Top
Best
New

Posted by rpastuszak 19 hours ago

Show HN: New Ensō – first public beta(untested.sonnet.io)
Ensō is a writing tool that helps you enter a state of flow by separating writing from editing and thus making it harder for you to edit yourself - https://enso.sonnet.io/

After 6 years and 2 million words of daily writing I feel like I've learned enough to make Ensō simpler and more accessible.

Related thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38025073

234 points | 81 comments
iNic 16 hours ago|
Very nice, I've been wanting to build something like this myself but haven't gotten to it. The coffee shop mode is great! My biggest feature request would be changing the font and cursor. The blinking cursor is both distracting and unnecessary as you should assume that you are at the end anyway (since you shouldn't edit)!
ryanianian 14 hours ago||
I really want a fixed-width font. I know most people dislike writing prose with monospace fonts. But I'm a developer, and proportional fonts always feel wrong.
tecleandor 10 hours ago||
Well, talk to a script writer, they only write on Courier typeface
rpastuszak 15 hours ago||
noted, thanks!

I'm VERY conservative with adding new UI elements, especially those introducing new possible sources of distractions, so I might hide it behind a bunch of menus. That said, I've spent ages yak shaving / working on those problems already :)

_elf 17 hours ago||
I've always felt that the best part of writing on a computer is the ability to edit while you write, however, I also understand that doesn't work at all for a lot of people, so I think this app is neat even though I personally wouldn't use it.
bayindirh 17 hours ago||
Sometimes forcing yourself "not to edit" allows you to bring out things which are hard to catch and hide in the nooks and crannies of your mind.

Brain dumping also works the same way. You write whatever you have in your mind, without even correcting spelling errors. It really brings out things you don't know they are there and bothering you or taking space.

You should at least try once. Takes an hour or so.

I also use a similar method for drafting my blog posts if I have the idea, but can't bring out the rest of the text.

jkmcf 9 hours ago||
I've always felt the best part of writing on a computer is legibility :)
d-lowl 17 hours ago||
Although, I don't think that Enso as a whole will work for me (I have a very different approach to writting); I love the idea of the coffee shop mode. Want to implement something like this for Obsidian now.
achairapart 16 hours ago||
This might be useful for a whole browser coffee shop mode:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/obfuscator/

tkgally 17 hours ago||
I like that idea, too.

When I’m at home, I do most of my writing now with voice input. Would somebody please invent a sound cancellation device that will enable me to talk to my devices in coffee shops and on public transportation without being heard by others?

dabbz 8 hours ago||
I know I've seen a handful of them no idea if they're real or not though:

https://metadox.pro/ https://gethushme.com/

varun_chopra 17 hours ago||
Oh man, I saw this once but forgot the name. Tried Googling, asked some LLMs—but alas, couldn’t find it again. Even an HN search didn’t turn up anything useful.

So glad to come across it again!

rpastuszak 15 hours ago|
Good to know :)

At least my https://meat-gpt.sonnet.io gets indexed well, including 100s of AI websites who webscraped it and hallucinated product descriptions.

WD-42 12 hours ago||
Looks a lot like https://flathub.org/apps/org.gnome.gitlab.somas.Apostrophe for anyone on Linux
pdabbadabba 12 hours ago|
These seem likely different concepts to me. Apostrophe is a nice looking markdown editor. Ensō is a minimalist writing tool (I hesitate to call it an 'editor') designed to facilitate a certain kind of writing by hiding text that has already been written and preventing the user from editing it. The focus here seems to be getting the writer to just get the words out and then use a (presumably) different tool to format and edit later.
WD-42 11 hours ago||
Apostrophe does the same thing, it’s just not really shown on the store page. It provides both distraction free and Hemingway modes. Hemingway mode doesn’t let you use backspace!
pdabbadabba 11 hours ago||
That's great to know! I'll have to give it a try.
Velorivox 12 hours ago||
This reminds me of https://github.com/maebert/themostdangerouswritingapp
maebert 11 hours ago||
Thanks for the shoutout!

I think it's funny that it's very similar to ensō in many ways, but also the complete opposite: ensō is calm, mindful, soothing. MDWa is hectic, terrifying, sadistic. Funny how a tiny difference produces products that look almost the same, and feel completely different.

huge props to rafal for creating ensō, personally really love it

spookie 8 hours ago||
Reminds me of Apostrophe actually.

https://flathub.org/apps/org.gnome.gitlab.somas.Apostrophe

teucris 15 hours ago||
Fantastic work. This is great example of how good execution is what really matters - not just good ideas. I’m sure I’m not the only one who had an idea similar to this at some point - mine was called “nanowriter” and was meant for NanoWriMo (RIP)[0] but I lacked the coding ability and executive function to actually make it.l at the time. Enso is gorgeous and… exists, and therefore is infinitely better.

0: https://storyempire.com/2025/04/28/nanowrimo-closing-what-we...

seabass 8 hours ago||
Huge kudos for omitting analytics tracking for an app like this. Your reasoning totally resonated with me, and I hope more app devs follow suit!
xandrius 10 hours ago||
The name brought me back to the PS Vita hacking times, I thought it would be something to jailbreak the PS5 or the switch 2. A bit disappointed :(
opan 8 hours ago|
I clicked for the same reason, haha.
jnsie 7 hours ago|
There used to be a really neat application launcher called Enso. Is this related in any way?
More comments...