Hey HN! Like most here regular meetings have always been a big part of my work.
Over the years I've learned the value of active note taking in these meetings. Meaning: not minutes, not transcriptions or AI summaries, but me using my brain to actively pull out the key points in short form bullet-like notes, as the meeting is going on, as I'm talking and listening (and probably typing with one hand). This could be agenda points to cover, any interesting sidebars raised, insights gotten to in a discussion, actions agreed to (and a way to track whether they got done next time!).
It's both useful just to track what's going on in all these different meetings week to week (at one point I was doing about a dozen 1-1s per week, and it just becomes impossible to hold it in RAM) but also really valuable over time when you can look back and see the full history of a particular meeting, what was discussed when, how themes and structure are changing, is the meetings effective, etc.
Anyway, I've tried a bunch of different tools for taking these notes over the years. All the obvious ones you've probably used too. And I've always just been not quite satisfied with the experience. They work, obviously (it's just text based notes at the end of the day) but nothing is first-class for this usecase.
So, I decided to build the tool I've always felt I want to use, specifically for regular 1-1s and other types of regular meetings. I've been using it myself and with friends for a while already now, and I think it's got to that point where I actually prefer to reach for it over other general purpose note taking tools now, and I want to share it more widely.
There's a free tier so you can use it right away, in fact without even signing up.
If you've also been wanting a better system to manage your notes for regular meetings, give it a go and let me know what you think!
This is personal. However, many of the people I had meetings with love this. So, here we go.
Quite a while back, I realized that anything digital, from phones to computers, tends to become or look like very official/non-personal and hence looks bad, especially in 1:1 meetings. I decided to go with pen and paper, in a simple Notebook (A5 or A7 is my choice). I’m do not write anything personal, but the points shared or noted down between us are enough to remind me of any points that I might have noted in my mind.
I’ve carried this habit to many other meetings (non-1:1s too), even when there is a note-taker (AI or otherwise). My meeting notes usually get shared or used as references by other participants.
Even during the meetings, other participant(s) sometimes contribute to my notes. I don’t hate digital mediums; in fact, I have used Freeform on an iPad just like I use my Notebook for meeting notes.
The interesting part is that I learnt to draw like Dan Roam[1] quite a while back. So, my notes contain texts with a lot of arrows, stick figures, shapes, etc.
Sidenote: A lot of conversations got sidetracked to discussions about paper, fountain pens, the way I write, etc.
I LOVE this, exactly what I’ve been looking for.
Here’s the issue - all my meetings have confidential, sensitive info. I can’t use a version you host (or well, I could, but you won’t be willing to do the 6 month security review I need).
Can you give me a version I can host (or run locally) and I give you some $ one time or per year?
yes, absolutely. I've been thinking about this too, I did plan to offer self hosted if there's demand and have built it with that in mind.
My email is davnicwil at gmail, please email me and let's talk about it!
Same here: no self-host, no way. Best would be a one-time payment option.
thank you. I will definitely offer this. Please email me (davnicwil at gmail) just to connect and I'll update you when self host is available.
Same issue. Sent you an email just now. Awesome product!
thank you very much, replied :-)
What 6 month security review?
Love it, great idea. My humble advice: you’re on the top of HN right now—make it completely free. Overnight you could get some serious adoption (strike while the iron is hot!) Then build a few more features that people won’t be able to live without and THAT can be your paid tier.
Good shout.
I'm going to give everyone who signs up today full access to everything and access to those features will be grandfathered in to any future plans.
The plans as you see them now are just rough shape anyway just to launch something!
--
UPDATE
alright that should be implemented now, and all existing signups ported (if I got everyone :-)
Everyone is now on the 'Business' plan (full access to everything) on signup
This is awesome. Thank you! Going to try this. Is there a plan to develop mobile app?
thanks! Yes a mobile app is definitely planned.
Nice. Going to try this out.
Thanks for sharing it! What are the advantages of using the tool instead opening a simple google docs?
