Hacker News: starfallg

New comment by starfallg in "Show HN: Bento - An entire PowerPoint in one HTML file (edit+view+data+collab)"

starfallg — Thu, 23 Jul 2026 15:20:18 +0000

Yes, but 1. Cowork burns tokens, lots of them, and tokens are rationed on the Enterprise plans, and 2. You need to know how to prompt it to make the changes. It's often a slow and painful process if all you want to change is a number here and there, or the colour of a box.

New comment by starfallg in "Show HN: Bento - An entire PowerPoint in one HTML file (edit+view+data+collab)"

starfallg — Thu, 23 Jul 2026 15:16:37 +0000

Thanks. To be honest, I don't know because I have a personal Max plan I use for this stuff and never set any telemetry up on it to get accurate metrics.

New comment by starfallg in "Show HN: Bento - An entire PowerPoint in one HTML file (edit+view+data+collab)"

starfallg — Thu, 23 Jul 2026 13:58:23 +0000

Thanks for the pointer on this, will check this out.

New comment by starfallg in "Show HN: Bento - An entire PowerPoint in one HTML file (edit+view+data+collab)"

starfallg — Thu, 23 Jul 2026 13:57:31 +0000

Notes was suggested in another comment as the next app in the series, so yeah I think it's a very good idea to do something like a workspace.

New comment by starfallg in "Show HN: Bento - An entire PowerPoint in one HTML file (edit+view+data+collab)"

starfallg — Thu, 23 Jul 2026 11:12:39 +0000

Thanks. Kinda jealous that you don't have to do slides to be honest.

New comment by starfallg in "Show HN: Bento - An entire PowerPoint in one HTML file (edit+view+data+collab)"

starfallg — Thu, 23 Jul 2026 10:58:42 +0000

Thanks for bringing this up, it's a valid point and also something I haven't really focused on specifically. I'll add at least the beginnings of these accessibility features to the next release.

New comment by starfallg in "Show HN: Bento - An entire PowerPoint in one HTML file (edit+view+data+collab)"

starfallg — Thu, 23 Jul 2026 10:56:08 +0000

That's a really good suggestion, thanks. I've been thinking about what to do next, and notes is probably the natural progression, especially if you want to share between different devices with no cloud.

New comment by starfallg in "Show HN: Bento - An entire PowerPoint in one HTML file (edit+view+data+collab)"

starfallg — Thu, 23 Jul 2026 10:54:53 +0000

That's how Claude works with pptx files, but the format is terrible to work with harnesses. Maybe that's going to improve but the it's currently the user experince is not good.

New comment by starfallg in "Show HN: Bento - An entire PowerPoint in one HTML file (edit+view+data+collab)"

starfallg — Thu, 23 Jul 2026 10:09:09 +0000

Bento has auto-update baked in. It checks for signed updates in a manifest, downloads it, rewrite the file structure with the new and reloads with the new file.

New comment by starfallg in "Show HN: Bento - An entire PowerPoint in one HTML file (edit+view+data+collab)"

starfallg — Thu, 23 Jul 2026 09:56:13 +0000

Technically yes, and the order is just dependent on the chain of the keypress event triggering slide changes. Will investigate the best way to do this.

New comment by starfallg in "Show HN: Bento - An entire PowerPoint in one HTML file (edit+view+data+collab)"

starfallg — Thu, 23 Jul 2026 09:32:34 +0000

Thanks for the kind words. I'll put some contact details in my Github profile.

New comment by starfallg in "Show HN: Bento - An entire PowerPoint in one HTML file (edit+view+data+collab)"

starfallg — Thu, 23 Jul 2026 09:14:38 +0000

Let me reproduce it on iOS and push out a fix shortly. Thanks for the heads up.

New comment by starfallg in "Show HN: Bento - An entire PowerPoint in one HTML file (edit+view+data+collab)"

starfallg — Thu, 23 Jul 2026 09:12:37 +0000

Good spot, it does look like a bug when you are using 1 axis. I'll roll a fix in the next release today. Thanks for the feedback.

New comment by starfallg in "Show HN: Bento - An entire PowerPoint in one HTML file (edit+view+data+collab)"

starfallg — Thu, 23 Jul 2026 07:10:44 +0000

For layouts that need to be static with a fixed page size like PowerPoint slides it's better to have specific placement, otherwise you will be constantly fighting with the layout engine. It's just a tradeoff I guess.

New comment by starfallg in "Show HN: Bento - An entire PowerPoint in one HTML file (edit+view+data+collab)"

starfallg — Thu, 23 Jul 2026 07:07:17 +0000

We tried so many AI presentation makers but larger companies have brand standards to adhere to and these are terrible at handling them. That's the reason we started to hand roll web apps as presentations.

New comment by starfallg in "Show HN: Bento - An entire PowerPoint in one HTML file (edit+view+data+collab)"

starfallg — Wed, 22 Jul 2026 22:52:46 +0000

Thanks, I hope this approach catches on!

New comment by starfallg in "Show HN: Bento - An entire PowerPoint in one HTML file (edit+view+data+collab)"

starfallg — Wed, 22 Jul 2026 22:47:25 +0000

In my day job, we have several teams doing this replacing mainly SaaS vendors. It's a easy sell and very low risk replacing basically CRUD web interfaces over databases.

New comment by starfallg in "Show HN: Bento - An entire PowerPoint in one HTML file (edit+view+data+collab)"

starfallg — Wed, 22 Jul 2026 22:43:32 +0000

Yes you can! Use the agent skill, instructions here - https://bento.page/#get-skill

New comment by starfallg in "Show HN: Bento - An entire PowerPoint in one HTML file (edit+view+data+collab)"

starfallg — Wed, 22 Jul 2026 22:33:14 +0000

I really like your system. It is very similar to Bento in some respects, but I haven't seen any editing capability though. Thanks!

New comment by starfallg in "Show HN: Bento - An entire PowerPoint in one HTML file (edit+view+data+collab)"

starfallg — Wed, 22 Jul 2026 22:27:42 +0000

This doc goes into more detail -

https://github.com/nyblnet/bento/blob/main/docs/security.md

But basically when your bento HTML first gets saved, it generates a number of keys used for managing the permissions to join the Cloudflare DO. You can then send out an invite deck with a key that allow other people to join (with their own generated keys). With this architecture, you can revoke people's access, as well as giving them only read-access to the sharing session for example.