Ancher
Your Chief of Staff for information to help you stay focused
975 followers
Your Chief of Staff for information to help you stay focused
975 followers
Most feeds keep you scrolling — filled with algorithmic junk, drug-like short videos, and endless echo chambers. Ancher, instead, keeps you growing. It helps you anchor what matters — learning your intent, filtering the noise, and delivering insights that help you think and act. In Do Mode, explore both sides of a story, see how people react, turn articles into your own post, or let Ancher watch it for you — alerting you when a real breakthrough lands.
Ancher
👋 Hi everyone — Vincent here, founder of Ancher
For most of my career, I've built digital news products used by hundreds of millions of people in the U.S. — AOL, Huffpost, Yahoo News, and most recently NewsBreak.
We made it easier than ever to access information — breaking news in seconds, personalized feeds, infinite scrolls. It was powerful, fast, and addictive.
But after years of building in those systems, something started to bother me.
People weren't getting smarter — they were getting tired.
The systems kept optimizing for attention, not understanding.
We taught algorithms how to chase clicks or watch time, but we never taught them how to serve meaning.
One day, my father — a lifelong engineer who values time and clarity above all — asked me a question that made me completely pause.
He was ill then, and we were finally spending quiet days together after years apart.
He looked at me and said:
That question hit harder than any investor pitch or user feedback I've ever heard.
Because it was true — we’re surrounded by content that keeps us busy, but not better informed.
We scroll endlessly, but retain almost nothing.
That moment became the starting point of Ancher — a project to rebuild our relationship with information from the ground up.
Ancher isn't just another feed.
🧭 What Ancher does
Ancher is an intelligent information assistant that learns your intent — even when you can't clearly define it.
In fact, most people aren't able to articulate exactly what they want to follow, and they shouldn't have to.
Just say a few words, or a simple sentence about what's on your mind — and Ancher understands who you are, what matters now, and where your attention should go.
At its core is the concept of an Anchor — a living, intelligent node that represents something you care about: a topic, a person, an event, or a question. Each Anchor learns, updates, and acts for you — keeping your understanding connected and alive over time.
Ancher reads for you — distilling the world's noise into what truly matters for your goals.
It keeps watch — tracking key events or trends from your angle, and only alerting you when something truly changes.
It helps you remember — turning everything you read into structured, recallable knowledge.
And when you’re ready to act, Do Mode helps you summarize, compare, or communicate instantly — all through natural, human conversation.
I built Ancher to answer my father's question —
and hopefully, to make all of us a little less overwhelmed,
and a little more anchored in what matters.
Would love to hear what you think.
👉 ancher.ai
@vincentwu800 "Do Mode" have an easy way to export the summarized information to other apps like Notion or Evernote?
Ancher
@masump That's a great point, Masum! I have to admit that currently, it requires the user to copy and paste manually.
But your feedback is definitely well heard, and we will prioritize our engineering to break the solo between platforms, and let users to share the summary/analysis/insights to Notion etc. places that you use.
Thank you!
Happycapy
@vincentwu800 The Anchor-as-a-living-node idea is brilliant — feels like a smart, non-judgmental research intern who actually follows up. Congrats!
Ancher
@victoria_wu You got it, Victoria! I really like your "non-judgmental research intern" description. Almost exactly the thing I'm imagining in the ideation stage.
Hope you enjoy using the first version of our product. Will appreciate more feedback!
Recap
Congrats on the launch! It's really what i'm looking for to avoid be overwhelmed by infomations.
Just curious - what specific mechanisms does Ancher employ to ensure that Ancher evolve effectively with user's changing interests and goals, preventing information staleness or redundancy over time?
Ancher
@liulixin Thanks so much — really appreciate your thoughtful question 🙏
You’re absolutely right — people’s interests are complex, fluid, and often hard to express (or not something they want to articulate). And yes, today’s feeds tend to trap us in narrower and narrower islands of information.
Ancher’s approach is different. It starts by deeply understanding who you are and what you’re trying to grow toward, then builds evolving “anchors” around those goals. Each anchor learns from how you read, save, or act — and uses large-scale AI reasoning to anticipate where your curiosity is heading, not just where it’s been.
Over time, your anchors can expand, merge, or even self-generate — so instead of freezing your interests, Ancher keeps them alive and evolving with you.
Recap
@vincentwu800 Thanks for replying. Learning my interests sounds great, i'll try.
A truly impressive product!
In my view, AI products represent a way of thinking rather than just a feature. They empower users to redefine their own interaction paths — and I can genuinely see that philosophy reflected in this product.
