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FocusBuddy (YC S24) — Your always on AI executive assistant
Your AI productivity co-pilot that stays on calls with you while working to help you get more done!
Focus Buddy includes:
• Seamless Voice First Todo List
• 24/7 Focus Coach for accountability
• Personalised weekly insights into your productivity.
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Replies
Adnan Sherif
Maker
📌
Hey Product Hunt! 👋 We're thrilled to introduce FocusBuddy.ai - your AI co-pilot for getting more done! 🚀💪
🧠 As a productivity geek and someone with ADHD, my co-founder and I created FocusBuddy to be the ultimate productivity companion we've always dreamed of. Here's how FocusBuddy works:
• 🎯 Work on the right thing at the right time: As you co-work with the AI, it learns what you're working on, what's left, and what's done. It automatically keeps your to-do list up-to-date, ensuring you never miss a high-priority task.
• 🤝 Check-ins that hold you accountable: Our coach checks in while you work, helping you talk through concerns, address perfectionism, and overcome barriers to getting started.
• 📈 Insights into how you work: By being there as you work, the AI learns your burnout patterns, distractions, time estimation errors, and peak productivity times. It shares these insights weekly, with real-time coaching coming soon!
🌟 Our vision? We want to build an AI co-pilot that truly understands your tasks and helps you become more productive over time. It's not just about tracking tasks – it's about guiding you to hit more of your own goals much sooner. We want to make productivity improvement a tangible, measurable journey, like Strava does for running. By delivering insights at the right moment while you're working, we aim to help you make real progress in becoming more productive across all aspects of your work life.
🔧 How to use FocusBuddy:
1. Hop on focusbuddy.ai when you're ready to work
2. Start a coworking call with your AI buddy
3. Collaborate on task breakdowns, updates, and accountability
4. Get personalized insights to level up your productivity game
💻 Users are loving FocusBuddy for:
• Coding sessions with fixed timeboxes
• Event planning without overlooking details
• Essay writing without overthinking
• And so much more!
🙏 A huge thank you to everyone who's helped shape FocusBuddy. We've come a long way from a simple phone call to a full-fledged desktop co-pilot, all thanks to your invaluable feedback.
We're beyond excited to hear what the Product Hunt community thinks! Let's make productivity fun, measurable, and achievable together. 🎉
Questions? Ideas? We're all ears! Drop a comment below or reach out directly. Let's revolutionize the way we work! 💼✨
#ProductivityRevolution #AIAssistant #FocusBuddy
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@adnan_sherif1 Very interesting. I would be very interested in using this, if this had a Notion integration. Then I could use my existing task system instead of managing them on Focus buddy.
@adnan_sherif1 @souravghosh Hey Sourav, yeah we have adding integrations on our backlog. In the meantime, what you can do is just call Copy (in a very unformatted way, just copy all of your tasks). If you go to our website, right above your to-do list, you'll see a place where you can paste completely unstructured text and it can structure it and turn it into your to-do list. So feel free to try that.
this is amazing, and one step closer to my dream AI assistant tool, which is to have an LLM w RAG/trained on my "life docs" (my goals, my str/weaknesses, my principles, my workflows, my schedule, my decision-making strategies); I've been building out this master doc for Claude Projects, CustomGPT, and am still testing more (MindPal, Epsilla, Taskade etc) with the goal of first establishing a very-context-aware/personalized assistant, then toward more agenic things like tasks, todos.
So when I saw your demo, it was like super exciting to see. Especially to see the AI able to add tasks in real-time.
my questions are:
1. do you plan on allowing users to train their AI's with custom instructions and/or upload reference docs? So that the AI can do what customGPT or Notion AI can do now by surfacing the docs? (granted notion AI doesn't allow custom instructions)
2. are y'all plan on building a platform to serve as a hub, like Notion as aforementioned, and/or adding features to the task list, sort of like Taskade?
3. and if not / if you think you'll focus more narrowly on being an effective AI voice interface, would the plan be to allow a public API, or IFTTT, or connections to other apps either to read from (notion, Google drive), or write to (Todoist, Tick Tick, Taskade etc)?
4. pricing model?
pardon the lengthy message. while I'm a daily PH checked, I don't usually comment on launches. but this product is something that's super exciting to me.
I started tracking some of my todos in this over the last couple of days. Chatting with the AI has been impressively smooth. This is especially great for times when you have to do deep work. Excited to see the progress!
Maker
Thanks @varun_jindal8! We have put a lot of effort into AI voice infrastructure to provide a seamless, non interruptive conversation experience. Up next you will be able to listen to music and have conversations with the AI at the same time without having to turn the volume up or down!
Congrats on the launch!
This is super useful! It would be even more perfect if it could be integrated into the devices ppl already have such as Google home
@shagun_mistry thanks for the idea, Shagun. Actually, we want to go much deeper than that. The Google Home is only there at your home. We want to be there anywhere you are working on your laptop. That's why we're going after a laptop-first approach.
Super interesting concept - will definitely have to try out the co-working setup. Do you plan to personalize the experience (e.g. tone of voice, speech style, etc.)?
