1667, a terminal UI for writing fiction with language models
Details
- External ID
- 49330604
- Source
- HN
- Company
- —
- Product
- 1667, a terminal UI for writing fiction with language models
- Website domain
- 1667.ai
- Launched
- Aug. 17, 2026
- Cohort
- —
- Upvotes
- 37
- Upvotes percentile
- 0.8313172043010753
- Tags
- —
- Fetched at
- Sept. 10, 2026, 5:32 a.m.
- Updated at
- Sept. 10, 2026, 5:32 a.m.
Description
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.
Enrichment
- Theme
- markdown editors and writing tools
- Vertical
- Media & entertainment
- Function
- Content generation
- Audience
- Prosumer
- AI stance
- AI feature
- Project type
- Hobby / open-source project
- Normalized one-liner
- terminal ui for fiction writing with language models
- Manually corrected
- False
Could you build this?
Yes It is a terminal UI (using Ink, Textual, or Blessed) that interfaces with LLM completion APIs to manage a tree-based document structure in local text files.
Discussion
20 comments analyzed.
Competitors mentioned: Lantern (text adventure game writing tool), Command line TUI writing tools, Ghost writers/human writers
Concerns raised: LLM interference corrupts writer's own thinking process, Book deals may be lost if publisher discovers LLM-generated content, AI writing removes skill development and craftsmanship from writing, Risk of normalizing low-quality 'slop' over human-engaged writing, Spiritual deadening from outsourcing creative control
Feature requests: Research assistant that highlights text and provides context-specific analysis and reframing suggestions, Context priming interface with challenge/feedback companion that questions existing work, Larger default context window configuration
Competitors
Other products that read as similar to this one — 60 launches clear the similarity bar, closest 8 shown.
Attention rank: #13 of 61 (itself plus its competitors, highest first — normalized so YC and Product Hunt are compared fairly).
Launched 282 days after the earliest competitor.
- The God Terminal · ph · 2026-09-15 · 2 upvotes · similarity 0.45
- Software Engineer to Novelist: Writing a Book Like Coding · hn · 2026-05-03 · 22 upvotes · similarity 0.42
- Startup sci-fi novel that took me 5 years to write · hn · 2026-06-08 · 27 upvotes · similarity 0.41
- I built "AI Wattpad" to eval LLMs on fiction · hn · 2026-02-03 · 32 upvotes · similarity 0.41
- HTML, CSS and JavaScript in the Terminal · hn · 2026-07-13 · 9 upvotes · similarity 0.40
- Continuity · ph · 2026-09-24 · 2 upvotes · similarity 0.39
- Wenmai · ph · 2026-09-06 · 1 upvotes · similarity 0.38
- Markdown-to-Book · hn · 2026-03-06 · 6 upvotes · similarity 0.38
Other launches for this product
- No other launches for this product.
Same idea, different domain
Nobody's really built a content generation tool for Government yet.