Show HN: New Ensō – first public beta

74 comments

·June 30, 2025

Ensō is a writing tool that helps you enter a state of flow by separating writing from editing and thus making it harder for you to edit yourself - https://enso.sonnet.io/

After 6 years and 2 million words of daily writing I feel like I've learned enough to make Ensō simpler and more accessible.

Visit

iNic

Very nice, I've been wanting to build something like this myself but haven't gotten to it. The coffee shop mode is great! My biggest feature request would be changing the font and cursor. The blinking cursor is both distracting and unnecessary as you should assume that you are at the end anyway (since you shouldn't edit)!

ryanianian

I really want a fixed-width font. I know most people dislike writing prose with monospace fonts. But I'm a developer, and proportional fonts always feel wrong.

rpastuszak

noted, thanks!

I'm VERY conservative with adding new UI elements, especially those introducing new possible sources of distractions, so I might hide it behind a bunch of menus. That said, I've spent ages yak shaving / working on those problems already :)

WD-42

Looks a lot like https://flathub.org/apps/org.gnome.gitlab.somas.Apostrophe for anyone on Linux

_elf

I've always felt that the best part of writing on a computer is the ability to edit while you write, however, I also understand that doesn't work at all for a lot of people, so I think this app is neat even though I personally wouldn't use it.

bayindirh

Sometimes forcing yourself "not to edit" allows you to bring out things which are hard to catch and hide in the nooks and crannies of your mind.

Brain dumping also works the same way. You write whatever you have in your mind, without even correcting spelling errors. It really brings out things you don't know they are there and bothering you or taking space.

You should at least try once. Takes an hour or so.

I also use a similar method for drafting my blog posts if I have the idea, but can't bring out the rest of the text.

Velorivox

This reminds me of https://github.com/maebert/themostdangerouswritingapp

_0xdd

Got excited for a second, I thought this was about HENkaku Ensō [1] for the PS Vita.

[1] https://enso.henkaku.xyz/

ModernMech

I thought it was about this: https://ensoanalytics.com

Enso it pretty overloaded as name for tech things.

Chris2048

Yep, thought it was going to be about Humanized Enso

https://signalvnoise.com/posts/228-humanized-enso

fermigier

I thought for a second that it was about the Enso programming language (https://modeling-languages.com/enso-dont-design-your-program...) :)

varun_chopra

Oh man, I saw this once but forgot the name. Tried Googling, asked some LLMs—but alas, couldn’t find it again. Even an HN search didn’t turn up anything useful.

So glad to come across it again!

rpastuszak

Good to know :)

At least my https://meat-gpt.sonnet.io gets indexed well, including 100s of AI websites who webscraped it and hallucinated product descriptions.

d-lowl

Although, I don't think that Enso as a whole will work for me (I have a very different approach to writting); I love the idea of the coffee shop mode. Want to implement something like this for Obsidian now.

achairapart

This might be useful for a whole browser coffee shop mode:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/obfuscator/

tkgally

I like that idea, too.

When I’m at home, I do most of my writing now with voice input. Would somebody please invent a sound cancellation device that will enable me to talk to my devices in coffee shops and on public transportation without being heard by others?

teucris

Fantastic work. This is great example of how good execution is what really matters - not just good ideas. I’m sure I’m not the only one who had an idea similar to this at some point - mine was called “nanowriter” and was meant for NanoWriMo (RIP)[0] but I lacked the coding ability and executive function to actually make it.l at the time. Enso is gorgeous and… exists, and therefore is infinitely better.

0: https://storyempire.com/2025/04/28/nanowrimo-closing-what-we...

handedness

Longtime Ensō user here. Your update to query interest in a Linux version has given me hope. The last thing someone actively trying to avoid distraction needs is an open browser window!

nine_k

Consider this:

  cat > ~/my-notes.txt <<EOF
  Type here anything you want. 
  To save and finish, type:
  EOF

Zero software to install, no editing except maybe backspace, no selection, no spellchecking, no formatting, no distractions on the screen.

rbanffy

For a second I thought it was the Enso analytics tool I worked with for a short while (as in “migrating away from it”). I’m glad it’s not.

mycocola

Interesting tool. I do something similar when I think it's important to focus on just getting the words out: I close my eyes, or look away from the screen.

layer8

This has its uses. However, I tend to use writing for reasoning about stuff, where you can’t keep everything relevant in your head simultaneously, and then it’s pretty crucial to be able to read what you wrote, even if you have no need to edit it.