Hey Mint
Showing and moving

Showing you things, and tricks

Mint can point at anything on your screen, and it moves like a little creature: on command, beside what it shows you, and in eight tricks.

Showing

Showing you where something is

Ask where something is, in any app: a PDF, a web page, a chat, a document, code. Mint finds the words on screen, scrolls to them if needed, marks them, and flies over beside the mark to look at it.

Box with a note: “the deadline”. The orb swoops over and looks at it.
Underline, drawn in like a pen stroke.
Highlight, with the note “budget cap”.
Circle, hand-drawn.
Arrow, with the note “review day”.

Try it on this page

The page's Mint can do the same here. Click an example and watch the document below:

  • where's the deadline?
  • underline who owns the release notes
  • highlight the budget
  • circle the biggest risk
  • point at the review day
  • clear the marks

Launch plan — Mint 2.0

Shared with the team · updated today

We ship the new voice experience to everyone next week. The launch deadline is Friday, 3 October.

Design review happens on Tuesday with the whole team. Priya handles the release notes and the demo.

Budget for the launch event stays under $4,000. Biggest risk: the wake word on older Macs.

How it finds things

  1. The exact words, even when they wrap onto the next line; only those words are marked, not the whole paragraph.
  2. Most of the words, allowing for plurals and word endings (“refund” finds “refunds”).
  3. The meaning: Jev picks the line that says it from the real text on screen, or says none does.
  4. Not visible? It scrolls the window a screen at a time, down then up, and looks again.

A picture or chart with no text is marked from a screenshot (mark_area). Marks fade after about ten seconds, or say “clear the marks”. Name the app (“in the PDF”) and Mint brings it forward first.

Moving

Moving on command

Every move is a curved path at 60 frames a second: it speeds up, overshoots a touch and settles, leans into the turn, stretches when fast, and squashes like jelly when it lands. The new spot is kept.

“Move up”, “move left”, “go back”, then home.
  • go a little up
  • move left
  • go a little down
  • you're covering something
  • go back
  • go to the middle
  • circle around the window
SayWhat happens
“a little / more / a lot” up, down, left, rightAbout 70 / 160 / 320 points that way
“you're covering something”, “move away”Hops to the other end of the same edge
“go to the middle”The centre of the screen
“go back”Undoes the last move
“circle around the window”Once round the front window: slow into the corners, fast along the edges, then home
“move to the top left”A corner, kept as the orb's home
Moving

Tricks

Ask for one by name, or “do a trick” for a random one. Each ends back home with a little expression. “Do all your tricks” plays all eight back to back.

  • hops
  • do a loop the loop
  • a figure eight
  • bounce like a ball
  • zigzag like a bee
  • chase a star
  • peek
  • spin
  • do all your tricks
Hops. Three hops out, a wave, one big hop home.
Loop. Up, a loop-the-loop, then dizzy or laughing.
Figure eight. Fast, slow, fast.
Bounce. Like a ball, lower each time.
Zigzag. A bumblebee flight out and back.
Chase. A star appears; it zooms after it and catches it.
Peek. Darts out, looks around, surprised.
Spin. A spinning hop, and a small one back.

On its own

About once every ten minutes, only while you have left the computer alone for a few seconds and nothing is going on, it does a random trick. Turn that off with "wander": false in settings.json. Grab the orb and any move stops at once.