I've put this in more words on the about page [0] but in my mind it all about the structure being first class for the regular meeting note use case, rather than a general document.
That means
- meetings notes are structured as entries, new entry in 1 click, with a template, with responsive structure
- easy to see who wrote what, everyone gets their own section
- first class action tracking and management of actions in one place
- distraction-free editor optimised for one-hand typing with only minimal formatting necessary to make notes tidy
- easier to search and navigate through history of notes
I think this applies for google docs but also other 'general' note taking tools and editors.
This reads a lot like a feature list to me. I don't understand the benefit from entries versus just an h1 tag. You can even collapse those down, and then docs will write you an index. Might be helpful to focus on the value prop more. It looks cool, but as a recovering GTD junkie, it looks more like a distraction than a core part of my everyday work.
I just realised I never dropped the link in above (doh) but I think my about page [0] does a much better job explaining than I can reproduce here.
But to get directly to your point, I just think entries give better structure than a sort of 'open doc' self-regulated-formatting type system with headers etc. You get an 'entity' that can be tagged with date&time, searched, displayed in a cluster of sections with responsive layout, etc. That's actually one of the precise things I'm trying to improve upon from my own experience with using general note taking tools for meeting notes. But I concede it could just be subjective opinion.
This might be a stretch but if you are at all up for it I would absolutely love to quiz you further on this though on a call or via email. I may have misunderstood. davnicwil at gmail, if you'd be up for it :-)
I'd say the most important part is to have a low-friction tool that fits within an individual's workflow. I like their tool, but i do agree on my side that a Notion with collapsible toggles works better for me, right now (alongside a nice cmd+k to teleport to the right pages)
As a former GTD Junkie and recovering productivity-a-halic myself, what did you settle on and how do GTD or not-do GTD today?
I totally gave up on any system. I trust my brain to remember the important things and don’t beat myself up when I forget. I was recently adhd diagnosed at age 46 so I might try something like atomic habits now that I know what’s going on. YMMV.
Already exists better to free and see the other one https://www.notetimeapp.com/diaries
Not sure if its better, but it is free and it works for me. Thank you for sharing!
As much as people like to criticize Microsoft Teams, it actually offers a feature called Facilitator [1][2][3] that, to my knowledge, works very well. I say this based on both my own experience and feedback from friends who use it in their day-to-day work.
That said, I, of course, always welcome competition.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMoGOWOBicY
[2] https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/facilitator-in-mi...
The very first sentence in the "about" page has a typo (extra "and": ... meetings, and you <and> want to...):
You're in a ton of regular meetings, and you and want to take notes and actions to keep track of what's going on in them week to week.
oh man, I thought I'd caught all these. Thank you! Fixed!
There's another : That was me, in meetings for years. So I decided to build Docket to be my tool. It could yours too.
Missing "be". Plus here is another vote for self hosted
cheers, also fixed!
Writer's blindness is real!
My email is davnicwil at gmail, if you email me just so I have yours I'll update you when self hosted is available
Wait, do I overlook something or is it just a shareable text file?
essentially, yes! It's deliberately very focused and simple, but you also have
- actions (checkboxes) with mentions that you can track in one place
- images
- templates and one-click new entry
On the shared thing, it's opinionated in that it's not a shared single document like a google doc, rather everyone you share with gets their own section, so you can very easily see who wrote what.
Lets say I have some private and silly questions that I need to take a note of & check first or I'm venting some frustration(hey that's what happens in meetings sometimes) in the notes, what do I do ?
May be add a small section for private notes ?
That's a great idea.
For now, you could temporarily turn off wifi and rant away ;-)
Well to address the elephant in the room. There is no world that I wouldn’t or shouldn’t be automatically fired for putting notes between myself and my employer in a none approved website I found on the web.
