Hugh Howey Open-Sourced Neo, a Free Novel-Writing App Aimed at Scrivener, Obsidian and iA Writer
Product Hunt·low signal
Neo ranked #5 on Product Hunt on 2026-08-30: a distraction-free writing app with automatic manuscript formatting and multi-project management, built by Silo author Hugh Howey after cycling through existing tools without finding one that fit. It is free and open source on GitHub, positioned against feature-heavy incumbents Scrivener, Obsidian and iA Writer. Small in isolation, but it is the fourth free-and-open replacement for a paid creative tool on the same 48-hour board.