Reader (by Readwise) is Goated

Intro

As I've discussed^[1] multiple^[2] times, creating a solid app that leverages GPT is a difficult challenge. LLMs have a steep learning curve. Even after the summit of learning is crested there are still major problems (features -- not bugs) that are (currently) unsolvable. These "features" include, but are not limited to: model hallucination, context window size, and fine tuning unfreezing for transfer learning.^[3]

These domain specific problems are in addition to the regular problems of building an app, including UX, data integrity, marketing, pricing strategy, data storage, dev ops pipelines, privacy, yada yada yada.

There is a reason I say that building my own E2E app Stenography took multiple years off of my lifespan.^[4] Shit was tough.

With this difficulty in mind, I want to give major props to the Readwise team for knocking it out of the park with the Reader App. They succeeded not just in the domain of building a great app, but also having a solid AI integration. This app provides a world class reading experience on mobile, in addition to a world class web clipper experience. The double tap to highlight a paragraph functionality is something I didn't know I needed so badly until I had it.

On top of all of that, the Ghost Reader Extension is actually really good.

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Ghostreader is easily accessible from the menu.

There are only a few options. Counterintuitively, limiting options with an AI app is the correct play.

Feels like a part of the app (crazy to say that I know, but you'd be shocked how many AI apps feel distinct from the parent app)

Human in the loop editing