It won't be today but my goal is to earn a place on your org's approved list one day and win you as a customer :-)
Relatedly, I've had a few requests for a self hosted version already and will be offering this very soon as a priority. If that'd solve the issue also, please email me at davnicwil at gmail and I will update you when it's available.
I hate to be mean. But you never will earn a place as a one man unknown developer to be an offering at my company and be a place where we put all of our information for both confidentially reasons and we wouldn’t trust the long term viability of your company.
We already use Lattice for performance notes, peer to peer feedback and it’s a place where we put notes for our 1:1s. It integrates with Slack to remind us to enter topics before the meeting, etc.
Even with all of those objections, you won’t get anywhere in corporate America with your product unless you offer SSO. It’s not that hard to do.
I have recommended a one man SaaS once in my career to something that was critical to what I needed for a large company critical initiative. But we got lawyers involved and negotiated our own instance and the code be put in escrow with a third party that we would get access to under certain circumstances. We were going to be 70% of his post sign in revenue and growing.
Yeah, so there's no way to make a new company? Unless you're directly bought by Atlassian because they are "known enough"?
I don't know Lattice so I would not use it.
I'll be doing this as a priority. I wanted to check there was concrete demand for it first, but I've now had enough requests that I'll be doing it.
If anyone wants to be updated when this is available, email me at davnicwil at gmail
YC has funded 5000 companies. from a quick Google search and only 20 have gone public and 3 of those have gone out of business
https://medium.com/@Arakunrin/the-post-ipo-performance-of-y-...
So yes, if you want to start a business your most likely outcome is going to be complete failure. Your second most likely outcome is muddling along in obscurity until you give up realizing you could make more money being an enterprise CRUD developer at a bank and not work as hard. The next outcome is you might get acquired.
Unless you are decision maker for a medium to large company, you shouldn’t have heard of Lattice.
But don’t you think before someone invest time in building something they hope to be successful they look at the landscape of others in their vertical?
There is a way: you have to make something that's better in a meaningful way, so that companies' management would want to SWITCH to it. And your new shiny thing also has to be compatible with all of the integrations, the ecosystem etc. that the current thing has.
I'm not even mentioning trust issues, when sensitive data is involved.
Doing anything less and hoping that companies would use your toy project is just wishful thinking. Sorry to be that guy, but please get real.
That may be true for enterprise customers but there's still a big market of midsize companies without such stringent vendor requirements.
Interesting theory.
IRL: I could add whatever I wanted into my computer at most places I've worked, including multi-billion$ international companies.
It's a proxy for amount. More data = more risk
Data tends to be valued based on volume/amount; enterprises have more data and with it comes more risk. As a result, they vet vendors more rigorously to control the risk.
Vetting vendors has a fixed cost. On the small end, it becomes challenging to bootstrap a business when you have a high amount of fixed costs so it's often forgone until a size threshold is reached. This same sentiment is frequently reflected in government regulation as well
Would you be okay with your doctor putting his notes on you in the website? Would you be okay with your accountant putting all of your financial data here?
On the contrary, I do appreciate the blunt reminder of the challenges. I'm just launching and there's some path ahead to get to the place where larger orgs could use Docket, but as I say it's my goal to get there.
That's a you-problem, not a general defect.
And I say that from a similar situation: I can't bring ANY executable onto my computer without corporate IT approval. Even as an untouched file.
But that isn't common in most companies.
You think that most companies are going to allow their proprietary information to be put on random website? That’s different than running something on your local computer.
If you think they wouldn’t mind, post your quarterly goals you discussed with your manager as a reply.
If you aren’t willing to do that, why are you willing to put your information in his website?
You do realise the internet vastly surpasses the reach of corporate america. There are another 7.5 billion people out there that aren't American that would possibly use this. You don't need American users to be a big company. If it is a good idea, it is a good idea.
I see absolutely zero mention of corporate America or any nation. It just states a way to improve meetings.
There are many people that don't have regular meetings so I'm guessing he is focusing on those that do which is a market. I wouldn't use it as personally I prefer to avoid the meetings.
