TL;DR: I’ve used Anytype since the beginning and love it, and I’ve converted several non-tech friends to it. I’m (really) excited about Anytwo, but I’m worried that the new name and “new product” framing will confuse non-tech users. With the rise of more usages through mini-apps, I’d also love to see Anytwo prioritize more simple UX (like Capacities does).
Why I’m writing this
Hi! I just want to share my feelings about this announcement. I’ve been using Anytype since its early days, and I really love this software.
I feel like I have a pretty unreliable memory, and Anytype has genuinely helped with that. I note everything in it: my deep thoughts, quick notes on the fly, and so on. It’s a wonderful tool for that, and I’m very grateful that such a talented and attentive team is building something fundamentally new that matches my principles of open source, local-first, and developing alongside the community.
The naming concern
My love for Anytype has even led me to convert several friends to it, and they love it too (even with the obvious limitations that are pushing you to build this new product).
But the friends I converted aren’t tech nerds. For us, “crazy” (like said by @kaye), it’s easy to understand (and even encourage) the need to restart from a solid foundation after 7 years of learning. But a lot of people are not tech-crazy-nerds, and to survive as a company in this world, you need to make the switch as smooth as possible for everyone. I’m honestly a bit worried about how this will be implicitly received by the non-tech people who use Anytype.
It’s mostly what the new name “Anytwo” suggests, along with the answers I’m seeing from the Any team, who fully embrace the “new product” angle. For instance:
kaye:
Mayar:
It’s kind of confusing for me, is Anytype/Anytwo synonyms for each other (where Anytwo is just the new shift in the product, but still being the same product)
No, they are not synonyms for each other whatsoever. We explicitly used different names in order to not make them seem like the same thing, which they are not.
A suggestion: “Anytype Legacy” + migration
As you described in the Town Hall, it’s quite honorable to see how this new product “takes” with the community before deciding on the future of your startup. But if, as you say, you’ve found a much better way to do peer-to-peer CRDT sync, why do you seem so hesitant to do a real migration from an old version of your software, to a new one ?
By doing the two-naming thing (Anytype vs Anytwo), you really run the risk of letting go of the sense of self-worth and trust you’ve built up around the “Anytype” brand and name, especially for non-tech users. Maybe you don’t see it, but some non-tech people are now talking to each other of Anytype like it was a brand. But non-tech-focused people don’t want a complex migration or even try to understand why to migrate to a product with a new name because of technical details. In my opinion, this could really lead to a loss of trust—as if, in the minds of non-tech people, Anytype had been acquired or something like that. On the contrary, I think you should reassure them that their note-taking software is about to take a huge leap forward, and that it’s going to be even more flexible and easy to use.
A move that would have seemed far more logical to me: an “Anytype Legacy”, and once Anytwo is ready, a really good migration tool to transfer Spaces data into the new Anytype. I believe you’ve done this kind of one-way migration in the past, and after all, you managed to make migration tools for Notion, Obsidian… Why not migrate fully and 90% safely Anytype Spaces to Anytwo ? At least for most basics blocs.
Your team has always been very attentive, and I fully understand the technical needs behind this new product. Still, I think you’re taking a big risk as a young company by letting go of a reputation that has grown a lot over the years. Some non-tech users may not understand, simply assume their note-taking tool no longer works, and end up frustrated with the alternatives to big-tech solutions.
Personal feedback on UX and polish
On a personal note, I have a small frustration when watching your demo. It’s extremely promising, and I’m sure it will bring a lot to the current experience (the editor ! the miniapps ! the collection, wow !). But it feels like a step back in terms of polish and UX thinking.
After watching your Town Hall, I went back and looked at demos of Capacities. It doesn’t have the local-first and p2p side we love so much, but it puts the experience for non-tech users front and center, with a lot of polish and a very easy setups (for GTD, for external tools without having to ask an AI to build it…). Everything you’re offering in Anytwo will be a huge leap forward compared to Anytype, but if you want to reach a wider audience, I think you also need to bet heavily on a simple UX with easy-to-set-up workflows. That’s something Capacities does very well, in my opinion.
Mini-apps: excitement and questions
Mini-apps look very promising. Part of me is extremely excited to be able to vibe-code my own mini-apps. I’d love to build scrapers to import my Letterboxd data, since that quickly hit limits with Anytype’s API.
I hope installing mini-apps will be simple enough, that (python if I understood correctly ?) will not be too limited (to scrap websites, searching through the database). And lastly, I hope that things won’t get too messy around the different data types that mini-apps import into the database, and how mini-apps connects between them.
Also, I didn’t quite understand whether mini-app data is “separate” from the Space or not?
Anyway, when I look at the reactions, I see both a lot of excitement and a lot of high expectations from this community. I think we have high expectations because we truly believe in your team and your product. Once again, thank you so much for everything you do. The future looks so promising with you!
).
Still actively using Anytype everyday, but I have not watched any town-halls or read any Community news for the past couple of months. No time to back read so I will write my questions and comments here and hope it gets a reply…
It seems like a lot of the team members have changed already (I see new faces/accounts), and I honestly miss some of the old ones (both admins and users), but it’s good to see that the app is still moving forward to improve its features and continue with its advocacies. You guys have come a long way!
