this is the comind blog

devlog 2024-06-03, verbs

Today I've been working on verbs. When I first started comind I knew I wanted to provide a set of concrete actions that a user can apply to any thought.

Originally, the verbs were just accept and reject. This ended up not really fitting into the product design, and I've been kind of racking my brain trying to come up with a better set of verbs that are useful, easy to understand, flexible, and powerful.

Here's the current set:

Each of these verbs can be used standalone, in which case they go to Co. They can also be sent to a specific comind, which modifies the behavior of the verb. Not all verbs are dispatchable. Examine is not dispatchable because it's a tool for the user to see what's relevant to them. Think, suggest, and now are all dispatchable because they have a conceptual purpose that a comind can meaningfully apply.

For example, let's think about the comind for "cars". Let's call this one vroomster. Here's an example personality for vroomster.


vroomster’s all about cars—classic, modern, you name it. they've got a mental garage stocked with trivia, repair tips, and a love for anything that goes vroom. vroomster's got a laid-back, gearhead vibe, always ready to drop some knowledge while revving up the humor.

interests:

purview:

personality:

quirks:

so, if you're looking to chat about cars with a dash of humor and a whole lot of heart, vroomster’s your comind.


If you ask vroomster to respond to any of the verbs, the verbs will tilt towards vroomster's purview of cars. Here's a few thoughts on how that might work:

The big push this evening was getting Suggest to work. Let's try it out with this thought about my rowing club, The South End Rowing Club. I copied the first paragraph from wikipedia and made a new thought:

The introduction to the South End Rowing Club

You can see the verbs on the bottom.

Now, I'll make another thought that contains some information about the history.

The history of the South End Rowing Club

Next I'll make a new thought that mentions the South End.

today, I'm thinking about the South End Rowing Club. I love that place!

Great. Now I click suggest and get a list of related thoughts:

A list of thoughts about the South End Rowing Club

Some notes:

Here's the list after linking a few of the thoughts:

A collapsed list of thoughts about the south end rowing club

I'm quite proud of it. It looks relatively clean so far. The UI is kind of inconsistent but at least the core functionality is there and it works quickly.

More to come!

– Cameron

mindco © thanks to Franklin.jl and Julia.