@bathientran Hey Ba Thien! Yeah one of the features we'll likely add by end of year is coach personalities. So you can choose between someone that sounds, feels and coaches like: David Goggins (direct, inspirational) , or Marie Forleo (softer, constructive), etc
Have tested the app and really love proactive ai for productivity - a game changer!
Woohoo congrats on the launch! Have loved having my AI buddy with me while working, definitely helps keep me accountable :)
Launching soon!
As someone with ADHD, I often find myself focusing only on tasks I enjoy — thankfully, they’re usually work-related. However, I tend to hyperfixate on work and coding, which makes me forget about daily tasks and chores. Do you plan to include integrations that help with everyday utility tasks, like reminding users to wish someone a happy birthday or pick up the dry cleaning before the store closes?
Maker
Thanks for bringing this up @othman_kabbaj! Focus Buddy is optimised for all the above use cases. I realise I have made no mention of it in the demo video or the description.
Currently Focus Buddy is also available on your phone it works exactly the same way on your mobile browser(Safari, Chrome, etc) as it does on a Desktop. A mobile is app is also coming soon.
I do my morning routine with focus buddy. I usually have 5 or 6 tasks in my routine each taking about 5-10 minutes. I start knocking them out one by one and ask focus buddy to check in on me at the end of each task to make sure I am not distracted, lingering around, or doing something else. Finishing the tasks this way helps me build momentum for the rest of the day.
@othman_kabbaj definitely hoping that existing to-do list + co-working Flow helps with the everyday utility tasks. Chores like coding are just so much more fun. One of the big theses we have is, "If the AI understands what you have to do, it can create ways to make it feel more like a game," so that most other tasks (like writing documents) also feel like coding. That's actually one of the things we're planning to iterate on soon.
This is awesome @adnan_sherif1 @yashmr !! I'll be using this to stay focused and boost productivity
I've been looking to improve productivity, interesting approach with voice-first AI. I gotta try this! Any plans for a mobile version that syncs with desktop so I can jot down things while I'm on the go?
Oh, love all the added functionality! You’ve come such a long way in the past few months. Excited to see how this keeps evolving!
And will definitely have to check out new desktop version for writing
Maker
Glad you have enjoyed Focus Buddy @anna_nevmerzhytska! You can now optionally have a movable popup window that allows you two to chat or speak with focus buddy without leaving your work environment!
@anna_nevmerzhytska Thanks Anna! The desktop version has definitely been an outcome of feedback from people like you
@schiffy Ooh, I actually hadn't heard of the Moleskine. I'm gonna check it out, see what we can learn from it.
This looks really cool! Going to give this a spin to have much more productive work sessions, and hopefully I can delegate random tasks that pop up in my head to Focus Buddy.
Maker
Thanks, @adityamankare! Keep us posted on how it goes. We'll be working hard to keep pace with your mind!
congrats on the launch!! 🚀 love the ease of use; being able to talk to the assistant whenever as you’re working. the google calendar integration is great too!
Maker
Thanks for asking @michacassola Currently, Focus Buddy learns what you are working on and what's done through
A) Conversations when AI checks in with you
B) You speaking out your thoughts as they come up.
C) When you manually update the Todolist in the UI
Updating todo lists and keeping track of work is now more like the conversations you have with your co-worker as opposed to a task that you allocate time for at the end of the day or work session.
On our roadmap we are also considering screen capture to make the process even more seamless.
Launching soon!
This looks super interesting! Numerous similar apps but this one is voice activated, you don't have to keep checking/reading, you can just ask the AI.
I'm curious how the AI handles distractions. Does it suggest breaks or help refocus you? Also, love the idea of personalized insights - wondering how detailed they get. Might give this a try.
@simonas_kauzonas Hey Simonas.
Thanks for the question.
So right it tries to handle distracitons based on the reason you're distracted
If you're distracted because:
1) You got distracted by a less important/urgent task: The AI will suggest adding it to your to do list so you don't forget it and schedule it in for you to work on later
2) You're avoiding the work because its very unclear what to do: The AI tries to break it down into smaller chunkcs with you so its easier to tackle
Beyond that - just by checking in with your frequently, it helps you realize you've been distracted for a while and you end up getting back on track.
The detail of the insights depends on how much you've shared with the AI during your work sessions. So the more it knows about you, the more detailed the insights. The less it knows about you. The less detailed the insights
Congrats Yash and Adnan! Excited to try this out and see how it's evolved since the original phone calls.
Maker
Thanks for sticking with us throughout the way @mukundh_murthy! Much more coming soon!
@mukundh_murthy Thanks for the support all the way through Mukundh. it's been a grind from phone calls > phone calls with text > shit website > good website > web app and the AI shows up all the time!
FocusBuddy.ai sounds amazing! I love the idea of having an AI to help stay on track and keep me accountable. Many congratulations on the successful launch.
Congratulations on the launch 🎉. Though I would prefer integration with other platforms like Google Cal, Notion, Asana, etc, I'm definitely trying it out.
@ashitvora thanks, Ashit. We have an integration on Google Calendar right now. We'll definitely work on the rest as well. Thanks for the feedback.