This looks cool! I would be a causal user of this, but $7 puts it out of my price range, even with a free trial.

Though I think there is something interesting you are exploring here —- I imagine this is backed by an LLM API? If that’s the case, I would naively assume that I can get similar information using my chat gpt subscription directly — personally that’s where I find myself going for many of the random questions that come up in my life these days.

That brings up a couple of interesting questions that I would be curious to hear the results over time on (not that you have any obligation to share) 1) is there a wide audience that finds a value in this that don’t otherwise have access to ChatGPT/claude/whatever llm — and value this enough to pay just for this sort of ‘niche’ AI product? Or 2) alternatively — is the prompting/fine tuning/curation of the ai content you are providing better than what a naive LLM user could do on their own in a casual chat, that paying for this directly in addition to an LLM service would be worth it?

I think this idea is beautiful! I definitively would use it for some plants at home. But I'm not buying new plants each month, and even if I do, I don't know if I would use this for all of those. I have only 8 plants I would like to scan and forget, and the idea of subscribing throws me off, even if I can unsubscribe.

A better pricing schema for this, that also combat today's subscription fatigue, would be to sell X amount of plant scans. Like you can sell 10, 30 or 60 in different pricing scales. Pay once, the already scanned plants stay there in the users library. At least, I would find that pricing to be much more realistic and fair, and I suspect plenty of potential users are in the same boat as me. I will be able to personally scan the aforementioned 8 plants today, and 2 new plants in the long run, and it will feel great and fair.

Not to poopoo this, but there are multiple apps for this, some with master Gardeners behind them. Some that are straight up suggested by states for use, based on the input from their master Gardeners.

What makes yours different?

I wanted to see how it looks and what exactly it does without reading too much. Since you're offering a free trial I went for that. It was annoying that I had to create an account first, but I can see how that might be necessary. But now the page is asking me to pay even though I just want the trial you advertised? That's just sketchy. Other obstacles: no PayPal. Maybe this app really is just a wrapper around an LLM chat and that's why you're not showing it?

Edit: I can't even delete my account? This app seems just super sketchy now. My impression is that it's either a scam or build by someone lacking the necessary experience and skills.

PlantNet has a ID feature that is based on the part of the plant, I.e leaf, flower, fruit etc that makes it much better at ID than just what you would get with Copilot or Gemini.

Companion planting, pests, common diseases and treatments tend to be other questions that we get ( as master gardeners )

You slapped together a wrapper around an LLM and are expecting to be able to charge $7 a month for it? Why?

"Personalized care instructions" - An LLM responding in a seemingly personalized way but with generic instructions is the average LLM chat experience. How is this different?

Im kind of the target audience since I am trying to identify certain species of native trees in my new area for a forest garden project and am not very good at it yet. That said I’ve tried these ML apps and it didn’t outperform me googling so I kind of gave up.

Especially with saplings they may not show the characteristics of the mature plant well but you can use context clues like if the parent tree is next to it.

If this is just a wrapper around an LLM, what’s the game plan when a poisonous mushroom gets misidentified as something edible?

I can't speak for anyone else, but the offer of a free trial made me bounce right off, despite my curiosity and the value such a product could potentially offer me. I want to know up front whether this is going to be useful to me before I sign up for anything. To that end, offering even a single no-strings-attached identification, even if the details are redacted, would go a long way towards conversion.

For anyone in Apple's ecosystem: photos on iPhone (I believe on Mac too but haven't checked) does this out of the box; details of how to use it are here: https://support.apple.com/en-au/guide/iphone/iph21c29a1cf/io...

As with their live text (ocr on an image), subject selection (remove background) etc, there are probably slightly better implementations in dedicated apps, but for most casual uses the built in is likely more than sufficient.

Let me scan a plant before I sign up. This kind of specialty app requires proof before anything else or users skip it. I am.