Cuz of exactly this reason i couldnt find any solution like that for me yet, so i started building my own one. I think the only way something like this is practical is in an on-premise scenario
And what do you think your company would say about you putting their proprietary content in your own self hosted and self built product?
Since it runs locally on my machine not really much :) im working always on the same machine therefor i don't need any online hosting for my work notes.
Everything has to start somewhere. Or should we just freeze software where it is today?
Is my market analysis flawed? You don’t start with premise “hey I’m trying to create something where I need your company to trust me with all of your proprietary company data and strategy”.
You can start with "hey this is useful for small businesses who don't necessarily have the same concerns" or "hey this is useful for personal notes" or any other use case that doesn't implicate the machinery of a massive bureaucracy.
That’s not what he’s aiming at “generic personal note taking”. Let’s say I am a small business with 1 on 1s. Should I as a manager put my one on one notes - Employee Jane Doe was discussing how she needs a raise because she’s going through a divorce and a bitter custody battle and just found out that she is pregnant and may need time off” - on his site?
Thanks for sharing! I like the clean interface. Does Docket have a feature to export all your notes into some file with one go? Assuming I would use the system for a couple of years, I'd prefer to have a (local) backup of all the notes I've written.
Thanks for taking a look!
Absolutely, yes, full export of notes (in variety of formats) is coming soon :-)
I've been using a Mead pen-based tablet with paper-like display for that. It has some disadvantages but it's been rock solid, no firmware patches or security exploits so far, and maintains state ridiculously long without needing battery recharges.
I use a Boox E-Ink device for the same purpose. I absolutely love it.
In case my description went past anyone: https://www.mead.com/c/notebooks/business-notebooks/notepads
No, you were very clear ))
I was emphasizing that E-Ink devices with EMR pens provide an input experience very close to writing on paper. Combine that with all the advantages of actually having a digital document. The EMR pen never needs charging, and the E-Ink device gets charged on the weekend.
Nice concept! I wrote this tool a while back which provides a bit more structure to your 1:1s including bubbling up latest topic to the top - https://meeteffective.com/
hello fellow notes nerd! Looks super interesting, we should talk and, erm, compare notes ;-) davnicwil at gmail
I tried signing up with my email (Gmail), but the message with the sign-in code never arrived (it's not in the spam folder either). Maybe your email provider has hit its sending quota?
I had hit a limit yes, thanks for flagging this!
It's fixed now and the emails should come through.
What does this add compared to Logseq's default journal view?
I think the positive reception of this product in the comments is down to how well the simplicity aspect of it has been executed. It does one thing and does it simply.
Interesting idea. The hardest part with systems like this is getting people to actually use them week after week. Curious how you solved the adoption problem.
Posting here is solving the adoption problem, apparently.
Nice! I've been looking for a lightweight version of notion for quick thoughts... And Google keep seems to be an abandoned project these days.
This looks great.
Almost as good as Emacs Org mode. I use Org mode with Evil, to get VIM keybindings. This way I can quickly navigate and edit the document, not just append to the end of it. And of course, Emacs is completely local.
I suppose there is supposed to be a collaborative element that Emacs won't provide. In my experience people in meetings already have workflows and are seldom interested in using the tool somebody else asks them to.
> Almost as good as Emacs Org mode
I take that as the highest compliment!
But yeah, the sharing aspect is a key thing I wanted to nail here. In my mind, it should be so simple to share and just start typing in Docket that say, the organiser of a meeting will just share the notes and it should be the simplest (or, at least, a simple) option for everyone to dive in.
Thank you for the Business plan. I'll try to provide feedback so that it benefits you as well.
RTL (right-to-left) text is displayed with LTR directionality and alignment. Even when preceding an RTL line with the RLE character, it remains left-aligned. I suggest using the method that most other software uses: detecting the first strongly-directional character in the sentence and then using that directionality. And since you provide formatting, provide also an option to override the detected directionality.
