I am a developer and I always need to manually copy and convert data every day, the below lists some cases:
The pattern is highly similar: copy text and then process them. There are many tools that can help with the tasks, but they are scattered and every time I need to open a browser and google them, they are hard to remember.
My idea is to develop a desktop assistant application that automatically "guesses" what process should be invoked based on the content in the clipboard, the application is itself a framework that supports installing plugins. Different plugins are used to finish different tasks, for example, translation. Users are able to install different plugins according to their personal needs. The application is also smart enough to learn a user's preferences, so when a developer copies a pure digits string, the application recommends showing it as a date-time, and for some other users, it may recommend adding it as a phone number to Contacts.
The application will run as apple's Spotlight or Alfred application and can be activated by hotkeys. It helps improve users' productivity because users can get a result quickly and no more need to open a browser or an application, and then find a tool, then paste the content.
The logic of the early stage of matching recommended plugins is simple: using some text pattern matching and recording the user's choices. I think it is also worth considering introducing AI technology such as GPT, but it is not the key point now.
I don't know if there is any application that has implemented the features and any person thinks it is a good idea.
Please leave your comment or suggestion, I really appreciate your opinion.
Hi @hackerpie,
I'm building a new developer toolbox called He3: https://he3.app/
It does similar to what you described here. Small devtools, easy hotkey, smart search, etc. What's missing right now is the plugin system, and the flexibility to configure clipboard detection behavior. We have just started, and been busy developing it as fast as we could. But the directions are quite similar to what you mentioned here.
We are setting up a discord channel soon. Feel free to join our Discord channel: https://discord.gg/VSf4XGVU
Awesome! I have downloaded your app and started to use it.
You are right, it has some features that I am expecting. But I think the killer feature should be the ability to extend and clipboard detection. Searching for tools is slow but automatically recommending appropriate tools can hugely improve productivity.