that made sense when people painstakingly typed out code by hand. Nowadays the code doesn't really matter and can be trivially thrown away and regenerated as needed.
I read this article and the subtext in my head is “I pointed Claude at my ten year old code in a sandbox and it couldn’t handle adding the features I wanted. So for v3 I will make it better for agentic development.”
I'm a happy self-hosted Monica user, I like that I have alerts set to remind me of birthdays and other events, and that there's a place to list, e.g. everyone who got a Christmas card from me last year. I recommend it to people.
I'm agnostic about a rewrite, I never used Chandler and as far as I'm concerned it's perfectly serviceable for me the end user as it is. I rarely use the UI. I have been contemplating interacting with it more agentically, maybe having a bot update the record that I had a beer with someone instead of doing it by hand, but I like that it's focused.
I have started musing about how I might bridge it to other systems, like the people I have resolved from faces in my Immich photos, but I neither want or expect Monica to do this for me.
After screaming into my pillow about the recent Facebook f**ery and the destruction of the individual and their relationships, I had a moment of appreciation and human-ness when I read, "Built because my memory is bad.; I created Monica because I kept forgetting details about people I genuinely cared about."
That's the kinda thing we should be building and supporting together.
I may start using it, even if that's a highly marketed phrase just because it's so much better than, "CLICK HERE TO LIKE AND SHOW PEOPLE HOW MUCH GOOD YOU ARE AND HERE ARE POINTS YOU CAN MEASURE AND NOW WE OWN YOUR WHOLE LIFE HISTORY ALSO GIVE US MONEY AND HERE'S AN ADVERTISEMENT FOR YOU KTHXBYE".
And yes, that's exactly what I hear in my head when I hear someone works for Facebook or Google or the socials out there that aren't decentralized or at least trying to be some form of humane. Sorry, I don't know you, but you choose to work there. That's the image you're siding up to.
What I'm confused about with Monica is this being v3. Didn't Monica already get rebuilt from the original version in 2017, since there's a beta software called Chandler?
I know very little about the Monica ecosystem but how come you're throwing away a second version as well? What were the flaws in that iteration?
I tried out Monica when it was posted to hn ages ago and still get the occasional reminder. But I've mostly switched to using the contacts app on my iphone for everything. It has primitive features that support 95% of what I need.
They lost me when they threw everything out and moved to Chandler. Now they're throwing everything out again. I love the idea, maybe it's time to vibecode an alternative.
I'd love to hear experiences of using Monica. I've been hesitant to try it out mostly due to my own ignorance of how to get existing data in there and get it into a usable state. But I love the concept.
I'll take "things you should never do" for $1000 Alex.
https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/04/06/things-you-should-...
that made sense when people painstakingly typed out code by hand. Nowadays the code doesn't really matter and can be trivially thrown away and regenerated as needed.
[delayed]
Written before LLMs made Big Rewrites an absolute doddle.
I read this article and the subtext in my head is “I pointed Claude at my ten year old code in a sandbox and it couldn’t handle adding the features I wanted. So for v3 I will make it better for agentic development.”
I’ve become so cynical this year.
I'm a happy self-hosted Monica user, I like that I have alerts set to remind me of birthdays and other events, and that there's a place to list, e.g. everyone who got a Christmas card from me last year. I recommend it to people.
I'm agnostic about a rewrite, I never used Chandler and as far as I'm concerned it's perfectly serviceable for me the end user as it is. I rarely use the UI. I have been contemplating interacting with it more agentically, maybe having a bot update the record that I had a beer with someone instead of doing it by hand, but I like that it's focused.
I have started musing about how I might bridge it to other systems, like the people I have resolved from faces in my Immich photos, but I neither want or expect Monica to do this for me.
After screaming into my pillow about the recent Facebook f**ery and the destruction of the individual and their relationships, I had a moment of appreciation and human-ness when I read, "Built because my memory is bad.; I created Monica because I kept forgetting details about people I genuinely cared about."
That's the kinda thing we should be building and supporting together.
I may start using it, even if that's a highly marketed phrase just because it's so much better than, "CLICK HERE TO LIKE AND SHOW PEOPLE HOW MUCH GOOD YOU ARE AND HERE ARE POINTS YOU CAN MEASURE AND NOW WE OWN YOUR WHOLE LIFE HISTORY ALSO GIVE US MONEY AND HERE'S AN ADVERTISEMENT FOR YOU KTHXBYE".
And yes, that's exactly what I hear in my head when I hear someone works for Facebook or Google or the socials out there that aren't decentralized or at least trying to be some form of humane. Sorry, I don't know you, but you choose to work there. That's the image you're siding up to.
/rant
What I'm confused about with Monica is this being v3. Didn't Monica already get rebuilt from the original version in 2017, since there's a beta software called Chandler?
I know very little about the Monica ecosystem but how come you're throwing away a second version as well? What were the flaws in that iteration?
I tried out Monica when it was posted to hn ages ago and still get the occasional reminder. But I've mostly switched to using the contacts app on my iphone for everything. It has primitive features that support 95% of what I need.
Contacts + calendar app for me, so you can keep on top of birthdays and other special occasions, know when people are away/back, etc.
A personal CRM sounds like a very interesting idea but I would feel weird building profiles on people like that.
The original ShowHN:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14497295
This is also listed in TFA, fourth paragraph.
They lost me when they threw everything out and moved to Chandler. Now they're throwing everything out again. I love the idea, maybe it's time to vibecode an alternative.
I'd love to hear experiences of using Monica. I've been hesitant to try it out mostly due to my own ignorance of how to get existing data in there and get it into a usable state. But I love the concept.
why aren't mentioning their failed rewrite from 3 years ago? https://www.monicahq.com/en/blog/chandler-is-in-beta/
and that Chandler is different from this Chandler? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chandler_(software)