
Prompt debuts “a command line for the real world” - gnkchintu
http://techcrunch.com/2016/03/07/prompt-debuts-a-command-line-for-the-real-world/?ncid=rss&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Techcrunch+%28TechCrunch%29&utm_content=FaceBook&sr_share=facebook
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jessaustin
_Fetch closed last summer after raising $3.05 million. According to Hadfield,
the service grew quickly with very high retention and engagement, but the team
couldn’t find a scalable business model._

Hmmm. Perhaps this is a line of questioning that could have been pursued with
respect to the current venture?

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justinlardinois
I'm not sure I buy the idea that there's a market for this.

The main argument for CLIs over GUIs is that they're faster to use (assuming
you know what you're doing). I don't imagine typing out commands on a
smartphone touchscreen is faster than using that same touchscreen to navigate
an app.

I only see this appealing to the kind of people that read Hacker News, and
even then only those who use CLIs because they find them more fun/interesting
than GUIs, rather than for utilitarian reasons.

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vinchuco
Will it include programming structures (loops, conditionals, etc) and
documentation (i.e. @prompt help @prompt)?

Would then also need to handle 'weird' cases that can dos a service, such as
the silly: @uber While True { from x to y; cancel;}

Could services be compounded? What if I want my domino's pizza delivered to a
location, picked up by an uber and delivered to my work address? (maybe
dominos doesn't service my area but I have a vitamin p deficiency)

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whitegrape
Don't forget the great fun to be had with out-of-order SMS messages. I really
don't get this app. All the macros advertised in the article are so basic I
can do (or already do) them via voice activation, which is so quick I don't
even need to grab and turn on my phone's display. For more interesting stuff I
want to have block diagrams for flows and triggers (kind of like the Automate
app actually). Another downside is the likely closed or at least very opaque
nature of the commands. Dominoes is gross, I want anything else. No one wrote
a plugin for Papa Johns, and I don't know how or it would take forever, and
even if the Dominoes plugin was open source I doubt it would be very
enlightening for writing one for another pizza place. Guess I'll go hungry.
Or, how about something as dead-simple as recording a workflow with hooks for
interaction like password entry so that I do it once myself and then
afterwards it replays it, even alerting me if during a future replay things
aren't as expected? That might not be allowed on the app store though, because
god forbid our phones be general purpose computational devices.

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LeoPanthera
Surely they're going to have to change the name.
[https://panic.com/prompt/](https://panic.com/prompt/)

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jessaustin
There's very little overlap between the two products, and for that overlap,
"prompt" is a generic term.

ISTM "Panic Sync", the first listed feature at your link, by which private
keys are transferred all over, is actually a mis-feature, a bad idea that
shouldn't be made easier for the user.

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LeoPanthera
I don't know why you felt to bash the product. That seems irrelevant here.

When I first saw the headline my first thought was that maybe it was a new
version of Panic Prompt, so clearly there is scope for confusion here.

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udfalkso
There's definitely something in the air...

Shall we call it session-based search perhaps?

[https://medium.com/@tedlivingston/the-future-of-chat-isn-
t-a...](https://medium.com/@tedlivingston/the-future-of-chat-isn-t-
ai-b07f65bc252#.fp4939yw0)

[http://www.theverge.com/2016/3/1/11136298/hound-app-ios-
andr...](http://www.theverge.com/2016/3/1/11136298/hound-app-ios-android-siri-
google-now-cortana)

[https://developer.amazon.com/appsandservices/solutions/alexa...](https://developer.amazon.com/appsandservices/solutions/alexa/alexa-
skills-kit)

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valine
The problem text based interfaces solve is a lack of UI standardization. In a
desktop environment a command line can be superior to some designer's attempt
to express herself through a fancy GUI. However, key strokes on mobile are
MUCH more expensive than in a desktop environment. What would have been a 4
second interaction on a desktop might be 20 seconds on a phone, simply because
typing is slower. What this needs is a minimalistic UI for executing commands
that doesn't involve typing. The workflow would look something like this:
Unlock phone > tap Uber > tap destination > tap execute > lock phone.

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venning
I don't see a support feature on the site, but since this is a YC company, I
figure I can list an issue here:

 _@whois google.com_ is not working. It just replies: "@whois: Please enter a
valid domain name. Example: @whois google.com" Same for other domains.

Edit: This only occurs over SMS, not through the site. My guess is that my
carrier (Fi) is doing something to munge the domain name that Prompt needs to
parse correctly.

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waterlesscloud
The examples in the screenshot look like the kind of functionality you get
from OK Google, only with having to type rather than speak.

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enobrev
I like the idea. I'm surprised there isn't a CLI for it.

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tomhadfield
Stay tuned - CLI for Prompt commands launching next week!

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sj4nz
Timing is everything. To me, this is just Dynamic Networds from the
mid-1990's. :)

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vmorgulis
IFTTT is a kind of rule-based command line too.

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ddw
With more integrations. Put the two together though...

