[mschrage]

Hey HN! Didn't expect to see Fig here this morning.

We just released a new version of Fig that allows users to install a custom input method on macOS. This means we now work with over a dozen new terminals, including all JetBrain IDEs, Alacritty, Kitty, WezTerm and more.

The engineering behind it was surprisingly tricky since these APIs are not as well documented as you'd hope. (Indeed, the best place to look is the C header files [0])

But with a lot of trial and error, we've managed to get an implementation we're happy with. (That said, if anyone has tips on how to install an input method, without requiring a system restart, I'd love to hear them!)

I'll be around all day to answer any questions about how Fig works under the hood!

--

Also just to address some stuff that generally comes up when we're posted on HN:

1. Why is there a login?

Autocomplete is just our first product, and it's part of a suite of tools focused on improving developer experience in the terminal. The idea is that you can configure your developer environment in Fig and then we'll sync it across all of your devices.

2. Is there telemetry?

Yes, but you can opt-out entirely by running a single command.

fig settings telemetry.disabled true

3. How will Fig make money?

Fig will always be free for individuals. Teams pay for Fig for collaboration and discovery of internal scripts and for managing dev environment setup and onboarding.

4. Is there a Linux/Windows version?

We are making really good progress and will have a prototype in the next month or so. See the Github issues for Linux[1] and Windows[2]

[0] https://github.com/phracker/MacOSX-SDKs/blob/master/MacOSX10...

[1] https://github.com/withfig/fig/issues/34

[2] https://github.com/withfig/fig/issues/35

[shric]

> The idea is that you can configure your developer environment in Fig and then we'll sync it across all of your devices.

What's Fig's target audience? Developers.

Developers have been using a tried and tested way to keep configurations for decades -- dotfiles. We sync them across all our devices using git (or any of a thousand other ways). This is a solved problem and doesn't require email addresses or logins.

[hoffs]

> Developers have been using a tried and tested way to keep configurations for decades -- dotfiles

Which kinda sucks

[mschrage]

There is certainly some room for improvement! :)

[radicaldreamer]

symlink dropbox used to be a solid way to do it, but that was before dropbox had to perform for the public markets every quarter

[mschrage]

Currently, lots of developers use GitHub (which naturally requires a login) to sync their dotfiles across devices.

We are building our own version of this, that is more tailored to the use case than a generic git repo interface. :)

[ushakov]

git controls versions and is open-source

you’re building a proprietary solution for something that isn’t a problem at all

[francoispon]

why don't you give this company a chance? I am sure there is room for innovation even if it's non oss it's fine along it's something new.

I'd like to see what kind of innovation they can bring to dotfile management.

I keep most of my important dotfile configuration in a private repo managed by stow/syncthing, but the management gets old after a while and the git commit -am "update" gets old after a while..

[ushakov]

> Didn't expect to see Fig here this morning.

Yeah yeah right and you just appeared out of nowhere with a 300-word explainer. "Just in case". Stop this shit-show already, everybody knows you're a YC-baked company

YC-baked companies get tips and notifications when they're about to get featured

people are critiquing you below and you're asking HN mods to downrank negative comments to keep up your PR-game

my harsh, but valid criticism of your product ended up at the bottom of page, although it has 20 points and should actually be higher than yours and any other comment, but life's easy when you can cheat a bit!

see yourself: https://imgur.com/a/Z5AZkik

how can a comment with 20+ points be the last one on the page?

[__sy__]

> YC-baked [sic] companies get tips and notifications when they're about to get featured

We don't.

[ushakov]

us outsiders can't know for sure!

for example i didn't knew a comment critiquing a YC-company could be pinned down

but now i know and this doesn't make neither HN nor Fig better in my eyes

[__sy__]

My understanding is that high-karma accounts can downvote comments/posts. HN is still primarily a community where supporting & encouraging those building things is the norm. Criticism of makers isn't rare, but my hunch is that it's less accepted. So this could explain the downvotes. Also keep in mind that HN is still a work in progress—to this day. Dang works hard to keep a civil, supportive community, and how upvotes/downvotes get weighted could be at play too.

[ushakov]

i don't know how many people must have downvoted the comment to bring it to the very bottom of the page, but as it stands it has 25 points

before some invisible magic happened, the comment was the first one on the page

can HN mods give an explanation to this?

[dang]

HN moderators didn't touch your comment. We moderate HN less, not more, when YC or a YC startup is the story. That's literally the first principle of HN moderation—lots of past explanation here: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu....

There are a small number of trusted users (not moderators or high-karma accounts, but people who have been on HN for many years) who have the ability to mark a comment generic or offtopic, which downweights it. We encourage them to do that when a generic or offtopic comment is sitting at the top of a page, choking out more interesting discussion. It's actually the single biggest thing we've found to improve thread quality, because generic and offtopic subthreads—especially angry ones, like the one you started—tend to quickly suck all the oxygen out of a conversation, and end up making the thread be about obvious-generic things rather than the intellectually interesting details of a specific article.

This is an experiment in extending moderation powers to the community at large (and I'd love to extend it further*, because the results have been superb so far). But it has nothing to do with YC—in fact we've instructed these users not to apply such downweights when YC or a YC-funded startup is the story, because the principle I mentioned above takes highest precedence. So I'd presume that the user who downweighted your subthread had no idea that Fig was a YC startup.

You posted 16 comments in this thread attacking someone's product from what is clearly a pre-existing entrenched position. That's way too much, and not at all the curious conversation that this site is supposed to be for. (Edit: we also got an unusual number of emails complaining about how you derailed the thread.) So I think the user who applied the downweight in your case was correct in principle—doing that did improve the quality of the thread (at least for a while), which is exactly what the downweight is for. They just didn't catch the YC aspect; if they had, I'm sure they would have held back.

* (Side note: if anyone sees this and wants to 'try out' for the right to downweight comments in this way, you're welcome to email [e-mail]. Send a few examples of subthreads you think should have been downweighted and I'll take a look.)