See here for more information about handling RTL:
https://dotancohen.com/howto/rtl_right_to_left.html
Also, the floating toolbar on mobile is maddening. It precludes reading what was written, which is very important when using e.g. a voice dictation keyboard (maybe not in meetings).
I have not tested with Docket, but do additional participants need to sign up? Ideally, sharing the URL should be enough.
That also means that the URL must be unique enough to not be guessed, and that the person initiating the session should be able to boot off users and lock the session so other users cannot join after every wanted user joins.
How do you collaborate with the other meeting participants? You all ssh into the one machine?
https://github.com/emacs-straight/crdt
Who am I kidding? If anybody ever gets their meeting partners to actually install and use this, I want to hear about it.
Thanks for sharing your work. I'm not sure I have a particular use for it at the moment, but it's well executed.
One point of (hopefully) constructive feedback is that it wasn't obvious from my first interaction with the temporary doc that I was able to create checklists and bullet points. Once I saw that those are possible, I quickly guessed the keystrokes, but it might be helpful to add some graphical guidance.
thanks! It's something I've batted around with a few friends who've tried it. I agree it's not totally clear.
On desktop, you get a little popover menu with all available formatting when you highlight some text. On mobile, it's always there when you select.
I was thinking along the lines of something like a little help icon (?) that might toggle it on desktop, some sort of overlay that only appears on first use, or just a real simple tutorial video or something. I'll think on it. Thanks for the feedback!
I like the concept but feel kinda dumb: how do I add an action?
I'd love a help button or keyboard shortcut to show keyboard shortcuts.
Thanks!
edit: I figured out the action, with putting [] first. But that was an educated guess based on some other comment here that said actions were checkboxes and me knowing more about Markdown than maybe your average meeting notetaker.
Thanks, you got it before I could reply!
But yeah, I need to make the formatting and shortcuts available much clearer somehow. Thanks for the feedback!
Just for reference in case anyone else finds this comment, we have
action: []
bullet: - at the start of a line
indent: tab and shift tab
bold: cmd+B / ctrl+B
emojis: type : and it brings up an autocomplete selector
image: just paste one in
---
You can also highlight any word to bring up a small popup panel with all these options too.
It's looking nice! Is it open-source?
Thank you! No, not open source, at least as of now.
Emacs org-mode is like this but 100x more powerful and it's just plain text and self-hosted.
But I agree with the other commenter about taking handwritten notes. I use pencil and paper and type them up into org-mode afterwards.
I just use a notebook and a pencil. I can share select parts using email.
Hey a couple of bugs: 1. When I create an org it doesn't appear in the list until refresh. Then, one of the two orgs I made was created twice, or is somehow displayed twice.
Really nice, reducing friction when note-taking is super valuable.
The best thing for this is pen and paper. Sophisticated mechanical hand movements associated with writing help memorize things much easier than pressing fingers on a keyboard.
While I end up taking paper notes for your exact reason, I have trouble porting such notes regularly into productivity software because of the level of effort required to retranscribe my notes. As a result, paper notes suffice for short term details but once the pile of notes on my desk builds up the information is effectively lost. Something like OP's app would be perfect if handwritten notes could be used as input. Input methods via tablets/wacoms are personally cumbersome for me, so I don't know how else to rapidly preserve paper artifacts.
It helps with memory but they're harder to search/index
Chiming in to say I also love this app and will give it a try to see if it improves my workflow. Best of luck with it. This sort of small targeted saas is the dream.
I really appreciate the kind words. Thank you :-)
You think this works well as saas?
This is really great, I love it already. I'm a convert from Google Note, which feels far inferior. Good luck with the project mate!
Thank you so much :-)
How so?
For some reason I can't paste my email address into the email address field when I try to sign up
just frenetically testing in my maze of tabs and incognito windows I've got going on over here... it's working for me.
What browser are you on if you don't mind me asking?
