It is simple but powerful supporting all formatting but also diagrams so you can get Claude to generate beautiful ER, or state-transition diagrams for your documentation. It also supports math notation, file links and has a cool table of contents feature

It's in the app store: ViewMD

It looks like Markdown is having a bit of a heyday with it being the default mode of docs for AI coders. And it became apparent that there is no simple, but powerful Markdown viewer for the Mac, so I made one.

It supports all the usual Markdown formatting but also diagrams and equations so you can get Claude to not only write up your system docs but also supply a diagram of the database structure, logic, or AWS services.

It would be cool if you gave it a go :-) It is in the Mac app store "ViewMD"

We have gone to a lot of trouble to try to engineer the prompt to make it clear to Gemini that it should take a "non-partisan and unbiased" view in all the analysis. This is an attempt to get away from any person's opinion, including ours.

Obviously, whether you think it achieving that ideal is in the eye of the beholder :-) But it is certainly less biased than most mainstream media, and social network echo chambers.

https://sivic.life

When I read social spaces like Reddit or X, if the government has done anything contentious you get nothing more than strident left takes, or strident right takes on the topic. Neither of which is informative or helpful.

So I am setting up a site which uses AI which is specifically guided to be neutral and non-partisan, to analyse the government actions from the source documents.

It then generates: - a summary, - expected affects, - benefits, - disadvantages, and - ranks the action against 19 "things you care about" (e.g. defence, environment, civil liberties, religious protection, etc.)

The end result is quite compelling. For example here's the page that summarises all the actions which are most, and least, beneficial to individual liberties:

https://sivic.life/tyca/tyca_individual_liberties/

When using developer AI agents like Claude Code, often they output, and use, .md files like CLAUDE.md, README.md, etc. You largely want to just read these, and if Claude updates them, read the latest version.

Other markdown apps incorporate editing, split screens, etc. I just wanted a neatly formatted read only view. And if you want to edit them, just use something specifically designed for that like Sublime Text, my viewer will instantly load with the updated file.

Anyway, check it out: search for "ViewMD" in the Mac App Store.

The site is up now as far as I can tell. We were doing some updates a couple of hours ago which might have been when you tried it. Please have another go.

The premise is that when I read social spaces like Reddit or X, if the government has done anything contentious you get nothing more than strident left takes, or strident right takes on the topic. Neither of which is informative or helpful.

So I have set up a site which uses AI which is specifically guided to be neutral and non-partisan, to analyses the government actions from the source documents. It then gives a summary, expected effect, benefits and disadvantages, and ranks the action against 19 "things people care about" (e.g. defence, environment, civil liberties, religious protection, etc.)

The end result is quite compelling. For example here's the page that summarises all the actions which are extremely beneficial or disadvantageous to individual liberties: https://sivic.life/tyca/tyca_individual_liberties/

Throughout that I have often been asked "Kevin, when do you think this feature/release/update will be done?". Generally it wasn't with a view to locking us into a deadline, but, quite reasonably people wanted to know when to expect it.

Often this was in order to do things like prepare marketing or support in time for the release. Such as when we upgraded an ERP, we needed to prepare the team and customers for a new format of invoice. So very much a real-world need.

Along with that I feel strongly that all such "complex" projects should be agile, I've seen the horrors of old-school waterfall first-hand. Not necessarily big A "Agile" with scrum and such, but certainly agile as in being prepared to track and adjust the plan and expectations at every turn as the learnings, and ideas come in throughout the delivery.

But how do you track to a deadline or expectation, and still be flexible and agile throughout the delivery? Surely there is a tool that can take your remaining plan of work and calculate approximately how you are tracking. Well as it turns out there isn't, so I wrote it and that is "Fixed".

Fixed is focused on answering two crucial questions:

"Are we on track?", and

"What are our options if we're not?"

On that mission I have provided an app with:

- Clear traffic lights and timelines which give an instant view of how the project is tracking

- A visual "what-if" mode for exploring options in scope, resources, and timing - this mode has been designed to be usable as a tool for an individual, or in collaboration with a team such as in a strategic planning meeting

The initial release is a Jira marketplace app. It takes the current plan of work, simulates the delivery of the rest of the tasks and presents projected timing for all your releases, epics and sprints.

It also applies innovative logic to levelling your team by skill. E.g. if you have 20 backend python tasks and 3 backend python devs, it will distribute the tasks evenly across them. Most other systems either don't differentiate your team members, or force you to arbitrarily assign resources to tasks before it levels the plan.

