Mastodawn

After 10 days of App Store rejections I'm so excited to say, Short Circuit is finally in the App Store! 28 days ago I started built a prototype of Siri powered by ChatGPT, and was immediately drawn to the idea of a premium-feeling iOS, iPad, and Mac app for ChatGPT. This amazing technology deserves a good user experience, and we gave it one.

Partnering with @Soroush to make that happen has been a dream, and I'm so excited to share Short Circuit with you.

App Store: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/short-circuit-ai-chatbot/id1638522784?ct=social

‎Short Circuit: AI Chatbot

‎Ask AI anything with Short Circuit. As an AI-powered chatbot, Shorty is here to revolutionize the way we communicate with our devices. Shorty can provide intelligent, sophisticated, and even funny responses to your every question, powered by the latest OpenAI models ChatGPT, and soon GPT-4. But tha…

App Store

We're only getting started too. We already have a true native Mac app in private beta, we're adding GPT-4 support, syncing all your conversations across devices, and so much more.

That's not to undersell the app today, it can already do so much and has been doing so much in our lives. You should try the app to find out for yourself, everyone gets 10 free messages to try it out. If you like the app we'd truly appreciate App Store ratings and reviews, they're the lifeblood of any indie app.

Next week I'll be publishing a post covering a large set of big questions about AI we have to answer as a society, but we've also been using AI as we've been building Short Circuit.

This week Short Circuit helped with meal prep, it made up stories for the little kids in my life, and it even helped build Short Circuit. It helped me write Short Circuit's app description, found good ASO keywords, and it even wrote the in app purchase code for me because I was too lazy to read RevenueCat's docs.

Before we go one last surprise. Our back and forth with app review was about providing users with a lifetime unlock option. Hopefully in the next day or two that will be approved and available in the app, but in the mean time you can purchase a lifetime unlock to use your own OpenAI token on Stripe. https://redpanda.club/short-circuit-lifetime-unlock

We truly hope you love Short Circuit, as much as you'll surely love our lil mascot Shorty. If you like 'em share 'em with your friends. (Hint, hint, the boost button. 🐘)

Stripe Checkout

I'm very happy to say that Apple has finally approved our lifetime unlock in app purchase, so now you can upgrade from within the app. We've also fixed up the bugs that were stopping some users from sending messages, which is, you know, the entire point of the app. 😅

Roman Lefebvre Mar 29, 2023

@mergesort shorty is truly the cutest! 🥰

@Rlfb 🥺🥺🥺

Jared Manfredi Mar 29, 2023

@mergesort does the secret key tie to a GPT-4 sub or is a sub through them completely unrelated?

@jared The lifetime unlock is unrelated, we just want to provide people who have subscription fatigue an option that better works for them. We probably will be able to get GPT-4 support out to lifetime users quicker though, but no promises. 🤞🏻

@mergesort I did this too! Is there something that I need to do or will it just work out-of-the-box, in terms of binding my license to my account? Thank you.

@nathan Hey Nathan, I’m really sorry, I know this isn’t a good first experience with the app. On Wednesday we submitted a bug fix to Apple (version 1.0.3 rather than 1.0.2 that you’re using) which solves the issue you’re running into, it’s specific to people who bought the lifetime unlock. We’re still waiting for Apple to approve the update, but since the app update is ready can we add you to a beta TestFlight build for the updated app we sent to Apple which should solve your problem?

Just another rakyat 🇲🇾Apr 18, 2023

@mergesort Is the lifetime unlock for all three platforms, or will it be separate purchases?

@rakyat You get all three platforms with one purchase, no nickel and diming here. 🙂

Just another rakyat 🇲🇾Apr 18, 2023

@mergesort Nice! ❤️

Thickey Mar 29, 2023

@mergesort I didn’t get any free messages🙃

@thickey So sorry about that, we're looking into it right now. Did you happen to be on the beta?

Thickey Mar 29, 2023

@mergesort nope, totally fresh to it. I’m not mad, launching something new is hard work!

@thickey Thank you for understanding. 🙇🏻‍♂️

Thickey Mar 29, 2023

@mergesort oh, I gotta tap the white suggestions. I get it now.

@thickey Ah yes, you can start sending messages after the onboarding is complete. We should find a way to make that clearer, sorry about that!

Olivier Halligon Mar 29, 2023

@mergesort @thickey I got the same and also thought I hit a bug. Then saw that toot so went thru the onboarding white buttons… except for the first "Configure Siri Shortcut" one, bc I didn't yet know if I wanted to configure the Siri shortcut before trying the app first, to know if I liked it and would use it. Alas, you're forced to configure Siri right away to unblock you — rather than trying the app first and configure Siri later. I think many will be tripped by that NUX!

@aligatr @thickey You don't need to configure Siri to start!

Soroush and I just figured out the original bug, it's annoyingly a race condition that has nothing to do with the onboarding process. The bug happens because we sometimes try to query your subscription status (which includes the 10 free messages) before you have an anonymous user ID, so it returns 0 messages. If you force quit the app the user ID will be there, and will fetch your correct subscription status the with 10 free messages.

CJ Gaspari Mar 29, 2023

@mergesort it’s asking me to upgrade before even getting to use my 10 free messages. I went thru the intro, but then wouldn’t let me ask any of my own.

@whatthecj It seems that we shipped a bug where it doesn't update free message count correctly. We're working on a fix, but would you mind force quitting the app to try again. I believe that should let you try it out, could you let us know if that works?

CJ Gaspari Mar 29, 2023

@mergesort that solved it!! Thank ya

mako Apr 18, 2023

@mergesort digging the app! Any plans for Apple Watch support?

@mako Thank you! If you mean a native Apple Watch app I’d love to understand more about what you’d like because we don’t have plans for that, but the good news is that the Ask Shorty Siri command should already work on your watch.

mako Apr 18, 2023

@mergesort yeah, native watch app (similar to Petey). I’ll play with the shortcut, but often on walks don’t even have the phone, just useful to be able to ask questions. It’s a far better Siri. :)

@mako Ahh, I don't ever go anywhere without my phone so I wouldn't have even considered this. We have a few important features like the native Mac app, conversation sync, and conversation features like new models or custom prompts enqueued but I'll put the watch app on my backlog to reconsider at a later date. Thank you for the idea!

mako Apr 19, 2023

@mergesort I get it; I’ve been trying to leave my phone home and survive on the watch. I know, it’s crazy.

@mako Haha, more like I wish I could be as sane as you. 🙂

mako Apr 18, 2023

@mergesort and… already bought lifetime! Thanks for a fun app!

@mako Thank you for purchasing a lifetime unlock, and thank you for the kind words! 🙂