I'm a bit intimidated by the long list of things this app is trying to do.
Is it a project management tool? If so, how do I share everything with my team? Project management tools are defined by their collaboration and workflow features.
Is it a journaling tool? If so I absolutely don't want my team in the tool, and so can't use it for project management. How does it encourage me to do better journaling and build the habit?
Is it a wellbeing tool? How well does that work if I don't put my project management in there? If I can't use it for half the stuff it's intended that I will, then it might be of limited use.
Is it a coaching tool? Why would I want to use an AI coach over a mentor or human coach?
Is the AI required? I have no idea how many tokens I'd need to use something like this? Do I need a million a day or a million a year? (When coding I tend to use ~10-50m input tokens per session, will this cost $500 per day to use?) If the AI features are optional, what is the product without it?
Overall my feedback is that there's a lot here, and I think the product needs a much clearer story. The copy on the site is long and rambling and needs a lot of tightening up. Personality is good, but in moderation.
I love the vision. From what I can tell, you're building something that I think should exist and we have the technology for now. I think we need a place to put our 3, 5, 10 year goals, and some kind of process to keep us on track for that. And it's so personal, of course the LLM aspect needs to be local-only.
One concern I have is that I think I will need more than an empty "add Journal entry" nudge or prompt. I think I would want what a real coach would do/say. Something like, "How's the meditation/exercise/calling friends/making stuff going?"
Hi I'm nobody and the stories on here constantly remind me of this old parable. There once was a man who was afraid of his own shadow and who hated his own footprints. Somehow he got it into his head that if he could just run fast enough he could outrun them, so he ran and he ran,
but no matter how fast he ran his shadow stayed by his side, and the faster he ran the more footprints he made. Somehow the man got it into his head that he just wasn't running fast enough, so he ran and he ran and he didn't stop or rest and he died. Not knowing that standing still is how to stop making footprints, and that resting under a tree is how to stop making shadows, is just so tragic.
Calendar is central, but I use a Google calendar which is important to me. Connect it?
Seems like a "dlog" is a calendar entry. So is my "journal" broken up into separate pages, not a sequential document or blog?
2:30 ff, strongly suggest that for your next video you pre-script it to avoid fumbling and mumbling.
5:10 side note, interesting that your personality(?) model was from 2018, well before LLMs.
7:50 for an app to produce such output (impact of a friend on mood) you surely must do a copious amount of extremely frank journaling. When, and in what format? As scattered calendar entries? I'm confused how I fuel the app.
10:40 relating diary entries (reported activities and attitudes) to one's stated goals -- this is what I would expect an AI to do, and tell me about them rather than the reverse.
I'm sorry, I just don't see how I could use or adapt to something like this when I have a well-established diary/blog and calendar, it would mean changing many daily habits and adding what looks like a lot of detail work.
The responses here so far have been amazing; working hard on your suggestions. I wanted to also share that Dlog received its first sales and founding supporters from Show HN in the last 24 hours; I can't thank you enough for the encouragement and motivation.
I like the concept, but I bailed at "GPT 5". The only thing that has given me peace of mind and the ability to journal honestly and successfully is Obsidian, because it lets me own my data (as text files).
Please, both hackernews readers and the author take a closer look to see the cracks on the site. I'm fine with using AI generation, but it needs human review especially for legally binding stuff like the privacy policy.
1. Look at the concepts pie on the home page. The text in the pie is unreadable. Its overlapping and overflowing, white text clipping onto a white background with terms like "topic tagging" that are not an actual example. Its like no human looked at the image before putting it on the website. Maybe just a slip up, we all make mistakes, let's keep looking.
2. I didn't understand the data storage/privacy from the video, so let's look at the privacy policy. At one point the policy says "Do we receive any information from third parties?
No, we do not receive any information from third parties."
Right before later saying:
"journal entries or project-related text that you select are sent to the ChatGPT-5 thinking nano API operated by OpenAI."
Open AI *is a third party*! The answer is "Yes we send data to Open AI under these conditions". That's bad.
3. Lets look deeper. The privacy policy says they store 3 things with the first bullet point (in full) being "A unique user ID number that cannot be used to identify you." You're telling me a literal Identification (ID) Number can't identify me? Why does it exist? That is borderline nonsensical.
4. The video has similar vague stuff saying the data is processed locally after saying its going to chatGPT 5.
I'm giving harsh feedback because I want a project like this to exist, be done right, and succeed. I understand "ship fast and iterate". You're going too fast and you're not shipping an MVP, there is lots of feature creep.
Even when everything looks good, people should be hella skeptical about an app that wants to (potentially) harvest extremely personal daily journal logs. When every page smells like "I generated this and didn't fully check it" it makes me imagine how many hidden problems there are in the codebase.
- The kinda-rough AI video tells everyone "I don't have time to record a 5 min video of my own project". If you want me to believe you care, at least hire a narrator on fiver for $20 if you don't like speaking and/or showing your face. Why should I trust what you say you'll do with my most personal data when you don't even show yourself/show a human?
- There's only three important things: pricing, privacy, and the data analysis / coach. Leading with price is good/solved. What's missing is clarity about privacy. The hackernews post is much more clear, the website is not. I don't need more words, I need to know when the data is and is not shared and I need to be convinced you're responsible. Right now stuff like "Dlog’s private AI model" makes it confusing what's local and what's shipped to OpenAI.
- Even when explained clearly, privacy is going to be a problem. Let me use me use my own model/token/url. It's easy to point to a local URL that responds with data in the exact same format as GPT 5. That kind of feature is 10x more important than changing the color of the background.
