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Ask HN: Should I pivot?

3 pointssysk3 comments
On HN

Hi HNers,

I built a Slack bot which turns Slack channels into SSH terminals. I got a few signups but the main feedback I'm getting is that people will not use it because it (understandably) poses a security risk.

I was initially thinking of marketing it as a tool for DevOps/sysadmin teams but I am now wondering if I should just give up and pivot into something else that will appeal to a different type of user.

Some ideas I came up with:

1) Education/training. I could see it being useful to teach users remotely. For example, a teacher could invite students in a channel, start a session and show terminal commands and students could participate as well.

2) Interviews. It could be useful as a quick first pass interview to see if your candidate knows how to use the command line.

3) Support. Companies/freelancers that do sysadmin type of work could invite their customers on their Slack, let them setup the SSH connection and let them watch in real time how they fix or setup their system.

Any feedback or advice would be greatly appreciated.

Comments

could you filter out some of the more ominous commands?

syskOP

Yes, I could do that but it's hard to get right. I think maybe I should release a SSH server container which has dangerous commands restricted.

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