To maintain agility, each day, week, month or whatever, you can push a button and get an update of that projection to have a readout of whether you are on track. Then you can adjust the plan, or expectations, accordingly.

You can see a demo video here: https://youtu.be/CFDbAdexwlY

And add the app for a free trial to your Jira account here: https://marketplace.atlassian.com/apps/1229649?tab=overview&...

More info at: https://fixed.pm

I would love people's views and feedback on how I can make it better serve the vision of reducing the stress of agile project management.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42198814

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

I am paraphrasing what he said as a non-technical person: Voyager has both a dish receiver, and a pole antenna. The dish is the usual mechanism for comms but in an emergency such as this they would send commands to the other antenna. To do this they would turn the main tracking station dish up to max, and send a "TURN AROUND!" signal out.

But prior to that they had to alert the local electricity grid, and the local air traffic control to not have any planes flying over at the time!

I guess the Voyagers are too far away for this manoeuvre now.

When I travel that's the only power supply I take. When I need to charge my phone, I just unplug the Macbook and plug in the Samsung phone. But if I had an iPhone I couldn't do that!

We are launching with our first such capability:

* The problem

People leading teams delivering tech projects often need to be able to provide an estimate of when the team will deliver a feature or release. Perhaps you've got a deadline to deliver an MVP for an upcoming trade show, or a commerce site to hit the Christmas season. Or you just want to maintain a roadmap. How do you tell feature X will be in Q1 and feature Y in Q3?

Current project management systems like Jira do not help. For an example, check out Jira's "Advanced" Roadmaps (https://www.atlassian.com/software/jira/guides/roadmaps/adva...). If you tell it a projected release date, it will present that date back to you in a timeline view. But where did that date come from? Our research and experience shows that many PMs are laboriously exporting data into other systems like Excel and/or MS Project and calculating it themselves. This process takes approximately a person-day each time. And this is often done weekly!

* The solution

Fixed connects to a Jira project (and Trello and more to come) and calculates the projected delivery date of every component of your entire portfolio in seconds. And when your project status changes, you press a button, and it recalculates it.

This gives the delivery lead a superpower! You can:

- Know instantly if the project is going off track, - Maintain an accurate and up-to-date roadmap, - Be Agile and still hit a deadline (https://medium.com/@fixed_pm/you-can-be-agile-and-still-hit-...), - Easily include stakeholders in handling the effects of a change of scope.

* How it works

Fixed applies the logic of levelling across skills. It connects to your existing project and extracts the following:

- Which skills each resource has - Which skills each task requires - The best estimate of the effort for each task - Optionally, any task priorities or dependencies.

Given the above, Fixed will simulate the delivery of the plan while ensuring it is completed as soon as possible with no resources over-allocated. This is much like Google maps simulating a trip ahead to pick the optimum route and providing an estimate of when you will arrive.

Whenever the team makes progress, scope changes, estimates are refined, etc., at the click of a button, Fixed re-generates the updated timing (and cost).

We have a provisional patent covering this approach.

* About me

I have been a software developer for many years and have been CTO of several small and medium technology firms as well as the media division of a major telco. I've had successful exits from an ISP and a pioneering VC-backed company in the hotel internet space that I founded.

The creation of Fixed was prompted by my experience leading many teams delivering technology projects, as well as similar feedback from others in the field. We repeatedly encountered the same inadequacies in the available tools.

* How you can help:

If Fixed sounds like it would solve your problems, I'd love it if you could try it out and tell me what you think, whether it works for you or, if it doesn't, how we could improve it.

The free MVP is running at https://fixed.pm.

I'm also keen to hear your thoughts on our messaging. We are trying to keep it concise and compelling but we are finding this very challenging. Please give any feedback on how we can improve how we're positioning the product, as well as any ideas for getting our first 100 PM customers.

Thanks in advance for all your thoughts.

(Note: this is reposted as I got the process wrong the first time)

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32256850

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

Fixed's mission is to apply advanced software logic to replace the laborious tasks that PMs have to do. Letting them focus on the outcomes, not the tools.

We are launching with our first such capability:

* The problem

People leading teams delivering tech projects often need to be able to provide an estimate of when the team will deliver a feature or release. Perhaps you've got a deadline to deliver an MVP for an upcoming trade show, or a commerce site to hit the Christmas season. Or you just want to maintain a roadmap. How do you tell feature X will be in Q1 and feature Y in Q3?

