Built an internal tool to reduce context loss in dev teams — looking for early testers
I’m a developer building OMNEX, which started as an internal attempt to solve a problem I kept seeing across teams:
We don’t lack tools — we lose context between them.
Code reviews in one place, decisions in chat, tasks in another tool, docs elsewhere. After an interruption (handoff, weekend, role switch), too much time is spent reconstructing why things exist.
OMNEX is an early-stage workspace that keeps:
• conversations
• tasks
• decisions
• files
• meetings
tied together around the work itself, so returning to a task shows the full trail — not just the latest message.
This is still very early (beta, no pricing, no polish), and I’m specifically looking for developers who:
• work across multiple tools daily
• collaborate async or across teams
• care about reducing cognitive overhead, not adding another app
What I’m looking for
• Honest feedback (what’s useless, what’s missing, what’s confusing)
• Real usage, even if it’s brief
• Devs who enjoy shaping tools early
What you get
• Early access (no credit card)
• Direct line to the founder
• Influence over features that matter to dev workflows
If this resonates, you can check it out here:
👉 https://omnex.tech
Happy to answer technical questions or explain how it fits (or doesn’t) into existing stacks.
Context loss usually becomes visible during incidents, not day-to-day work. Tools can help, but only if ownership and handoffs are already clear. Otherwise they end up documenting confusion instead of reducing it.
You’re 100% right — context loss shows its teeth during incidents and messy handoffs, not when everything’s calm. That’s actually one of the reasons we built OMNEX: if ownership and handoffs aren’t clear, most tools just become a log of chaos.
Our focus is to make the “who owns this + what’s next + why” visible at the moment of interruption (handoff, urgent ping, meeting follow-up), so people don’t spend 20 minutes reconstructing state across Slack/email/docs. The goal isn’t more documentation — it’s faster re-entry with fewer “where are we?” loops.
Appreciate the insight — incidents/handoffs is exactly where we’re testing hardest right now.
That framing makes a lot of sense — especially the “moment of interruption” part. Most tools optimize for steady-state work, but real failures happen when context is already fragmented.
The distinction you made between more documentation vs faster re-entry is sharp. In incidents, the cost isn’t missing data — it’s missing shared understanding under time pressure.
Curious: how are you testing this in live scenarios? Real incidents tend to expose edge cases that don’t show up in planned handoffs.
Totally agree — incidents are where context debt shows up brutally, and “planned handoffs” don’t capture the chaos.
How we’re testing it right now (given we’re early/beta) is a mix of real workflow simulation + lightweight “incident-mode” drills with small teams:
• Live capture: we ask teams to use OMNEX during their normal week, then flag any moment where someone says “wait… what’s the latest / why did we decide this / where’s the link?” That’s our “micro-incident” signal.
• Incident drill: we run a 10–15 min “you just got pulled into this late” scenario (handoff + missing context + decision trace). We measure: time to understand, time to take a correct next action, and how many external tools they reopen (Slack/Jira/Docs) to reconstruct context.
• Edge cases we’re actively hunting: joining mid-thread, switching owners mid-stream, “who owns this now?”, and time-gap returns (overnight/weekend).
The goal isn’t “more documentation” — it’s faster shared understanding under pressure.
This is a really solid way to test it — especially the “micro-incident” framing. Those “wait… why did we decide this?” moments are exactly where teams bleed time without realizing it.
I like that you’re measuring time to correct action and tool hopping — that’s a far more honest signal than feature usage. In my experience, reopening Slack/Jira/Docs is usually a sign the system failed to carry intent forward.
Curious: when ownership switches mid-stream, do you see confusion coming more from missing decision rationale or missing current priority? In incidents I’ve seen, teams often have the data but not the “what matters right now” context.
This topic resonates — context loss is one of those silent productivity killers in engineering teams, especially when you’re juggling multiple repos, tickets, and async handoffs.
Often the question isn’t just “does a tool get opened?” but whether it reduces the cognitive cost of re-entry — e.g., developers can pick back up without hunting for threads in Slack, diffs in code, or stale mental state.
From a measurement standpoint, the signals I’d watch first are things like:
Curious — when you test early versions, which behavioral signal are you prioritizing as the strongest indicator that context loss is actually reduced in real usage?
This resonates a lot — you’re exactly right that the real signal isn’t “did the app open,” it’s whether re-entry becomes cheaper cognitively.
Right now, the primary behavioral signal we’re prioritizing is time to first purposeful action after returning (edit, decision, handoff), especially after async gaps (overnight / weekend) or role switches. If someone comes back and can act without reconstructing Slack threads, docs, or tickets, that’s the win we’re chasing.
Early patterns we’re watching closely:
• Users returning to OMNEX unprompted after interruptions
• Fewer jumps out to other tools to “figure out what’s going on”
• Reuse of existing context snapshots instead of recreating new ones
We’re intentionally biasing toward forward momentum (“what happens next?”) over pure archival history, to avoid becoming a passive knowledge store. If we get that bias wrong, adoption stalls fast.
Still very early, but these are the signals we’re validating with real teams right now.
If you’re curious to test or pressure-test this yourself, we’re opening early access here:
👉 https://omnex.tech (early access form — no credit card)
App access is sent by email, and we’re actively shaping the product based on usage and feedback.
This is a really strong framing — especially the distinction between forward momentum vs passive archival.
“Time to first purposeful action after return” feels like one of those metrics that’s obvious in hindsight but rarely measured early. I also like that you’re watching what users stop doing (fewer jumps to Slack/docs) rather than just what they do inside the tool.
Curious — have you seen any early tension between forward-momentum bias and the need for lightweight historical context?
In other words, cases where users want just enough past state to act, but not a full archive?
Feels like that boundary is where a lot of dev tools either become sticky… or quietly turn into storage.