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I left my job as a principal software engineer a few months back and have been working on an agentic harness and https://blackbear.app https://blackbear.app --

I left my job as a principal software engineer a few months back and have been working on an agentic harness and https://blackbear.app https://blackbear.app -- a local first, end-to-end encrypted everything app with file editors for notes, documents, sheets, free-hand canvases, slides, and a whole lot more. Also features a calendar and task system, and a lightweight discovery engine. There's a BYOK agent system (Pax) that works with you across the whole app (OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini, and local Ollama support). Works in a browser, from the CLI, and from native mac and linux apps (mobile on the way). Not exactly sure my end goal yet, but it's been fascinating building these things

rheisen_ 2mo ago
Oh, and all the editors support real-time collaboration. There's messaging, voice and video calls, and a lightweight contact management system that I'm still iterating on
mcapodici 2mo ago
Hi. As you are deeply thinking about these sorts of things, I want to see what you think of my https://useorganizer.com https://useorganizer.com which turns the todo idea on its head a bit by being timeline oriented.
- rheisen_ 2mo ago
  Seems very cool! I like the concept. I am still designing a "project" sort of organization primitive myself, which would incorporate more time based views of progress. Just from browsing around and playing with it a bit, it seems there's still a lot of polish needing to be done. Quite a few areas where data is leaking across UI boundaries and some of the hard problems like data management and retention are stubbed (export is nice but it's the floor imo)
  - mcapodici 2mo ago
    Thanks! And absolutely there is a big tidy up and code review on the horizon for this repo. Data storage changed direction a few times as I heavily used this and found things that seemed fine in theory didn't work out in practice. A big one was using syncthing and folder sharing in the browser had all sorts of issues for this app and how it operates. I'll probably add a sign soon to say this is alpha (as in before beta, a prototype) software. It is vibe coded and is also an experiment is using AI more wildly than I would at work Thanks for wording that kindly and thoughtfully. Some may have said it is trash and moved on :)
philips 2mo ago
What is pax?
- rheisen_ 2mo ago
  Pax is just what I call the agent inside of Blackbear. It's a model agnostic harness, e.g. you can use Claude (Fable, Opus, Sonnet, Haiku), GPT 5.6, or Qwen to provide the inference. The harness gives the model a set of tools and guidance for working within Blackbear, so Pax regardless of the model you supply can help you write notes, manage a spreadsheet, organize your space, etc.

rheisen_ 2mo ago

Oh, and all the editors support real-time collaboration. There's messaging, voice and video calls, and a lightweight contact management system that I'm still iterating on

mcapodici 2mo ago

Hi. As you are deeply thinking about these sorts of things, I want to see what you think of my https://useorganizer.com https://useorganizer.com which turns the todo idea on its head a bit by being timeline oriented.

rheisen_ 2mo ago
Seems very cool! I like the concept. I am still designing a "project" sort of organization primitive myself, which would incorporate more time based views of progress. Just from browsing around and playing with it a bit, it seems there's still a lot of polish needing to be done. Quite a few areas where data is leaking across UI boundaries and some of the hard problems like data management and retention are stubbed (export is nice but it's the floor imo)
- mcapodici 2mo ago
  Thanks! And absolutely there is a big tidy up and code review on the horizon for this repo. Data storage changed direction a few times as I heavily used this and found things that seemed fine in theory didn't work out in practice. A big one was using syncthing and folder sharing in the browser had all sorts of issues for this app and how it operates. I'll probably add a sign soon to say this is alpha (as in before beta, a prototype) software. It is vibe coded and is also an experiment is using AI more wildly than I would at work Thanks for wording that kindly and thoughtfully. Some may have said it is trash and moved on :)

philips 2mo ago

What is pax?

rheisen_ 2mo ago
Pax is just what I call the agent inside of Blackbear. It's a model agnostic harness, e.g. you can use Claude (Fable, Opus, Sonnet, Haiku), GPT 5.6, or Qwen to provide the inference. The harness gives the model a set of tools and guidance for working within Blackbear, so Pax regardless of the model you supply can help you write notes, manage a spreadsheet, organize your space, etc.