As a product manager, I have two questions I’d love to explore after experiencing it:
When it comes to information granularity, concise summaries improve efficiency but often sacrifice valuable details, while reading the full content can hurt the overall experience. How do you find the right balance between the two?
From a user psychology perspective, what is the core feeling that this product hopes to bring?
Is it “I’ve become smarter”, “I’m no longer overwhelmed by information”, or “I’ve mastered the flow of information”?
Each represents a different mindset — and these distinctions often shape product design and communication strategies.
Overall, this product genuinely helps me overcome some of my daily information overload challenges — perhaps a daily subscription email is the best proof.
Ancher
@charleschen0622 Wow — you really caught one of the most challenging points in building a news product in the AI era. Too many builders (especially tech folks) assume “summaries = efficiency,” but news has always been both an art and a science. It’s not just compression — it’s judgment, tone, and context. Editorial thinking still sits at the core.
After years straddling media and tech, I’ve realized there’s no fixed “right” depth or format — only context: who’s reading, when, and why. That’s why Ancher doesn’t force one-size-fits-all reading. It adapts — sometimes a 20-second brief, sometimes a 3-minute read. We haven’t fully achieved that yet, but that’s the vision — to make the shift of depth feel natural and invisible.
And your second question is even more brilliant — because it asks not just how people read, but why. Early on, I wanted Ancher to evoke “remove the noise, let me focus” — that calm “less is more” feeling. But six months in, I’ve realized that’s only 10% of the goal. The real challenge is: once you have less, more focused information — what do you do with it?
People don’t get smarter just by consuming better info; they grow when it connects to real work, decisions, and goals. That’s the feeling we’re chasing now — not just clarity, but usefulness. Maybe we haven’t built it fully yet, but we’re determined to get there.
Charles, thank you again for such thoughtful, sincere questions — they mean a lot. I’d really like to keep a heartfelt connection with you as we continue building this journey forward.
PopPop AI Vocal Remover
The short-form content on platforms has made it hard for people to concentrate and a tool like Ancher may be useful. Thanks for your launching!
@charlenechen_123 Appreciate your feedback! It means a lot that you’ve noticed the value Ancher brings to tackling concentration issues from short-form content. Enjoy using it!
Ancher
@charlenechen_123 Yes! Short-form content may have its merit to some extent (like relaxing :0), but our world shouldn't be full of that. Someone has to do something to change it, at least we're trying!
Ancher
@charlenechen_123 Thanks for your support. Our mission is to provide modern professionals with clarity, context, and control in a world of information overload. You can learn more about Ancher by watchingAncher Youtube Channel
I had a similar thought when Perplexity launched their feed - really love where this is going.
Right now I’m running into a few bugs that make it a bit hard to use day to day:
Some content doesn’t load.
When I refresh, I see the same content again.
Excited to see how it evolves - the concept has a lot of potential! 🚀
Ancher
@shahar_shalev Thanks so much for your thoughtful and sincere feedback 🙏
You’re absolutely right — there was indeed a short system glitch earlier that temporarily affected how the feed loaded. Startups always go through these “growing pains,” and we’re no exception. But that’s not an excuse — your note genuinely helped us spot and fix the issue quickly. In fact, our tech team felt encouraged by your message — it pushed us to resolve it within the hour. So, thank you again for catching that and caring enough to let us know.
And I was honestly thrilled when you mentioned Perplexity — that made my day. From the very beginning, we’ve constantly asked ourselves: what problems has Perplexity solved, and what hasn’t it? Our goal is to go one step further — to build something more intelligent, more proactive, and more context-aware, so users don’t always have to initiate searches. We believe most people won’t (and shouldn’t have to) search 10–20 times a day. Instead, they deserve an intelligent Chief of Staff who quietly finds and surfaces the most relevant, valuable signals for them.
Really appreciate your trust and understanding — feedback like yours means a lot to us ❤️
@vincentwu800 Besides the 50% discount, is there a free trial available?
Ancher
@vincentwu800 @alan_1999 Hi, Lan. We’re launching a “Free for One Year” plan on Product Hunt — you can find the code on our launch page. Hope you can explore more and share the feedback.
Ancher
@ignora_z Chiwei, thanks so much for the kind words — really appreciate you taking the time to share that.
You put it perfectly: simplifying sounds easy, but in reality it’s one of the hardest things to do — especially when “more” has been the default logic of most feeds for years.
Our goal with Ancher is exactly that — to make less feel like more useful.
Every signal you see should earn its place on your screen, and DO Mode is where that simplicity turns into action.
We’re still early, but your feedback really hits the core of what we’re trying to get right. Thanks again for noticing that.