Sorry, I should have said, I'm on Android 16, Firefox 145.0.2 (Build #2016128151)
thanks. I'll investigate. It really should be working as it's just a plain html input element, nothing fancy going on.
Not sure what the advantage is over Obsidian for personal notes and e.g. Notion for teams?
Why does it need to be on the web? Maybe I've missed something, can I run this locally?
It's a web app for now, just to start somewhere. If there's demand in future, I'll make native apps too :-)
Instead of taking the money you should be paying customers for giving you training data set
It doesn't work that way. Paying users would discover product-market fit for the "market" of people who want to be paid to use it. Working with paying users (even if they are incredibly hard to acquire) will discover product -market fit for a market that might actually pay for your service.
I don’t want to put anybody down, but I don’t get this. What does this do that sai Apple’s Notes doesn’t? Or million other applications? And why on Earth is this hosted on web, this is something you clearly do not want to leave you device?
Also, I use pen and a notebook. It is better than anything electronic, since we are monkeys and using our eye-hand coordination has proven effects on concentration and learning.
I think my about page [0] might do a decent job providing more context and trying to answer that question.
I guess in the end it's my take on a system that I want to use for regular meeting notes with others and that I've never been able to find in any other tool, so I built it.
Well hey, good for you. That’s a good reason to built things. Maybe I don’t get it and maybe it is not for me, but it won’t stop others finding it useful.
feedback : my sign in code always gets "That code has expired. Please try again." error messages even if I received it mere seconds ago.
thanks for the report. I've just double checked it works for me, and it does.
If you triggered a few login flows there may be some race condition with emails arriving out of order or something.
If you're feeling even more generous with your valuable time and want to let me know your sign in email (my email is davnicwil at gmail) I can investigate further.
you've got mail
Personally I just take notes in Obsidian
Me as well, but this could be a great addition to Obsidian (idk about ux part) but [automatic] timestamps are awesome.
We offer a notetaker specifically for 1-1s https://www.15five.com/blog/ai-meeting-assistant
Also shout-out to Attendee which is OSS for building meeting bots https://github.com/attendee-labs/attendee
I like pen and paper for meetings because I can take notes while asserting dominance through constant eye contact. I can touch type, but I need to be looking at the screen to achieve the same level of accuracy with which I can blindly write.
Tangential: I also recently switched to paper without lines after 20 years, and it's been quite liberating.
Fortunately, I was trained/forced to write on plain blank papers in school. So, I can pretty much course-correct my invisible lines. However, when I have a choice, I’ve decided to stick to dotted grids.
what you see as "asserting dominance" i show as "giving respect"
are these the same things or are we reaching differently w/ the consideration
I share the same sentiment. Not sure if it’s productive to see one on ones as a game of domination.
In my experience empowered coworkers make a better team and are a better deal for the company.
Maybe it was a humorous remark lost to the absence of tone in the written medium.
gosh dangit, it's easy to re-read with that in mind
whoosh right past me head
is this a very subtle troll?
> My meeting notes usually get shared or used as references by other participants.
How are you transcribing, or are you sharing photos?
Hmmm! How many meetings do you do in a week? Unless, you are building a Meetings App or your company is about Meetings, I'd suggest reducing the Meetings enough that you don't have to Transcribe everything.
My meeting notes are, well, like comic books; quite a lot more drawings. So, people usually take pictures or I just take pictures and email them.
For instance, I was once in a meeting at a company planning the product roadmap for the next 3-5 years. I did a timeline-of-sort note with circles (inspired by DaisyDisk), complete with a few different colors. That note became the "official" starting base for the plan, shared across the company and referenced by the team.
If you are a manager and having 1-1s the very use case he called out, you may have 1-1s with 15+ people every two weeks.
I am a staff consultant. I am constantly in meetings with customers, sales, my management for high profile clients, people working on projects I’m leading, internal strategy go to market meetings.
Maybe a photocopier?