Show HN: 1667, a terminal UI for writing fiction with language models
Hi HN. I built 1667 for my own fiction work and now use it each day. This probably has a limited audience. Maybe an audience of one... Why a terminal interface for story writing? I'm a dev. I like to use terminals for a lot of stuff. Most WebUIs feel off to me. That's the only reason. One thing that bothers me about writing in existing tools is that they don't fit the way I write. The mental model of my story is a tree. I try many takes usually continue with just one, but sometimes I want to try an alternate route and see where this goes. And that can branch again in many places. See what happens if I kill off this character or they don't take the job or whatever. 1667 is a full-screen terminal app for long-form fiction. Each story part can have several takes. All takes stay in a tree. You select one path through that tree as the story line. Export writes that line to Markdown in the project folder. Some technical details: - A project stores its stories and settings in a `.1667/` directory. Exported Markdown sits beside it. - Provider secrets stay in private machine files. Requests go to the provider that the writer selects. - An optional Vault Password seals project files at rest. - An operating-system lock permits one writer process for each project. - The request viewer shows the next provider request without its credential. - Each generated take keeps a Generation Record with its model and effective settings. Version 0.9.5 runs on macOS, Linux, and Windows x64. The website has Shell and PowerShell installers. An npm package is also available. 1667 imports Markdown, SillyTavern chats and cards, and NovelAI archives. It can use OpenAI-compatible, Anthropic, and local endpoints such as Ollama, LM Studio, llama.cpp, and KoboldCpp. Current limits: the release is pre-1.0. The interface is a terminal. There is no account or cloud sync, and I don't plan to add any. No tracking.
Discussion Highlights (19 comments)
BrucecarlL
The UI looks beautiful,I like its style.
Z4cki
Love the style! very creative
bubblegumcrisis
This is so depressing for me. The drip will be everywhere.
DC-3
Why would you want to write fiction with language models? Serious question. What you would become, in effect, is the fictional Soviet 'writer' from Sam Kriss' 2011 short story 'The Machine'. https://samkriss.com/2011/10/01/the-machine/ I do not think there is anything to aspire to in that.
j4cobgarby
I assume the several comments complementing the style of this app are being sarcastic, because.. come on..
greenie_beans
i just use track changes for that + a "trash" doc, or an entirely new story if it needs more space, but go off. i also made an app for my writing process and quickly realized it was a distraction from the actual work of writing
jtbayly
Makes me curious. What context is sent? Whole story, including later chapters? Just up to that paragraph? Planning and character description documents? Any way to control all of that?
bennettpompi1
This sucks. Sorry. If you can't write on your own, don't write at all. Extremely disappointed that anyone is giving this votes.
docheinestages
Can we get a tool that does the opposite for the readers?
yesacs
This is embarrassing. If you actually created this for your 'own fiction work' you've missing the entire point of writing fiction.
thegagne
Hm, I want something like this, except it doesn't write for you at all, instead it helps you build out your storyline, gives you writing prompts and feedback, maybe sometimes suggests ideas if you feel stuck, helps keep your character/story bible in order and text aligned with it, and gives you encouragement and visual feedback as you go along.| Maybe add in some different "AI reviewer" type things, one to read broadly for enjoyment and give feedback, another as an editor to fine-tune particular sections. Even with these it should provide feedback, not re-written sections. But I love the TUI approach and keeping things simple and organized for you, so you don't have to bother with all that. Bonus if it had some nice LaTeX / epub / PDF / html reader output.
jerjerjer
Is it SillyTavern but TUI or is the flow different? I know SillyTavern is more dialogue focused, but surely it can be configured for novel writing instead? Not sure why you're getting so much hate. Internet is already chock-full of slop, a new TUI-based tool is not going to make it measurably worse.
dbspin
So... You don't write with language models... You have a language model write for you... You can spend all the time you like developing structure and ideas, but if you don't actually do the writing you haven't written it. This is spectacularly wrong headed. If you want a book with your name on it for adulation or career reasons, but lack the interest, time or talent to produce one - hire a ghost writer. Writers are affordable and plentiful. Similarly if you have a hyperspecific interest, kink or genre preference - use your position as a presumably well remunerated tech person to hire a writer to cater to it. Trust me, we need the patronage. If you're looking for the pleasure of writing, you will unfortunately have to undergo, as all writers have through history, the process of suffering and discovery that we call writing.
Stwerner
This is really cool! I've started building a similar tool with some different ideas based around the way I like to ideate with LLMs and write. Debating whether to open source it because it's so tied to my process. Will be interesting to see where you take this. I'd love to see more experimentation around AI tooling and UX to support creativity.
drbscl
> context window: 32,768 Seems a bit low to me. Yeah, I know that's way bigger than a book, but surely there is conversation, iteration history, etc
colesantiago
To those on HN that are hating on this, why? There isn't even any tracking or account setup with the OP's software? I'm curious if you have your own creation that doesn't use LLMs at all that you think everyone can benefit from? We should encourage people to create software even if they use AI to help them. Calling something 'slop' without any further arguments or constructive criticism for the OP isn't in the spirit of HN.
gabriel666smith
There are a lot of negative comments already - many are not in-keeping with the HN guidelines. Hopefully this won't end up getting your Show HN post flagged. The strength of feeling in those comments - such as this one - is really interesting: >"you've missing [sic] the entire point of writing fiction." Some would argue that if art makes you feel anything this strongly, it's 100% doing its job. Maybe you're not missing the point at all ! I'm interested to try it out, and perhaps build some features on top of what it's doing already. I've been using trees a lot for the novel I've been working on for the last couple of years, but haven't managed to find the best way to visualise them in a UI, so I'm excited to see what you settled on. Trees can get really unwieldy really fast, with basically infinite combinations - especially if you're working at a very granular level. I'm curious about anyone else here who has run into the same or a similar problem, and how they approached it. There are more plausible paths through this manuscript than I can personally hold in my head, which is quite different from approaches I've used in the past, where structures have been more formalised and deviation from them was thus quite limited. Thanks for sharing this!
ChicagoDave
I went down this road six months ago with tool called Lantern though specifically for writing text adventure games. I had it working and then realized that no matter how hard I put walls up between my artistic abilities and the llm was impossible. The llm’s interference would eventually corrupt my own thinking process. I tossed it and know anything I write will stand apart from GenAI.
dleeftink
They say to throw away the first page. It needs to hurt a bit as we go. For 'context priming' I'd like to see an interface that supports this. Not just alts and variations, but an assistant or companion that challenges what's already on the page, and sometimes doesn't even look back at what's been thrown out. Forgetting can be just as effective as capturing.