Brutal Docs
A while back I shared Ensemble here - my screenplay writing software(https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47449524). I’m following up with a technical overview and my learnings. Hope it’s interesting or useful to someone!
Brutal Docs launched on May 29, 2026 with 6 votes, #1,742 of 20,538 launches that month and more than 75% of that year's launches.
What it does
Brutal Docs is a writing tool that does the few things writing actually needs. Words, code, diagrams, tables, checklists. Nothing else. It's a home for cloud-based multimedia notes you can keep personal, private, or password-protected; a fast, classic-internet-style blog; a simple way to share ideas, photos, and videos; and a place for technical docs and planning. What it isn't is just as deliberate: no AI bloatware, no social network, no ads.
Brutal Docs is an experimental tool for ideation and self expression. Scan handwriting, type, draw diagrams, build tables, and publish notes. Offline-first, free, no login required.
Does a similar job
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SkilldocsAug 2026 · skilldocs.dev · ▲192I got fed up with Notion, so I built my dream document editor. It's all markdowned so it's easy to view skills or other agent-related documents. It's got the collaboration features I love from Figma (shared cursory and the ability to follow) and Google Docs (comments, realtime editing). Then you can export the diff and comments to an agent. I've been really liking it for talking over skill documents live on a call. I'm curious if this resonates with other people. More generally, I feel like notion is less and less relevant in an age where documents have a very different purpose and Markdown…
Writingmate2023 · chromewebstore.google.com · ▲454AI copilot for Google Docs, Slides, Sheets with 20k+ users

A Handwritten Blogging PlatformJul 2026 · handwritten.blog · ▲192You simply: 1. Connect your device. 2. Create a top-level `handwritten.blog` folder. 3. Every new notebook in that folder becomes a draft on https://handwritten.blog/ I hope this eventually obviates the need to look at the ugly upload interface you have to use to now upload your writing.
Bibby AI Apr 2026 · trybibby.com · ▲165Hi, Fellow researcher from Yale, I was frustrated with Overleaf and google docs not able to write and collaborate on documents the way I wanted to. I write my research in Latex but since Cursor came out, I thought this has to change, I'm wasting too much time and having mental fog all the time, kinda going through writer's block and hence I decided to create this latex writing assistant for myself but now used by a ton of researchers, I wanted your feedback, what you like, what you don't like, alternatives you've seen, what you would like to have, nice to have, you'd definitely pay to have,…

More work this month
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Smooth Recorder▲257Mac screen recordings that look edited when you hit stop
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Work · 13d ago · readrare.com
Source: Product Hunt launch ↗
Launched alongside, May 2026
the whole month →

Parallel agents, diff reviewer, and multi-model comparisons
Dev tools · May 2026 · kilo.ai



Hey HN, Henry here from Cactus. We open-sourced Needle, a 26M parameter function-calling (tool use) model. It runs at 6000 tok/s prefill and 1200 tok/s decode on consumer devices. We were always frustrated by the little effort made towards building agentic models that run on budget phones, so we conducted investigations that led to an observation: agentic experiences are built upon tool calling, and massive models are overkill for it. Tool calling is fundamentally retrieval-and-assembly (match query to tool name, extract argument values, emit JSON), not reasoning. Cross-attention…
Life & fun · May 2026 · github.com

🌱 Private, quiet space for thinking. Simple app for .md files. - zakirullin/files.md
Dev tools · May 2026 · github.com