I spent 2 years fixing my biggest daily frustration. Here's what we built.

2 years ago I was copy-pasting the same email for the 47th time. So we built something.

Hey IH! 👋 I'm Sorin, co-founder of Lightning Assist.

This is our first post here, so I'll keep it real.

It started with a simple frustration. I was spending a chunk of my day typing the same replies, the same templates, the same messages — over and over. Not because I had to. Just because there was no tool that actually solved it the way I needed.

Not a browser extension that only works on web pages. Not something that breaks in the terminal. Something native. Something that works everywhere I work.

So in 2023, my co-founder and I started building. Two years of evenings and weekends later — here we are.

What is Lightning Assist?

A native desktop app for Windows, macOS, and Linux that works in every app you type in — Gmail, Slack, VS Code, terminal, SSH, you name it.

Here's what we built into it:

Text Expansion — assign a hotkey or abbreviation to any text you type repeatedly. Email templates, code snippets, canned responses, SQL queries. One keystroke, done.

Quick Access Palette — press Alt+C anywhere to open a searchable launcher for all your snippets. No mouse, no menus, no interruption.

AI Commands — create custom hotkeys that rewrite, enhance, summarize, or generate text on demand. Directly in whatever app you're in. No tab switching, no copy-pasting into ChatGPT.

Push-to-Talk Voice-to-Text — hold a hotkey, speak, text appears. Works in the terminal, in your IDE, anywhere.

Team Sharing — share snippet libraries across your team so everyone's on the same page without copy-pasting from Google Docs.

We also have folder organization and community resources — but honestly the thing people use most is still the basics: snippets and hotkeys.

Who's it for?

Developers who live in the terminal. Customer support teams sending the same replies 50 times a day. Writers who want AI assistance without leaving their workflow. Anyone who's ever thought "I just typed this exact thing yesterday."

Pricing

Two plans, both include everything:

• $5.99/month

• $4.99/month billed annually (~17% savings)

14-day free trial, no credit card required. AI credits available separately as optional add-ons.

We built it for ourselves first. Turns out other people had the same frustration.

We're early, building in public, and genuinely curious — what does your current workflow look like for repetitive typing?