My wife and I are building Spruce, a Slack app that autocorrects typos in your messages: https://spruce.so/
The motivation behind this was twofold. Firstly, we're both the type of people who often edit our Slack messages (or any other messages like WhatsApp) to correct mistakes. Secondly, my wife is a PMM at a tech company, but she can't code. I've been telling her that anyone can create a decent product with the help of LLMs and tools like Replit, but she usually just rolls her eyes. So, on a flight from London to SF, I suggested we build Spruce. The idea was that she would take the lead and rely on LLMs (ChatGPT + Ollama for when the wonderful Delta internet wasn't working), and she could also treat me as a [more intelligent] LLM. After ~12 hours and a few small arguments, Spruce was born. :)
Some random learnings, top of mind:
1. A non-technical person, even with current LLMs (GPT 4.5), can't go from idea to shipped product without at least some help from a technical person.
2. I now make even more typos because my habit is to type as fast as possible, often without even pressing the space bar. Spruce autocorrects everything in Slack, but when I'm using other products, I feel incomplete.
3. Although I'm practically a native English speaker, it's still my second language. I've added a feature to Spruce, just for myself for now, that DMs me if I make really obvious grammar/English mistakes in my messages. I decided to do this after one of my colleagues, who is very English, said "for prosperity" instead of "for posterity" in several messages, and another said "for all intensive purposes" instead of "for all intents and purposes." It's been a very cool development, at least for me! It's fun because a) it has a nice tone, and b) it's not verbose and only nudges you on major mistakes, and only up to twice a day.
Anyway, feel free to give it a try: https://spruce.so/
P.S. This Slack app necessarily needs the permissions it has because it needs to be able to read and edit your messages everywhere (e.g., public channels, private channels, DMs, etc.). Don't install it if that freaks you out. However, it's easy to remove Slack apps, so there's no harm in giving it a try.
The motivation behind this was twofold. Firstly, we're both the type of people who often edit our Slack messages (or any other messages like WhatsApp) to correct mistakes. Secondly, my wife is a PMM at a tech company, but she can't code. I've been telling her that anyone can create a decent product with the help of LLMs and tools like Replit, but she usually just rolls her eyes. So, on a flight from London to SF, I suggested we build Spruce. The idea was that she would take the lead and rely on LLMs (ChatGPT + Ollama for when the wonderful Delta internet wasn't working), and she could also treat me as a [more intelligent] LLM. After ~12 hours and a few small arguments, Spruce was born. :)
Some random learnings, top of mind:
1. A non-technical person, even with current LLMs (GPT 4.5), can't go from idea to shipped product without at least some help from a technical person.
2. I now make even more typos because my habit is to type as fast as possible, often without even pressing the space bar. Spruce autocorrects everything in Slack, but when I'm using other products, I feel incomplete.
3. Although I'm practically a native English speaker, it's still my second language. I've added a feature to Spruce, just for myself for now, that DMs me if I make really obvious grammar/English mistakes in my messages. I decided to do this after one of my colleagues, who is very English, said "for prosperity" instead of "for posterity" in several messages, and another said "for all intensive purposes" instead of "for all intents and purposes." It's been a very cool development, at least for me! It's fun because a) it has a nice tone, and b) it's not verbose and only nudges you on major mistakes, and only up to twice a day. Anyway, feel free to give it a try: https://spruce.so/
P.S. This Slack app necessarily needs the permissions it has because it needs to be able to read and edit your messages everywhere (e.g., public channels, private channels, DMs, etc.). Don't install it if that freaks you out. However, it's easy to remove Slack apps, so there's no harm in giving it a try.