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Show HN: Open-source Workspace (mail,docs,spreadsheet,drive) web/iOS

102 points by nathanstitt

by nathanstitt

1 subcomments

Hey all, Nathan here, I'm the author.
I wrote TinyCld because Google in their infinite wisdom decided to cancel my 20 year old free Google Apps suite for "commercial usage". Which, to be fair it totaly was, and I obviously shouldn't complain about 20+ years of free usage.
But _still_, that wasn't the terms I signed up under, and nothing is more irratating than a good old fashioned rug pull. How hard could it be, right?
TinyCld is two things, a self contained workspace like the one we're all familiar with (mail/cal/contacts/drive/text/calc), as well as an easy to extend platform that brings all the batteries you'd need to write realtime web+native apps.
And yes, I used AI to write a lot of this. (really, ~200k loc by one author is a pretty good tell) Some may hate on that and thats fine, I get it. But I did look at each commit and there is a lot of bugfixing and tweaking features back and forth that went into it. If nothing else, I've got some good stories to tell here and have learned a lot.
Stack: Expo (React Native + web) on the frontend, PocketBase + Go on the backend. Standard protocols (IMAP/SMTP/CalDAV/CardDAV/WebDAV) so native clients work as well.
I'm currently using it myself with a few friends but has not been widely used beyond that.
Demo (no signup): https://tinycld.org/ and click the big Demo button.
One-line Docker install: https://tinycld.org/docs/installation Build a package in 10 min: https://tinycld.org/docs/creating-a-package iOS app: https://apps.apple.com/app/tinycld/id6762420971 Repo: https://github.com/tinycld
I'm very interested in any feedback anyone can offer. I've got a looong list of add-on packages I'm considering, suggestions welcomed!

by djfobbz

1 subcomments

I like this. However, I just gave your Sheets a simple stress test by selecting a bunch of cells, then using the fill handle to populate other cells, and afterward doing an undo (Ctrl+Z). It completely crapped out and did not do what I expected...which was to return to its original state prior to using the fill handle, with the selection still selected.

by philips

1 subcomments

The spreadsheet app looks like a really nice boiler plate. I was surprised to learn about this amazing library digging through the docs: https://github.com/handsontable/hyperformula

by smokel

1 subcomments

Looks really nice. Do you plan to support this in the future? Are you planning to foster a community of developers around it, or are you thinking about hosting it as a service?
Asking for a friend, who also enjoys building projects with LLMs, but publishing and supporting them not so much.

by dangrover

2 subcomments

This looks really cool and more modern than Nextcloud. From the homepage, I was a little wary of the idea of hosting my own email server -- doesn't that require a ton of effort due to spam? Or can I use it with an external provider and use this as webmail?

by NBenkovich

1 subcomments

I will try it out. Can agents interact with systems?

by elevation

1 subcomments

I have been considering Nextcloud for a homelab install, but dreading the deployment/maintenance story there if I ever start relying on it as a source of truth. Would definitely consider a smaller option like this.
My biggest worry is your supply chain. If you're mostly using AI, would love to see you build your own library of functions and drop as many direct and transient dependencies as possible.
Nice work!

by atmanactive

1 subcomments

This looks awesome, thank you. Kudos for supporting dark mode out of the box. Looking forward to seeing calendar and drive catching up to full dark mode.

by betimsl

1 subcomments

PocketBase is awesome and this thing looks awesome.
One question, I could not understand if a mail provider is needed or it handles on its own?

by thijsmie

2 subcomments

Interesting! Will try this soon, I have very similar gripes with nextcloud et al that you mentioned. The lock in to postmark I don't love, I think I would rather have it be a SMTP+IMAP "proxy" so I can use my existing email service within the suite of apps seamlessly.

by gbalduzzi

2 subcomments

I have seen lately a number of new productivity suite.
How is the Microsoft Office compatibility managed by these tools? There is a popular SDK providing the compatibility? I can't imagine everyone reimplementing the full compatibility layer

by tom1337890

1 subcomments

Thank you for sharing. Nice landing page and very cool demo.
I was wondering what your reason is of developing it instead of just use nextcloud for your company or for mail, calendar, drive, docs and sheets? I mean at least with nextcloud you'd be up and running and have a battle tested solution.
I totally get the do it yourself approach and it's reason enough. And combining all the apps in one web interface is really solved well. Kudos. But I just wonder what your technical and maybe other reasons were.

by dvirdung

1 subcomments

Interesting. I've tried owncloud, nextcloud, and other similar "all-in-one" solutions in the past. None ever stuck with me, for various reasons I cannot remember. I just might try this out on a weekend when I have some free time.

by FlamingMoe

1 subcomments

Looks promising! The multi-org feature is interesting, and not something I see very often with these types of solutions. Is the use-case that I host and manage it, and onboard my clients as users in their own orgs?

by barddoo

0 subcomment

nice, I was just deciding what to use. I tried nextcloud, but I'm running a php system on my machines.

by swaminarayan

0 subcomment

[dead]

by candizdar

0 subcomment

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