Current project management systems like Jira do not help. For an example, check out Jira's "Advanced" Roadmaps (https://www.atlassian.com/software/jira/guides/roadmaps/adva...). If you tell it a projected release date, it will present that date back to you in a timeline view. But where did that date come from? Our research and experience shows that many PMs are laboriously exporting data into other systems like Excel and/or MS Project and calculating it themselves. This process takes approximately a person-day each time. And this is often done weekly!

* The solution

Fixed connects to a Jira project (and Trello and more to come) and calculates the projected delivery date of every component of your entire portfolio in seconds. And when your project status changes, you press a button, and it recalculates it.

This gives the delivery lead a superpower! You can:

- Know instantly if the project is going off track, - Maintain an accurate and up-to-date roadmap, - Be Agile and still hit a deadline (https://medium.com/@fixed_pm/you-can-be-agile-and-still-hit-...), - Easily include stakeholders in handling the effects of a change of scope.

* How it works

Fixed applies the logic of levelling across skills. It connects to your existing project and extracts the following:

- Which skills each resource has - Which skills each task requires - The best estimate of the effort for each task - Optionally, any task priorities or dependencies.

Given the above, Fixed will simulate the delivery of the plan while ensuring it is completed as soon as possible with no resources over-allocated. This is much like Google maps simulating a trip ahead to pick the optimum route and providing an estimate of when you will arrive.

Whenever the team makes progress, scope changes, estimates are refined, etc., at the click of a button, Fixed re-generates the updated timing (and cost).

We have a provisional patent covering this approach.

* About me

I have been a software developer for many years and have been CTO of several small and medium technology firms as well as the media division of a major telco. I've had successful exits from an ISP and a pioneering VC-backed company in the hotel internet space that I founded.

The creation of Fixed was prompted by my experience leading many teams delivering technology projects, as well as similar feedback from others in the field. We repeatedly encountered the same inadequacies in the available tools.

* How you can help:

If Fixed sounds like it would solve your problems, I'd love it if you could try it out and tell me what you think, whether it works for you or, if it doesn't, how we could improve it.

The free MVP is running at https://fixed.pm.

I'm also keen to hear your thoughts on our messaging. We are trying to keep it concise and compelling but we are finding this very challenging. Please give any feedback on how we can improve how we're positioning the product, as well as any ideas for getting our first 100 PM customers.

Thanks in advance for all your thoughts.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32248986

Points: 2

# Comments: 1

You're spot on about that. I've been the "someone" dev lead doing this so often I decided that someone should build a system that does this. You can see my progress so far at fixed.pm

I'm not sure where you all live, but as a counterpoint, I live in Australia and I don't use cash hardly at all any more. I don't even use cards, or take my wallet. If I have my phone on me I can charge anything to any of the 4 cards I have in my phone's wallet (also I can bring up my official Medicare card, drivers license, etc. on my phone). So whenever I go out I just grab my phone and keys.

Everywhere accepts this. Whether I'm paying for a coffee or a $2,000 TV, I just unlock my phone and tap it on a payment terminal. It takes literally a second. For larger purchases (over A$200) you have to enter a PIN.

I certainly wouldn't like to go back to carrying notes and coins around - making sure you have enough, handing it over, waiting for change to be organised (and waiting for them to do this with everyone before me).

Pretty much all establishments still take cash but I don't use it, and most of my friends are the same.

- It gets you fit, which is a good thing for attractiveness :-)

- It trains you in leadership - you start off as a student but by black belt you're running classes, or at least parts of classes

- It gives you confidence that you can defend yourself, but more importantly, if necessary you can defend your family, your friends, your SO, etc. This changes the way you move through the world. Note: you don't suddenly become invincible, you also learn the humility of encountering people in training that are still far superior to you, but these become less and less over time.

- To get your black belt is transformative, and the equivalent of trial-by-fire/coming-of-age rituals that have faded from our culture: you have to work hard for years to get to that point, and you have had your attitude and skills genuinely tested and evaluated before being granted each belt. And it was all you, no-one else can do it for you, you can't buy it, there are no shortcuts. This is one of the few things you can achieve that you can genuinely call all your own, and it feels good, and it is a massive boost to how you see yourself in the world.

Basically if you find the right martial art you get all the benefits of going to the gym plus learning a valuable new skill, and transforming your outlook of yourself along the way.