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- Hacker News
- I joked a while back that it was faster to vibe-code a white noise generator than to download a white-noise app.
I've since tested that theory on the Google Play Store (iOS has one built in), and it was depressingly true. The slow part was trying to find an app that didn't waste your time with ads.
by yen223 - Loved reading your story. Personal apps are great even they have only one user - the creator itself.
But if only a handful people use the app and it stores data to a single device does the app need authorization / 2FA / login at all as these usually needs a 3rd party service or API (you need to pay for?).
So I've gone a bit different path and cut the costs to about 0$ for creating, publishing and running an app:
1. For someone that could not afford 160$/month subscriptions the alternative is to use cheap/free Chinese models through the chat (not VB code, extensions etc. that needs paid APIs). They are not so bad and generate code that is almost production ready (and free if used through their homepage AI chat).
2. Creating my apps as web apps as PWA and host on my own shared server for 2.50%/month. This set costs for deploying an app to almost 0$ (no AppStore fees, no 12 testers approval on PlayStore needed). Just upload the code and it is live. Everything else is marketing and SEO
This way I've made 50+ apps and games. They are simple but does the job, and the whole process from idea to a final product is less then a week (usually 3 days or the weekend) including basic SEO, submiting to sites like ProductHunt, social media, some basic SEO and link building.
I'm going to write a detailed post about how I'm doing it soon. Till then enjoy some of my apps and games:
https://nonconfirmed.com/miniproductivity/ https://nonconfirmed.com/app/dataset-toolset/ https://nonconfirmed.com/fisher-boy/
by colenikol2 - Side note, why not just deploy onto a VPS and save the money from using hosted services, as well as protecting yourself from when they inevitably go down? The CBA clearly shows that while active development is going on its trivial to have hosted service subscriptions because the AI sub is way more, but what if that sub disappears? You're left paying (relatively) exorbitant amounts compared to $1-10 per month per VPS for life, or less if you have the privilege and wherewithal to self host. It's also dead easy with AI. Maybe this just reinforces how much a personal runtime solution is needed, as stated in YC's recent RFS.by rrvsh
- This was really interesting, but I admit I bumped on this throwaway detail:
> Our sleep consultant's plan arrived as a PDF full of conditional logic: wake windows, nap caps, what to do when a nap fails
Every so often, you get a glimpse into a whole world you never knew existed.
- Before I officially got into development as a career I had a manual labor job at a local business. They were debugging issues in their operations and brought in a consultant that wrote out workflows using FoxPro [1] a Database Management System (DBMS) that was similar to MS Access. These DBMS systems allowed non-technical people (like the consultant) to create quick and dirty forms-based apps.
I recall at the time (late 90s) these were popular dev platforms for regular folks. People would create fitness apps, time trackers, meal planners, etc. using WISYWIG interfaces and visual schema editors.
Of course, the 2000s, 2010s and 2020s were massive consolidation events with winner-takes-all SaaS eating the world.
My intuition here is that software for one is a temporary thing. Longevity has a quality of it's own, and eventually people just don't want to debug their own stuff. Sooner or later $5/month (or freemium) takes over.
- Oh my this is so true:
* I waited for Duolingo to support Mongolian for years, and in one evening, created my own DuoMongo https://github.com/matusfaro/DuoMongo
* I wanted an LLM to mock up a server to speak arbitrary network protocols across any layer (e.g. http/tcp/bgp/snmp/arp) for protocol development/testing/cybersecurity and I got it: https://smotanacom.github.io/netget/
* I wanted a way to inspect/route LLM calls coming from my laptop, something like OpenRouter, but locally running, so I built LocalRouter: https://localrouter.ai/
No one is using these, but I love them!
Also it allows me to prototype so quickly, currently had an idea on a Language Server Protocol (LSP) that compiles English language into a set of software requirements (Intermediary Results) and to generate code and tests against those reqs.
by matusfaro
Excuse me??? Vibe-coding personal software is not a homecooked meal or a handwritten letter! It is [at best!] more akin to tastefully combining microwaved ramen with microwaved veggies and toaster oven chicken, or using ChatGPT to write a letter then editing it afterwards. It's fine, maybe even very good. But it's not "homecooked."Thariq wrote "personal software was a bit early in 2020 but in 2026, it really can be as personal as a home cooked meal, or a handwritten letter."Ugh. The most depressing thing about the AI boom is watching tech people devalue human experience.
by Diogenesian- Things I've built in the last month or so:
* A personal music player for Apple Music with an embedded agent loop, so I can say things like "I'm going to work in the wood shop, play woodworking-appropriate music and keep the playlist full and non-repeating indefinitely".
* A calorie/protein tracker that takes 1-liner summaries of meals, resolves them to macros with GPT5 calls, and tracks them in SQLite.
* A macOS menubar combined Apple TV and Roku TV remote control.
* A calculator front-end to SageMath that renders Latex math notation and has point/click shortcut affordances for linear algebra and MVC.
* A "self driving wiki" macOS desktop llmwiki that imports and digests PDFs.
* A menubar tracker for the little temperature sensors I have scattered all throughout the house so I can click my menubar and instantly see the temps in the different rooms of the house.
* A layout tool for designing picture frames to get cut lists and rabbet depths and stuff.
That's just the desktop stuff. These applications are generally better than what I'd get from the App Store. The calorie tracker is one of the better-designed apps on my dock.
I feel like I'm not doing this enough yet, it hasn't fully sunk in, and I'm going to be building a lot more stuff when it does sink in. I haven't yet gotten to the point of writing my own note-taking application (still Bear.app for that), but how long can that last?
by tptacek