Your comment is fair. I don't love vibe coding as a category name. And somehow using vibe coding to describe something whose namesake, the Memex, had such virtuous ambitions feels cheap. But I ALSO want people to understand what our product does.
I want to make something that truly empowers people. Many of our users are tech savvy, but not coders. We decided to make a GUI because it allowed them to one-click install.
And we are closed source freemium right now because we're trying to find a revenue model that we can sustain ourselves with without being wholly dependent on VCs. We plan to open source components of Memex so it's more extensible in the future and to give back.
We were never going to have something that is worthy of the name memex on the first release. But our ambition is that with time and hard work, we have a chance.
Vibe coding is fine but right now it dominates the pitch, and it's a stark contrast to Vannevar Bush's grand vision of memory expansion. Even if you want it to be more, the pitch makes the name hard to justify and could harm trust building.
I understand your dilemma with open-source licensing, but being closed source is not the core issue.
Bush described a Memex as a private and personal tool. But right now, your tool depends on cloud-hosted LLMs, and the cloud is not private. With nothing to prevent mandated access, an intimate mind mirror is problematic. In some places, people can get into serious legal trouble for visiting a doctor, favouring a political cause, who they're attracted to... Not having a solution could scare potential users away. The name raises expectations that conflict with the product pitch, which is confusing and makes it harder to trust the product. That said, you could still launch with API support for private local LLM endpoints, like Ollama and other OpenAI-style APIs. Do you have support for that already? If so, pointing that out could help. The name has serious weight, and if people don't see it as living up to it, don't you think that you might be better off avoiding the expectations it invites? You could adjust the branding, or change the pitch, and work on building trust. I would suggest considering doing all 3!
Memex makes it easy to ideate, research, and build projects without writing a line of code. It's a fully chat based interface (not an IDE). Its GUI allows you to visualize data inline, perform deep research-esque queries, and create + run programs. It supports any programming language / tech stack that LLMs "know". It also comes with pre-built templates that allow you go from 0-60 on your project quickly.
HN Community:
We had this clause in our Terms and Conditions: "you will not (and will not enable others to) use the AI Features: (e) for the development of any service or other offering that competes with or replicates the Services.”
That clause was boilerplate our lawyers included, and it doesn't reflect how we operate or what we intend to enforce. I should have caught it, but I missed it.
The terms and conditions are now updated to not include a anti-competition clause.
We had this clause in our Terms and Conditions: "you will not (and will not enable others to) use the AI Features: (e) for the development of any service or other offering that competes with or replicates the Services.”
That clause was boilerplate our lawyers included, and it doesn't reflect how we operate or what we intend to enforce. I should have caught it, but I missed it.
The terms and conditions are now updated to not include a anti-competition clause.
Hi @thro1 - this is my first post to the HN community. Memex is something I and my cofounders have worked hard on. While I expected some trolling, your comment is just baffling.
To anyone reading this exchange: I wrote the Show HN attempting to be as clear and to the point as possible according to the "Show HN" guidelines. And everything I wrote is factual. It's available for free for you to try yourself on our website.
in this context, not opionionated == you can use it to build with Rails, FastAPI, Firebase, python + modal ... whatever tech stack you want to use. Some will work better than others just due to the nature of the LLMs.
We've heard loud and clear from the HN community that bringing your own key is important, and we're going to fix that.
Regarding multiple models -- that's next up in the roadmap. We're a small team - we were three and just had two more join recently. So we decided to add checkpoints / shadow git repo before adding multiple model support.
Honestly I hear you on this one. But the market has really taken up "vibe coding", so it's been the easiest way to clearly communicate to people what Memex does.
Hey, there's a really cool new tool that you could use to add this feature, I think it was called 'memex' or something like that.
(sorry couldn't resist)
Been playing around with this for a day and found it intuitive and fun to use. A little scary on the "but how much will this cost me if this becomes a frequently-used tool?" question. Can't wait to point this at local models, too!
To be 100% clear: we do not prevent anyone from using Memex to build a Memex competitor. That clause was boilerplate our lawyers included, and it doesn't reflect how we operate or what we intend to enforce. I should have caught it and we'll fix it.
On the Usage Data side, your code is never stored anywhere other than your machine when you use Memex. And you can enable "Privacy mode" to not have your prompts stored either.
> On the Usage Data side, your code is never stored anywhere other than your machine when you use Memex. And you can enable "Privacy mode" to not have your prompts stored either.
It would be nice if there's some kind of auto-censoring of secrets if sharing code etc, cursor handling of this is very bad bc if I block .env files, then i can't never add them as context and it thinks they dont exist, instaed of knowing they're secrets and to be treated as such.
hoping a less binary solution for controlling what gets shared and not is possibe
That's a good feature idea and something we've considered but not gotten around to yet.
We do have a secrets mgmt feature that uses keyring, so you can store secrets through the app in your system keychain, which then requires your approval before Memex uses it.
We're hoping to make that feature easier to use with MCP
That's a great reply and hoping for it to give memex a try, not that i want to give a competitor but I can use and give back to OpenAIs codex codebase because its MIT, it would suck to use an app you cannot modify for your own pleasure or build your own specific itching solving version of, most so as a tool for builders
That's fair. We do plan to open source components of Memex to allow for extensibility while also having a strong enough revenue model to build without being fully dependent on VCs
I want to make something that truly empowers people. Many of our users are tech savvy, but not coders. We decided to make a GUI because it allowed them to one-click install.
And we are closed source freemium right now because we're trying to find a revenue model that we can sustain ourselves with without being wholly dependent on VCs. We plan to open source components of Memex so it's more extensible in the future and to give back.
We were never going to have something that is worthy of the name memex on the first release. But our ambition is that with time and hard work, we have a chance.