She was inviting me to play a game. Gist is an AI interpreter that gets what people mean — not just what they say.
Open source. Self-host free forever. Hosted service pricing coming soon.
Gist is in active development. Your conversations may be reset during updates.
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Google Translate says "two hundred thousand" but doesn't tell you that's $12 and a fair price. You overpay, undertip, and never know.
Each sentence starts from scratch. The app doesn't know you're still haggling over the same motorbike rental from three exchanges ago.
A polite refusal that literally translates as "maybe later" actually means "no." You wait. They've already moved on.
Type into Google Translate, show your screen, wait for them to type back, show again. By the third round, everyone's given up.
Every translation comes with three layers: what they said, what it literally means, and what they actually meant — including cultural context you'd never guess.
Gist remembers the whole exchange. "How much?" means different things at a market vs a pharmacy — and Gist knows which one you're at.
Vietnamese, Thai, Khmer, Lao, Burmese, Bahasa, Mandarin, Japanese, Korean. Opens in your browser — no app store, no download, no account. Just go.
Press and hold to speak. Gist transcribes, translates, and shows both sides the conversation in their own language. No typing, no screen juggling.
"I built Gist because Google Translate nearly started an international incident at a Vietnamese market. Twice. Literal translations miss everything that actually matters in a conversation — the tone, the context, the culture. I wanted an interpreter in my pocket, not a dictionary."
Aaron Clements
Builder · Currently somewhere in Southeast Asia
Google Translate processes each sentence in isolation — no memory of the conversation, no cultural context, no understanding of idioms. Gist is an AI interpreter that remembers the entire exchange and explains not just what was said, but what was meant.
Launching with Vietnamese, Thai, Lao, Khmer, Burmese, Bahasa (Malay/Indonesian), Mandarin, Japanese, and Korean. More languages coming based on demand. The AI can technically handle any language — we're focusing on the ones travelers need most in Southeast and East Asia.
No. Gist runs in your phone's browser as a Progressive Web App (PWA). Open the link, add it to your home screen, and it works offline-capable. No app store, no downloads, no updates to manage.
Yes. The entire codebase is on GitHub. You can self-host it with your own API keys for free, forever. Progress shouldn't be locked behind a paywall.
Self-hosting is free forever — bring your own API keys. A hosted service with cost-plus pricing is coming soon: you'll pay close to what the AI APIs cost us, with a small margin to keep the lights on. No lock-in, no surprises.
Open source. Self-host free forever. Hosted pricing coming soon.
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