"I don't want to read this, just tell me what it says"
Today I got the first feedback from someone using the tool for real.
A friend who's doing a PhD read a paper with it this morning, start to finish. He wasn't testing it for me. He actually had to read the paper. He said the translation works really well and he figured everything out without reading any instructions. He also found problems. When he wanted to select a sentence to ask AI about it, it got highlighted instead. The proportions of the Ask AI panel felt off. And he wanted to ask about the whole paper, like "what's the main contribution here?", without selecting anything.
The most important point was that he wanted AI to summarize papers for him. Talking it over, we realized most people don't read PDFs for fun. They read them because they have to. So now there's a button called "I don't want to read this, just tell me what it says". Every point in the summary links back to the original sentence, and that's where we beat pasting the paper into ChatGPT. A friend's younger sister wanted to read Markdown files, so I added that too.
I started keeping a requirements sheet that records every round of feedback and what we decided. I shipped ten versions today. Translation in the China edition now streams in paragraph by paragraph, which is much faster. The website updates itself whenever I push to GitHub. Opening a personal invite link sets up the AI automatically. Translation follows you when you turn the page. The app reopens right where you left off. There's also "Roast it", where users can send feedback anytime and see which update their feedback turned into, and a "Recommend to a friend" button.
What I held the line on today: no pointless settings. I want it to feel as smooth as possible.
Versions today: v0.17.2 faster China translation · v0.18 automatic website deploys · v0.19 personal links · v0.20 version number, what's-new notes · v0.21 whole-document Ask AI, "just tell me what it says" · v0.22 AI sorting for the bookshelf · v0.23 Markdown files · v0.24 auto-translate on page turn · v0.25 Roast it, Recommend to a friend · v0.26 pick up where you left off