceeds that as each applet is its own sandboxed environment with persistent storage. This and being able to inject your own api keys or just random links from the web (ie unsplash) results in some pretty interesting creations. The core component I wanted was sharing and collaboration, so I designed the entire idea around sharing links, previewing, and simultaneous prompt based collaboration with versioning. Anyway, try it out I hope you like it :)
PS: I didn’t put a lot of credits to the llm or sandbox pool so if you run into any issues (or bugs) just shoot me an email here: hello@sharefreeform.com
Also if you decide to make something feel free to email it to me or post it in the thread Thanks!
I'm really curious to hear about the user experience cause chat threads for llm interaction are the mainstream which is cause of how its inherently designed. However, I wanted to do something different that feels more interactive but I think the experience lacks in feedback from the llm. I'm curious to hear your thoughts.
Also I think the hardest thing to get right was the sandbox streaming, trying to minimize for cold boots and keep sessions from dropping out, so if anyone has questions about that I'm happy to talk about it.
Storytime: I’ve been working on a startup for a while (another context layer startup) and one night while I had One Piece playing in the background and I was going through YCs request for startups list. I was watching the videos and reading the transcripts when two of them particularly stood out to me: cloud for small apps and shareable apps. Specifically the quote “AI hasn't had its multiplayer moment yet”. I had an idea floating in my head for a collaborative app which I thought would be nice to have and haven’t seen anyone implement anything like it yet (maybe so, I live under a rock). So having a free weekend and a claude pro subscription I started building Freeform. I didn’t count how many hours it took overall but it was about ~4.5 days total. I figured I should post about it since I’m curious if YCs startup direction is… well.. market driven. Anyway, this isn’t a reflection of YCs predictions obviously but more so a loose experiment of my interpretation and implementation of said ideas.
Application: Freeform. What is it? I’d loosely describe it as an ai canva since a lot of the direct output is design driven and based on what you see. However, I think the functionality exceeds that as each applet is its own sandboxed environment with persistent storage. This and being able to inject your own api keys or just random links from the web (ie unsplash) results in some pretty interesting creations. The core component I wanted was sharing and collaboration, so I designed the entire idea around sharing links, previewing, and simultaneous prompt based collaboration with versioning. Anyway, try it out I hope you like it :)
Try it here: https://sharefreeform.com Some stuff I made:
A product page with stripe integration on checkout: https://sharefreeform.com/a/d0e55aff-8aec-45dc-9874-5dc1b943...
A record player that plays midi and itunes music: https://sharefreeform.com/a/661d308e-1751-49c3-bd68-f7a58c05...
A brainrot card I’m sending to my friends: https://sharefreeform.com/a/e31a5954-dcd4-4821-8cdf-c1dc6d2f...
PS: I didn’t put a lot of credits to the llm or sandbox pool so if you run into any issues (or bugs) just shoot me an email here: hello@sharefreeform.com Also if you decide to make something feel free to email it to me or post it in the thread Thanks!
I'm really curious to hear about the user experience cause chat threads for llm interaction are the mainstream which is cause of how its inherently designed. However, I wanted to do something different that feels more interactive but I think the experience lacks in feedback from the llm. I'm curious to hear your thoughts.
Also I think the hardest thing to get right was the sandbox streaming, trying to minimize for cold boots and keep sessions from dropping out, so if anyone has questions about that I'm happy to talk about it.