I just use Google lens in the Google mobile app for this because the price is right

From the FAQ: "Our database includes thousands of plant species, and we continuously update it. However, in rare cases or with very similar species, there might be slight inaccuracies. We always provide a confidence level with each identification"

As a casual user of LLMs (Gemini, ChatGPT) with multimodal capabilities, I've snapped a few pictures of random insects/plants and gotten pretty good identification out of the box.

The first thing you should do is point out how deep your moat is, and what makes it different. Your site says its uses AI and an internal database. I would give some clear examples then of how your product has better accuracy then any of the widely accessible LLMs already in use.

I thought Hacker News was legit place. But so many upvotes for this clearly shows it is not.

How does your project compare with the completely free-to-use citizen science project and mobile app, PlantNet?

https://plantnet.org/en/about/

The pricing seems... optimistic? It's not immediately clear to me what this offers that Google Lens/Gemini, Chat Gippity, or Claudius doesn't already do for free or zero marginal cost. Also specialised apps with basically fine-enough free tiers like PictureThis. Look for and focus on developing a unique angle -- and offer more for the money (or ask for a lot less from users). It's not facetious to say someone could replicate the current core features (a few prompted API calls and a wrapper) in the time it takes to boil a kettle. What's your moat?

I used to use PictureThis a lot, as it was the most accurate I tried.

Any idea how this compares? For me personally, the other stuff is useless, I can Google care and such later. I'm after the most accurate, point - shoot - ID app out there.

My wife is very much into gardening, but also habitat. She'll look up endangered butterflies, find out what plants they rely on for laying eggs, food sources as larvae etc. She'll plant them in a corner of the garden and like magic, we'll see those butterflies within a year or two. In some cases there will be an insect that relies entirely on a tiny number of plants, but those plants may also rely entirely on it, or on something else. My point being that except for cultivated and commercially available plants, ecosystems are critical. Much of our garden's flowers are wild. Commercial flowers usually provide pollen, but not habitat, which is why she focuses on wild native flowers. I'll ask her to try the app, but I'm gonna predict that it won't be much use for these.

Usually when she's looking up how to care for a particular plant she uses Kagi to exclude websites with a large userbase in the United States. She prefers websites that are UK/Ireland based, or to a lesser degree, Northern European (using Google translate). Why? Because of subtle differences in plant naming, species etc and wildly different climate. She finds advise from U.S. based sites to be extremely questionable here, and you might waste a whole year trying to grow something before you realise that the advice doesn't work here.

But hey, every British band in the 60s and 70s wanted to break into America because they're are hundreds of millions of English speaking people living in a single TV nation. It makes sense for you to focus your efforts there. And whatever AI is behind your app is likely to have been trained on commercial plants in the US.

Just a note, you have couple of places with different copy

> 7 days free trial.

> New users can enjoy a 1-day free trial of Frondly Premium

Is it an LLM wrapper or not? As far as I can tell you haven't answered that.

Based on your feedback, I’ll be switching to a credit-based pricing model. I’m also looking to build a community around this and add a gamified experience. Thanks so much for all your input—I really appreciate it!

It’s a nice idea but the site says under support so if I were you I’d have wait until you had something to show that remains available before posting for feedback.

Congratulations on getting your MVP working! Ignore the whingers who say it’s too expensive. It’s not, and they are by definition not your target market.

https://www.picturethisai.com/ does something similar.

Wow! I am building something similar around this. Glad you built it. Too happy, but pricing is out of my range.

Why would I use this over what Picture this offers for free? The free trail sign up is really odd putting

Pl@ntNet already exists and it's free

So the site is inaccessible due to being down for maintenance only 16 hours after this Show HN was posted?

I’m not able to signup :(

Sorry, but I have about 60€ in total for subscriptions per month.

I am not going over that budget (despite not being poor, it's more of a principle) and 7$/month is too much.

I totally understand that subscriptions are nice for the seller side. But for me as a consumer, they are not in the majority of cases.

Love the idea!

Is this a joke site? I can just ask ChatGPT.

We need more of this - identification and clear instructions rather than any clickbaity "10 best plants to have in your home" nonsense.

Would second the opinions in the comments that I'd need to know if this is going to be useful to me before I signed up to anything.

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