Since Sonnet 5 came out I've been using it quite a bit, I'd say it's on par with Opus 4.8 and it even uses up my limits slower. Are we approaching the era of amazing and cheap AI?
I've looked at the public usage stats these companies themselves publish. Most conversations are trivial: recipes, summaries, "help me word this email." You're paying F1 Ferrari toll fees to run driving school laps. Nobody scammed you, you scammed yourself, because owning "the best" feels like status even when you never use what makes it the best.
Originally, I thought the main value was privacy. No mandatory accounts, user-controlled storage, private mode, transparent usage, that kind of thing.
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The product itself is fairly complete at this point. It has web search, file uploads, image generation/editing, projects, memory, multiple models, exports, real-time data, and a bunch of other features.
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But the more I work on it, the more I wonder if "privacy" is actually a feature rather than a reason for the product to exist.
When people talk about ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini, etc., they usually have a simple answer to the question:
"What do you use it for?"
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Research. Writing. Coding. General productivity.
When I ask myself that same question about what I'm building, my answer is much less clear.
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The weird thing is that I don't think the problem is missing features. If anything, I've probably added too many.
I'm starting to think the real problem is positioning.
If you were building an AI product today, what would you focus on?
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Would privacy ever be a primary reason for you to use a tool, or is it just a nice bonus?
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And more generally, how do you know when a product has a positioning problem rather than a product problem?
Originally, I thought the main value was privacy. No mandatory accounts, user-controlled storage, private mode, transparent usage, that kind of thing.
​
The product itself is fairly complete at this point. It has web search, file uploads, image generation/editing, projects, memory, multiple models, exports, real-time data, and a bunch of other features.
​
But the more I work on it, the more I wonder if "privacy" is actually a feature rather than a reason for the product to exist.
When people talk about ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini, etc., they usually have a simple answer to the question:
"What do you use it for?"
​
Research. Writing. Coding. General productivity.
When I ask myself that same question about what I'm building, my answer is much less clear.
​
The weird thing is that I don't think the problem is missing features. If anything, I've probably added too many.
I'm starting to think the real problem is positioning.
If you were building an AI product today, what would you focus on?
​
Would privacy ever be a primary reason for you to use a tool, or is it just a nice bonus?
​
And more generally, how do you know when a product has a positioning problem rather than a product problem?
Solo founder. NOLO (nolo-app.com) is an AI chat with a deliberately weird model: no account, no email, anonymous ID, chats stored on the device, providers configured for zero retention. Free tier with no signup; Plus €7.99 and Pro €16.99, VAT included, cancel anytime.
I'm upfront that it's not frontier-level intelligence. The wedge is privacy + zero friction + 30 languages + honest pricing, not "smarter than GPT."
What I'd actually value from this sub:
Free tier is one click if you want to see it before answering. Thanks.
Solo dev here. NOLO (nolo-app.com) is a private AI chat: no account, no email, chats stay on your device. The free tier runs with zero signup, so testing it costs you nothing and no data.
What I need: people to actually use it and tell me where it's slow, confusing or broken, especially on mobile.
Honest heads-up so nobody's disappointed: it's not a frontier model, don't expect GPT-5. It's built for fast, private, no-friction use, and it works in 30 languages (web search, image gen, document and image reading are in there).
The single most useful thing you can tell me is the first moment something felt wrong. Reply here or DM me. Thanks for any time you give it.
Hey. Not a company, no investors, just one guy who's spent the last while building a private AI chat. The idea was simple: no account, no email, no tracking, your history stays on your device. You open it and start typing, that's it.
I'll be upfront about the downside, because I hate when people hide it: it doesn't run the big frontier models like the latest ChatGPT or Claude. It uses open-weight models on providers that don't train on your data. So it's not the smartest AI on the planet. It competes on privacy, honesty and a fair price, not raw horsepower.
And here's where I'm stuck, which is why I'm posting. The stuff people seem to want most (an AI that remembers you, one that doesn't make things up) leans hard on having a giant model, which is exactly the thing I traded away. So instead of guessing, I'd rather just ask you:
I'm not here to sell anything, I genuinely want to build the right thing instead of copying whatever ChatGPT shipped last week. Brutally honest answers welcome, I can take it.
Hey. Not a company, no investors, just one guy who's spent the last while building a private AI chat. The idea was simple: no account, no email, no tracking, your history stays on your device. You open it and start typing, that's it.
I'll be upfront about the downside, because I hate when people hide it: it doesn't run the big frontier models like the latest ChatGPT or Claude. It uses open-weight models on providers that don't train on your data. So it's not the smartest AI on the planet. It competes on privacy, honesty and a fair price, not raw horsepower.
And here's where I'm stuck, which is why I'm posting. The stuff people seem to want most (an AI that remembers you, one that doesn't make things up) leans hard on having a giant model, which is exactly the thing I traded away. So instead of guessing, I'd rather just ask you:
I'm not here to sell anything, I genuinely want to build the right thing instead of copying whatever ChatGPT shipped last week. Brutally honest answers welcome, I can take it.
Hey. Not a company, no investors, just one guy who's spent the last while building a private AI chat. The idea was simple: no account, no email, no tracking, your history stays on your device. You open it and start typing, that's it.
