Show HN: New Ensō – first public beta

Posted by rpastuszak 6/30/2025

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.

251 points | 87 commentspage 4

gavmor 6/30/2025|

Now if only someone would invent a tool to do the opposite. I have too easy a time of forgetting what I wrote, and penning new lines in obliviousness. It's a habit from many years of stream-of-consciousness writing a la The Artist's Way and https://750words.com.

The hard thing, I find, is structuring text so that each paragraph has a purpose in relation to the others. I was once taught this in school, but I haven't kept up with my practice.

So, maybe a tool that takes previous paragraphs and--contrariwise to letting them recede into obscurity--shoves them repeatedly in my face?

Anyway, very elegant and pleasant. Like a foggy quayside cafe.

rpastuszak 6/30/2025||

Haha, I'm actually working on that too! Currently experimenting with a graph based editor.

Also, you might like The Fieldstone Method (Weinberg).

PS. Andy Matuschak's notes: http://notes.andymatuschak.org have some good tips on a similar subject. (My "digital garden" is more of a choose your own adventure book, I'm not married to a single methodology, but I appreciate much of their work)

sorcerer-mar 6/30/2025|||

Is this for non-fiction/business writing?

If so, I recommend looking at Barbara Minto's Pyramid Principle.

https://www.amazon.com/Pyramid-Principle-Logic-Writing-Think...

sam1r 6/30/2025||

To the OP: Great product, at least can you update the description text to guide newcomers with some user persona.

We don't know what it is based on the description, so even the simplest "Try xyz" or even some goal would help us discover what it is.

rpastuszak 6/30/2025||

Thanks!

I've collected a lot of high quality feedback over the years*, plus have defined user personas/problem areas (examples: writers, developers, neurospicy folk, people working on their mental health through journalling/expressive writing, YouTubers, video essay creators, ...).

Over the next few weeks/months I will continue writing/thinking about those on untested.sonnet.io (working with the garage door up, so to speak).

Then, once I come up with more terse/clear ways of expressing this -- I'll put it on the product page (https://enso.sonnet.io)

* thanks to relying on an email link over analytics in the app

sam1r 6/30/2025|||

Just trying to maximize your efforts... to optimize for first-time user usability, unveil to yourself regular use cases for your users, etc.

rpastuszak 6/30/2025||

Yeah, to be frank, this was intended to be more of a devlog entry for the people who already know my work/follow me on untested and I didn't expect any responses on HN. Still, that's a big lesson for me, I shouldn't have made that assumption posting here. People have been really kind and responsive in my experience.

I think this is also a problem of framing.

_0xdd 6/30/2025||

Got excited for a second, I thought this was about HENkaku Ensō [1] for the PS Vita.

[1] https://enso.henkaku.xyz/

ModernMech 6/30/2025||

I thought it was about this: https://ensoanalytics.com

Enso it pretty overloaded as name for tech things.

Chris2048 6/30/2025||

Yep, thought it was going to be about Humanized Enso

https://signalvnoise.com/posts/228-humanized-enso

fermigier 6/30/2025||

I thought for a second that it was about the Enso programming language (https://modeling-languages.com/enso-dont-design-your-program...) :)

bodge5000 6/30/2025||

Turns out there's a lot of Enso's, my first thought was the looper (https://www.audiodamage.com/products/ad049-enso)

mellosouls 6/30/2025||

Appears to be Apple only, for anybody spending time on the page trying to work out what it's about.

hmlwilliams 6/30/2025||

There is a PWA at https://write.sonnet.io/

rpastuszak 6/30/2025||

Thanks, just bear in mind that the PWA differs from the app and will not be actively developed. I'm planning to maintain it and keep it free.

jhardcastle 6/30/2025||

> Note: if you remove the Edit menu and call it Write, MacOs won't add its AI crap to your settings.

Good to know.

b0a04gl 6/30/2025||

[dead]

robert-whiteley 6/30/2025||

[flagged]

binary132 6/30/2025||

Unfortunate naming collision with Enso Analytics (formerly Luna compiler).

nilirl 6/30/2025|

I didn't understand what this was from the link posted; why choose cute over clear?

But when I clicked around I found what the app was and I liked it. Here the cuteness was charming. Great work!

rubyfan 6/30/2025|

reminded me of _why