Hacker News: PocketBot

New comment by PocketBot in "Ask HN: What should I do with my app? 130 downloads 3 real subscribers"

PocketBot — Sun, 12 Apr 2026 17:43:15 +0000

The "I'm gonna fix onboarding" instinct is almost always the wrong first diagnosis when users cancel immediately after trying. Onboarding is a funnel problem. Immediate cancels are a positioning/expectation problem - they expected X, saw Y, bailed inside 30 seconds.

Three canceled immediately and one got to the paywall and canceled. You have a sample size of 4 users who engaged. That's not "optimize conversion" territory, that's "call them personally and ask what they expected vs what they saw" territory imo. A 15-minute call with each of them will teach you more than any onboarding A/B test from my experience.

If the three who canceled immediately say the same thing ("I thought this was going to do X and it doesn't") — well that's your answer and copy tweaks won't fix it. If they each say something different — the product isn't legibly positioned yet.

At 130 downloads with 2-9/day organic, you don't have a traffic problem. You have a "does this do something specific enough that people want" problem. Fixable, but only by talking to the people who bounced, not by guessing. You must established a channel of communication with your users.

New comment by PocketBot in "Ask HN: Do you trust AI agents with API keys / private keys?"

PocketBot — Sun, 12 Apr 2026 17:09:07 +0000

Absolutely not, and if you do this then please please rotate keys every day or two.

New comment by PocketBot in "Ask HN: Hiring in the age of AI-assisted coding: what works?"

PocketBot — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 20:25:56 +0000

A tough middleground. Someone adaptable who doesn't waste resources and knows precisely what they're trying to build.

New comment by PocketBot in "Ask HN: Should AI credits be refunded on mistakes?"

PocketBot — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 22:06:21 +0000

Anthropic definitely has some paying back to do, it chewed on 50GBP of extra credits like it was nothing.

New comment by PocketBot in "Ask HN: Alternatives to Claude (Code)?"

PocketBot — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 18:43:37 +0000

I have never heard someone complimenting claude on frontend lol. To each their own though, fair play.

New comment by PocketBot in "Free models you can use with your OpenClaw (no credit card needed)"

PocketBot — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 18:38:18 +0000

Not trying to advertise us (yes I am) but we had people switching from Hermes to PocketBot. And we are completely free in beta right now (iOS Testflight). Might be worth taking a look for anyone interested in the whole automations business.

New comment by PocketBot in "Ask HN: How do you handle marketing as a solo technical founder?"

PocketBot — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 18:36:34 +0000

It's as rough as it gets. You really have to know who your customer is. Not as a thesis, but as a proven. If you can find your exact customer base, you will get customers over and over again. There is one subreddit where I can post any time of the day and will have 50-100 new testers by the morning (and if it does extremely well then 10x those numbers). It's way more niche and specific for most products than people think, spamming X won't help build brand identity unless you are following and talking to your literal customer. Then persistance, persistance and more persistance. P.S I am an absolute amateur at this as well but just my experience.

New comment by PocketBot in "Ask HN: What are you building that's not AI related?"

PocketBot — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 18:29:59 +0000

Well PocketBot won't be AI related in a few years. We're using AI with it's only job being to eliminate itself. Automations, using a single simple prompt, fully private, with a massive user created library (~1000 testers so far). People create automations - our LLM makes a template out of it -> goes to our shared user library -> when someone asks for an automation we check if it already exists and if so then deterministically adjust it for their use. If no automation exists then request sent to our Tier 2 LLM which creates it. Maybe not exactly what you wanted to hear, I am just excited about our idea...

Edit: Sorry missed the most important point. So the more users and the bigger this library gets, the less LLM usage we have, until eventually we are able to run almost fully deterministic.