I'll be upfront about the downside, because I hate when people hide it: it doesn't run the big frontier models like the latest ChatGPT or Claude. It uses open-weight models on providers that don't train on your data. So it's not the smartest AI on the planet. It competes on privacy, honesty and a fair price, not raw horsepower.
And here's where I'm stuck, which is why I'm posting. The stuff people seem to want most (an AI that remembers you, one that doesn't make things up) leans hard on having a giant model, which is exactly the thing I traded away. So instead of guessing, I'd rather just ask you:
I'm not here to sell anything, I genuinely want to build the right thing instead of copying whatever ChatGPT shipped last week. Brutally honest answers welcome, I can take it.
Hey. Not a company, no investors, just one guy who's spent the last while building a private AI chat. The idea was simple: no account, no email, no tracking, your history stays on your device. You open it and start typing, that's it.
I'll be upfront about the downside, because I hate when people hide it: it doesn't run the big frontier models like the latest ChatGPT or Claude. It uses open-weight models on providers that don't train on your data. So it's not the smartest AI on the planet. It competes on privacy, honesty and a fair price, not raw horsepower.
And here's where I'm stuck, which is why I'm posting. The stuff people seem to want most (an AI that remembers you, one that doesn't make things up) leans hard on having a giant model, which is exactly the thing I traded away. So instead of guessing, I'd rather just ask you:
I'm not here to sell anything, I genuinely want to build the right thing instead of copying whatever ChatGPT shipped last week. Brutally honest answers welcome, I can take it.
Hey. Not a company, no investors, just one guy who's spent the last while building a private AI chat. The idea was simple: no account, no email, no tracking, your history stays on your device. You open it and start typing, that's it.
I'll be upfront about the downside, because I hate when people hide it: it doesn't run the big frontier models like the latest ChatGPT or Claude. It uses open-weight models on providers that don't train on your data. So it's not the smartest AI on the planet. It competes on privacy, honesty and a fair price, not raw horsepower.
And here's where I'm stuck, which is why I'm posting. The stuff people seem to want most (an AI that remembers you, one that doesn't make things up) leans hard on having a giant model, which is exactly the thing I traded away. So instead of guessing, I'd rather just ask you:
I'm not here to sell anything, I genuinely want to build the right thing instead of copying whatever ChatGPT shipped last week. Brutally honest answers welcome, I can take it.
EDIT: The tiers are Free (0€), Plus (8€/mo) and Pro (17€/mo)
Hey Reddit, I'm currently building NOLO with Claude Opus 4.8 Max x5 and it's been going pretty well so far. Lately, though, the usage limits keep getting tighter. GLM 5.2 just dropped, and its Pro plan (about 50% cheaper) looks tempting, and Kimi 2.7 code also caught my eye. Should I switch models or stick with Claude? I tried OpenAI's Codex a while back and was pretty disappointed. Any thoughts? Thanks!
Hey, it's just me working on this. The app's called NOLO, it's an AI chat app but the main point is privacy: no account, no sign-up, and it doesn't store your conversations anywhere, they stay on your phone.
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Right now I only have 7 testers and they're all friends, and Google wants more for the closed test before I can launch it properly, so here I am.
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It's free. Besides chatting it does web search, image generation, a few small calculators (tip, loan, currency, that kind of thing) and some other stuff. Mostly I just want to know what's confusing or what breaks.
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One heads up: to install it you have to join a Google group first, that's just how Google's closed testing works (the Play link won't show the app otherwise).
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Join with the same Google account you use on your phone: https://groups.google.com/g/nolo-testers
Wait a couple of minutes, then open this on your phone and hit install: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=app.nolo.ai
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If you want me to test your app back, drop the link.
Hey, it's just me working on this. The app's called NOLO, it's an AI chat app but the main point is privacy: no account, no sign-up, and it doesn't store your conversations anywhere, they stay on your phone.
​
Right now I only have 7 testers and they're all friends, and Google wants more for the closed test before I can launch it properly, so here I am.
​
It's free. Besides chatting it does web search, image generation, a few small calculators (tip, loan, currency, that kind of thing) and some other stuff. Mostly I just want to know what's confusing or what breaks.
​
One heads up: to install it you have to join a Google group first, that's just how Google's closed testing works (the Play link won't show the app otherwise).
​
Join with the same Google account you use on your phone: https://groups.google.com/g/nolo-testers
Wait a couple of minutes, then open this on your phone and hit install: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=app.nolo.ai
​
If you want me to test your app back, drop the link.
Hey, it's just me working on this. The app's called NOLO, it's an AI chat app but the main point is privacy: no account, no sign-up, and it doesn't store your conversations anywhere, they stay on your phone.
Right now I only have 7 testers and they're all friends, and Google wants more for the closed test before I can launch it properly, so here I am.
It's free. Besides chatting it does web search, image generation, a few small calculators (tip, loan, currency, that kind of thing) and some other stuff. Mostly I just want to know what's confusing or what breaks.
One heads up: to install it you have to join a Google group first, that's just how Google's closed testing works (the Play link won't show the app otherwise).
Join with the same Google account you use on your phone: https://groups.google.com/g/nolo-testers
Wait a couple of minutes, then open this on your phone and hit install: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=app.nolo.ai
If you want me to test your app back, drop the link.
