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Show HN: I made an email app inspired by Arc browser

44 points by johndamaia 7 hours ago

Email is one of those tools we check daily but its underlying experience didn’t evolve much. I use Gmail, as probably most of you reading this.

The Arc browser brought joy and taste to browsing the web. Cursor created a new UX with agents ready to work for you in a handy right panel.

I use these three tools every day. Since Arc was acquired by Atlassian, I’ve been wondering: what if I built a new interface that applied Arc’s UX to email rather than browser tabs, while making AI agents easily available to help manage emails, events, and files?

I built a frontend PoC to showcase the idea.

Try it: https://demo.define.app

I’m not sure about it though... Is it worth continuing to explore this idea?

25 Comments
I really hope the OP reads the following comment.
And, Hey, I promise, I wouldn't willingly... go *out of my way ON A late FRIDAY EVENING (EST)* -- as I low key peruse HN on some sh* mobile browser at a dinner event --
This is really awesome. It took me a second, but then I realized I'm inline tinkering with the product.
Don't let these "pitter, patter" HN minor critiques get in the way of delivering a novel product that is currently on the top of HN.
If it auto-went to dark mode, I would've probably been even more "whoa, i get it..". I know it makes no sense, but, default to dark-mode w/ a fallback header "light" option?
Also, for someone who has dark mode configured on their most visited websites, the light is a little overwhelming. Not at your fault by any means. It's just this may be your average visiting user on your app. I could be the only one, of course.
Excited to see where this goes.

By sam1r 14 minutes ago
“ This demo is optimized for desktop screens (1000px+).”
Opportunity missed with me, not everyone browses HN on their desktop.
At least have some screenshots of your app so I am motivated to check later.

By carl_dr 4 hours ago
I think especially for websites / web apps you'd want to start with a "mobile first" design, as is common in web design.
It's almost always easier to go from lower widths to large widths than the other way around for good responsive designs. This, and 1000px being an arbitrary number, doesn't give me confidence.

By bryanhogan 3 hours ago
It works when I rotate the phone

By TheLNL 2 hours ago
Same here.

By nthypes 4 hours ago
And here.

By zephyreon 3 hours ago
And not here

By nssnsjsjsjs an hour ago
Same here.

By endofreach an hour ago
Please I’d rather have a bad mobile view than a blocker! I know it seems bad but you can always just tell the user to zoom out, a mobile view is coming!

By forthwall 4 hours ago
Or even a video alternative for mobile would be good.

By nssnsjsjsjs an hour ago
Well done!
I do hope AI will really allow folks to build products with better UX. The problem traditionally is that the UX gets "stuck" - gmail, google maps, they cannot really change because of user's expectations and the big orgs that run them as products. And building new things from scratch was fairly expensive. But now with AI (and modern UI tooling) the equation is at least partially changing.

By xixixao 4 hours ago
On Android, you need to request the desktop version, rotate the phone to landscape, and refresh; assuming you have a tall enough screen (in px).
If it was like Cursor with BYOK, custom instructions, and the ability to have it automatically draft replies when I open an email, and integration with popular suites like Google and Outlook (even if via MCP or CLI) and integration with whatever else I want to integrate it with, you'd have something special.
It could cater to the same type of people who love tinkering with their ide, emacs, vim, etc. I don't know if that's necessarily a market but it would be cool.

By dr_kiszonka 3 hours ago
> On Android, you need to request the desktop version, rotate the phone to landscape, and refresh; assuming you have a tall enough screen (in px).
That's what I thought should do the trick, too, but for me it worked neither in Firefox nor in Chrome. (I have a Pixel 10 Pro, so the resolution should definitely be high enough.)

By codethief 3 hours ago
I feel like it's been years since I saw the request desktop version button in mobile browsers have any effect on the site I had loaded.
I haven't worked closely with web stuff in years, either, though- so I haven't looked into why. But that button just feels like it taunts me, now.

By mh- 3 hours ago
Worked on Pixel 8!

By dr_kiszonka 2 hours ago
Love the social feeling of UX. I screen through 100s of emails every day and if you are interested in some pointers for potential uses I would die for on our current corporate set-up...
Visual ques that are extracted from the email context -Due in 3 days >> has a timer with a 3 day countdown -Urgent- action immedaitely >> adds an urgency mark to the email
Emails that can get diarized, then brought back up automatically -Follow up when client is back form their trip >> sorts email into folder, but brings it back up when the date comes
Assign emails like tasks -X action need to be done by another person but you need to provide oversight >> tag the team or person and get notified when actioned or not actioned
Best of luck!

By LinkSpree 4 hours ago
> [email's] underlying experience didn’t evolve much
In stories of architecture, this is the beaten path that becomes the walkway.
> Is it worth continuing to explore this idea?
It has to be worth it to you.
If you open-source it, you get to articulate what's important and shift from doing to leading. That's a forcing function to state values that inspire people.
For me, UI is a frustrating 1:N problem, where 1 designer(s) make trade-off's for many users. You're bound to get some early accolades, but expanding surface area scales mainly to frustrating everyone in some manner.
I'd like a UI that settles per user or use-case: automatically pruning things I don't use and hoisting things I do, often adapting use-case driven patterns. (The eclipse IDE UI had workspaces suited to different activities, and Mylyn task-based UI which hide or highlighted resources in the workspace for a given task; and that task context could be shared, e.g., attached to a bug, so anyone working on the bug would see (only) the relevant files or methods.)
The key question is what's different now with AI. Email or DB forms are presenting data in ways you can arbitrarily explore.
But when co-working with others or AI, it's more about watching messages and command streams between users, agents, etc, with varying levels of detail. AI is more about queueing up and automating interactions with a given intent. So in this case I'd e.g., enforce a GTD workflow by making queues for simple or hard, with contingencies on approvals or work, spawning actions that reply, and some ways to correlate related streams. To scale you need completion functions, archives, task debt tracking, etc. so you're always starting with a clean slate but someone can always pick up where you left off.
The thing about email is that it has mostly outlived a bazillion contenders, because the data conventions are dead simple and it has relevance built in, where each message (should) start with next steps and provide necessary context (intent and context: sound familiar?). And they're queued in your inbox, giving you instant organization (urgent X important). Combine it with markdown...

By w10-1 4 hours ago
The sidebar approach is interesting — Arc proved that a persistent sidebar changes how you interact with content fundamentally.
One thing worth considering: email clients live or die on keyboard shortcuts. If the sidebar navigation is fully keyboard-accessible, that alone would set it apart from most email apps.
What's the tech stack?

By izajahmad 3 hours ago
I find the sidebar very confusing. I can not click on the INBOX folder for example.

By kwanbix 3 hours ago
> This demo is optimized for desktop screens (1000px+)
Could reword this: demo only available on...
Better would be to make it mobile responsive before it trends on hackernews.

By hirako2000 4 hours ago
I am user of Arc(even now!) and I really love it. Feels different in a good way. I can see it's PoC, but have you touched backend even in concept?

By joozio 3 hours ago
Not only would I use this, I’d love to contribute if you have a repo.

By jwoods19 4 hours ago
I'm no expert in this niche but I really do like the design of your project.
Great work :)

By selixe_ 5 hours ago
I'd give it a try for sure.

By rocketpastsix 4 hours ago
This is beautiful product design.
I will say, I do wish there was a conversation list when looking at folders--having conversations listed on the sidebar can get a bit busy.

By sergiomattei 5 hours ago