- I'm not getting a coaching app because it has a good theme engine. Finish talking about coaching/analysis before going into themes and calndars etc. I don't even care how data is entered into the app, until after I know the useful things its doing. Give a real example of insight that changed your daily choices.
- I think you can do it, and I'm glad to see someone trying to meet this usecase.
First comment: I freaking love your privacy policy. Seriously. Great job!
Second: I haven't downloaded it yet because my itsatrap.gif warning bells are going off about pricing. On a scale of free to kidney, what are we looking at here? Is this going to be priced for end users, or will it look closer to an enterprisey kind of plan?
Show HN: Dlog – Journaling and AI coach that learns what drives wellbeing (Mac)
(dlog.pro)43 points by dr-j 27 October 2025 | 32 comments
Comments
Is it a project management tool? If so, how do I share everything with my team? Project management tools are defined by their collaboration and workflow features.
Is it a journaling tool? If so I absolutely don't want my team in the tool, and so can't use it for project management. How does it encourage me to do better journaling and build the habit?
Is it a wellbeing tool? How well does that work if I don't put my project management in there? If I can't use it for half the stuff it's intended that I will, then it might be of limited use.
Is it a coaching tool? Why would I want to use an AI coach over a mentor or human coach?
Is the AI required? I have no idea how many tokens I'd need to use something like this? Do I need a million a day or a million a year? (When coding I tend to use ~10-50m input tokens per session, will this cost $500 per day to use?) If the AI features are optional, what is the product without it?
Overall my feedback is that there's a lot here, and I think the product needs a much clearer story. The copy on the site is long and rambling and needs a lot of tightening up. Personality is good, but in moderation.
One concern I have is that I think I will need more than an empty "add Journal entry" nudge or prompt. I think I would want what a real coach would do/say. Something like, "How's the meditation/exercise/calling friends/making stuff going?"
Calendar is central, but I use a Google calendar which is important to me. Connect it?
Seems like a "dlog" is a calendar entry. So is my "journal" broken up into separate pages, not a sequential document or blog?
2:30 ff, strongly suggest that for your next video you pre-script it to avoid fumbling and mumbling.
5:10 side note, interesting that your personality(?) model was from 2018, well before LLMs.
7:50 for an app to produce such output (impact of a friend on mood) you surely must do a copious amount of extremely frank journaling. When, and in what format? As scattered calendar entries? I'm confused how I fuel the app.
10:40 relating diary entries (reported activities and attitudes) to one's stated goals -- this is what I would expect an AI to do, and tell me about them rather than the reverse.
I'm sorry, I just don't see how I could use or adapt to something like this when I have a well-established diary/blog and calendar, it would mean changing many daily habits and adding what looks like a lot of detail work.
1. Look at the concepts pie on the home page. The text in the pie is unreadable. Its overlapping and overflowing, white text clipping onto a white background with terms like "topic tagging" that are not an actual example. Its like no human looked at the image before putting it on the website. Maybe just a slip up, we all make mistakes, let's keep looking.
2. I didn't understand the data storage/privacy from the video, so let's look at the privacy policy. At one point the policy says "Do we receive any information from third parties?
No, we do not receive any information from third parties."
Right before later saying:
"journal entries or project-related text that you select are sent to the ChatGPT-5 thinking nano API operated by OpenAI."
Open AI *is a third party*! The answer is "Yes we send data to Open AI under these conditions". That's bad.
3. Lets look deeper. The privacy policy says they store 3 things with the first bullet point (in full) being "A unique user ID number that cannot be used to identify you." You're telling me a literal Identification (ID) Number can't identify me? Why does it exist? That is borderline nonsensical.
4. The video has similar vague stuff saying the data is processed locally after saying its going to chatGPT 5.
I'm giving harsh feedback because I want a project like this to exist, be done right, and succeed. I understand "ship fast and iterate". You're going too fast and you're not shipping an MVP, there is lots of feature creep.
Even when everything looks good, people should be hella skeptical about an app that wants to (potentially) harvest extremely personal daily journal logs. When every page smells like "I generated this and didn't fully check it" it makes me imagine how many hidden problems there are in the codebase.
- The kinda-rough AI video tells everyone "I don't have time to record a 5 min video of my own project". If you want me to believe you care, at least hire a narrator on fiver for $20 if you don't like speaking and/or showing your face. Why should I trust what you say you'll do with my most personal data when you don't even show yourself/show a human?
- There's only three important things: pricing, privacy, and the data analysis / coach. Leading with price is good/solved. What's missing is clarity about privacy. The hackernews post is much more clear, the website is not. I don't need more words, I need to know when the data is and is not shared and I need to be convinced you're responsible. Right now stuff like "Dlog’s private AI model" makes it confusing what's local and what's shipped to OpenAI.
- Even when explained clearly, privacy is going to be a problem. Let me use me use my own model/token/url. It's easy to point to a local URL that responds with data in the exact same format as GPT 5. That kind of feature is 10x more important than changing the color of the background.
- I'm not getting a coaching app because it has a good theme engine. Finish talking about coaching/analysis before going into themes and calndars etc. I don't even care how data is entered into the app, until after I know the useful things its doing. Give a real example of insight that changed your daily choices.
- I think you can do it, and I'm glad to see someone trying to meet this usecase.
Second: I haven't downloaded it yet because my itsatrap.gif warning bells are going off about pricing. On a scale of free to kidney, what are we looking at here? Is this going to be priced for end users, or will it look closer to an enterprisey kind of plan?