The overarching promise of companies working on AI-powered productivity tools is to build solutions that would do a task for you. Some of the early demos that we have seen don’t really fare well in fulfilling those promises.
A to-do list app called Twos is approaching this problem differently. When you add a task, it can suggest actions that might be relevant. Examples include adding a link to a site or helping you form a text to complete a task. The idea is to recommend sites or apps to complete your tasks.
To use the AI-powered suggestions feature, you just need to write down your tasks like you would usually do, and the app’s AI model will check if it can populate a suggestion. For instance, if you write “Buy paper napkins,” you will get suggestions for links to Amazon, Walmart, and eBay with paper napkins as the search terms.
If you write about a birthday or anniversary, the app will nudge you to add a reminder to your calendar, text the person, or buy a gift card for them.
The app currently has 27 integrations with apps like Amazon, Walmart, eBay, Instacart, Expedia, Google Search, Google Maps, Google Flights, Uber Eats, contacts, calls, messages apps, email, IMDb, Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube, ZocDoc, Ticketmaster, and StubHub. These cover a wide range of use cases, including shopping, restaurants, food, music, movies, reminders and events.
The feature works well in most cases, but right now, it suggests U.S.-centric services for categories like shopping, ticket purchases, and food delivery. The company will need to add better localization for people outside the country.
The challenge for Twos will be to get this feature working reliably so that people can use the AI feature repeatedly. Only then will the app be able to extract interest from users who use apps like Apple Notes and have them migrate to Twos.
Twos was founded in 2021 by former Google engineer Parker Klein and Joe Steilberg. The app currently has more than 25,000 active users. It is available across the web, Android, and iOS and is free to use. Users can optionally activate “Plus” features so that they can add tags and hyperlinks, create a custom home screen, take advantage of an auto-sorting feature, and leverage templates. Each feature is a one-time purchase, and it currently costs $2 per feature.
Last year, the startup also introduced an AI assistant that helps you with list creation. And if you want to see what else is out there, other apps like Hypelist are tapping AI models to help people build out their recommendation lists.