Bingo.
Coda’s AI stalled when Their chief AI scientist left. But he was building these types of carefully integrated intelligence features before he left.
I stopped using Coda AI when David left. I switched to pack-based AI. Less integrated, but more reliable and useful,
I am “IT” for a rural volunteer fire department. We have about 25 volunteers and a very small budget. Our previous tech-stack was a white board in the station.
There are two main reasons I chose Coda for our team- the platform itself and Maker pricing.
The Coda platform is great because it is a “roll your own” system. It is a DB driven app-builder. I can’t imagine any existing Coda user choosing Coda because of its great AI and long form writing. If those were the important aspects to them, they would have chosen a different platform.
Our budget is small, we don’t make money and can’t pass on costs. We are volunteers but for a government entity, not a non-profit. 99% of our users spend less than 30 minutes per week on Coda, they sign up for shifts and check for a few updates. Volunteers frequently come and go (we have professional wildland FFs that get deployed for weeks or months, so they won’t be actively volunteering with us), we don’t want to have to manage this by constantly changing their status. We can’t pay per user, it is not possible.
I had never heard of Grammarly until this announcement. Now that I have looked at it I am perplexed by this union and nervous about the future of Coda. “AI” is not something we ever wanted. Even if it works great and is free, we don’t want it. We use Coda for internal communication. We know how our teammates talk and want their writing to sound similar. I ramble, our BC uses hilarious jargon, etc. This is a good thing. Looking at the community suggestions, I am not alone in this thought. Of the top-ranked suggestions the only AI related suggestion is to allow disabling AI.
A sincere congrats on your exciting news. I don’t want to be too negative, but it does sound like your exciting news. I share the same sentiments as many here. The timing and vagueness is alarming. Most companies do a holiday freeze. A week before Christmas this huge announcement is made with no details.
So perhaps I could ask for your holiday wishes of the new combined Coda+Grammarly?
You are asking “50k+ teams, millions of users” to fulfill your holiday wish while giving them nothing but uncertainty. No concrete changes, no timelines, no roadmaps, only the worry that soon we may be scrambling to find alternatives or rebuilding our docs to keep them working and in budget.
I am hoping for a great future for Coda. This includes- keeping the Maker pricing and keeping the core Coda functionality independent of Grammarly.
Just for the record: I am not defending Coda, I just sort of think that is their good right as the owner of a platform to do whatever they want. We may not like it, we may not agree with it, but there is nothing stopping them from doing what they think is the right thing to do.
As far as “This is my right as a user”: I am not even going to attempt to address that statement. I really don’t know what rights users have, other than getting the service and availability that is offered with each subscription type.
There are a lot of users without a paid subscription and they feel (sometimes) shortchanged too, in particular about the limitations of a free account. Maybe it is just me, but I don’t understand that way of thinking either.
It’s very convenient to justify ignoring objective problems and user feedback with the phrase ‘they have the right to do whatever they want.’ Of course, Coda does have the right to determine its strategy. However, if they position themselves as a service for users and not as a playground for their own self-indulgence, then ‘nuances’ like feedback and solving real user problems become no less important than their rights.
We’re not talking about demanding the impossible, but about normal practice for SaaS platforms — listening to their users and improving the product based on real requests.
As for free users: yes, they don’t pay directly, but their participation in the community and their feedback are part of what makes the platform better. Ignoring this segment of the audience is a case of strategic shortsightedness.
If you truly aren’t defending Coda, then it’s unclear why you’re so eager to justify ignoring user requests aimed at making the platform better. Your lack of demands is your personal choice, but it doesn’t give you the right to consider our expectations for quality and improvement as burdensome. Being content with ‘what works’ is your privilege, but don’t impose it on everyone else who believes the platform can and should be better than just ‘what’s already there.’
Suggestion: mash up your comments and ask a competent AI if it agrees. 
Oh, what a brilliant idea! I’ll definitely compile my comments and turn to GrammarlyGO and Coda AI—right after I decide to abandon my critical thinking and experience in favor of a machine that, ironically, can’t even offer basic solutions within the platform we’re discussing. In the meantime, I’ll continue to rely on my personal experience and my understanding of how to properly articulate and stand by my opinions.
Friendly reminder — to everyone — that we welcome constructive criticism in this forum, but please keep discussions constructive.
We’re all trying to understand one another, but that’s only possible when we don’t make it personal.
Now you’re just being disingenuous and nasty. I said exactly the opposite. Use a competent AI and be sure to include your last comment.
I have already clearly expressed my opinion, and regardless of how you evaluate it, you are free to entrust it to any AI for further analysis if that helps you gain confidence in your conclusions. Unlike you, I don’t need validation from machines to be confident in what I’m saying. And if I ever decide to do so, I’ve already stated how I would proceed.
Coda is adding new functionality. That does not imply that any old functionality is going to disappear.
You can ignore it the same way you do with the existing Coda functionality that you do not use.
P
I find it interesting you would accuse someone else of being nasty after telling everyone that if they’re not on board with this change, it’s their fault for, essentially, not being smart enough to understand it -
Nice.
Snipped out of context.
No, it wasn’t.
Piet shared his view that AI is the “new normal” and then described his view of the history of knowledge management to support that. That’s it. You replied and added the judgement that he made it “obvious that if you’re disenchanted with Coda’s new direction, you don’t fully understand the natural transformation of human knowledge.” That was your conclusion of Piet’s post. Piet’s post had no such claim or implication.
I am disappointed in the sudden drop in the tone and quality of this thread.
The topic is the original post; Grammerly acquiring Coda.
Please start a diffetent thread for all this ‘he said, she said’, pissing contest stuff.
This forum has managed to avoid that kind of trolling and moaning and name-calling childishness for years.
Get a room guys.
Or at least go to a separate thread.
Respect,
Max
Happy Holidays all, and a bright New Year full of making!!
Thank you for the awesome suggestions! Just to respond to a few of the suggestions, here are a few that I can verify are at the top of the stack for next year:
There’s a ton of other things, but those were a few that were mentioned that I wanted to call out.
This is some good news. Single page sharing will really transform codas abilities.
Locking down to the column and table levels will really help builders keep their pesky team members in check!
Looking forward to a comprehensive ROADMAP and to see how grammarly fits into this whether it’s browser extensions or even a desktop app?
Also please please please address mobile it is unusable at the moment.
Please add mobile and international standards.
It has been asked for years, and is a huge drawback for product adoption (you directly send Europeans users to Notion by not listening).
If mobile is not going to be addressed also let the people know.
I cancelled my subscription after being a paying user for years because it seems Coda AI was completely botched and really unusable. I hope this goes better but I lost confidence in this tool to deliver year after year. I hate to bring it up but you need to spend some time just using Notion. They’ve nailed the UI/UX. The AI functionality there is a thousand x better. Whenever this launches I’ll give it a try but Im not excited. Great value prop but the execution needs tremendous work.