8 ms·

Software for One

• fny 2mo ago
  This is such a romantic idea, but unfortunately Apple and Google are hostile to this model. Of the two, iOS is /worst/ for running vibe coded apps. You need to pay $99 a year to be an Apple developer if you want your app to live on your phone for more than a a week. Distribution is a also pain in the ass even for personal use alone (you can't just toss around an IPA). Finally, so many useful APIs are totally locked up. The fact that I cannot in 2026 extend Siri, for example, us infuriating. Android is far more promising but Google recently shot themselves in the foot with their verified APK nonsense. Google's privacy posture is infamously nonexistent as well, and I have little interest in rooting a Pixel at my age. Hopefully now that enough people can vibe code, these walls will crumble a bit.
  • 2001zhaozhao 2mo ago
    A PWA might be well suited to your needs. Even Apple's restrictive model leaves plenty of room to build useful apps especially if they are designed to connect to a backend (like the ones in the post).
    • fny 2mo ago
      I have used PWAs and online web apps for a lot of my vibe coded tools, but sometimes you just want/need native features and performance.
      • genghisjahn 2mo ago
        I totally hear you on that, but for my one off apps (and even some of my not one off apps) if I can't implement a feature in a PWA, I just learn to live without that feature.
  • chrysoprace 2mo ago
    Local first is a model I'm exploring. Combined with PWA it's pretty good and doesn't need to be native. LLMs are most useful for apps that are Good Enough™ anyway, and struggle with the remaining 5-10%.
  • pornel 2mo ago
    App Store will be the place to download apps you can't avoid, like your bank's client. For personal apps, the locked down stores are making themselves irrelevant. When you have software for one person, you don't want to publish it there. You want to bypass the gatekeepers.
  • rvz 2mo ago
    > You need to pay $99 a year to be an Apple developer if you want your app to live on your phone for more than a a week. No complaints over paying more than >$100 a month in subscriptions with coding agents but $99 a year is some how too much? Yet another reason why “developers” are just consumers that are selective complainers that want their tools to cost $0.00. Clearly as already stated in the article, hosting and distribution is not free.
    • BobbyTables2 2mo ago
      Imagine paying $100/year for the privilege of running homemade software on your desktop computer… Aside from Apple, running homemade software on a phone was free of cost, even back in the days of Motorola flip phones running Java…
    • matheusmoreira 2mo ago
      > No complaints over paying more than >$100 a month in subscriptions with coding agents Plenty. The problem isn't so much the price as it is the loss of sovereignty. It's not your model running on your computer, it's $CORPORATION's model running on their own data centers. They're just generously allowing you to use it, and only on their terms.
    • woah 2mo ago
      hosting and distributing binaries to one person, who is also the person who created the app is free
    • j1elo 2mo ago
      Not a matter of money. It's an outright rejection of the "Billionaire-in-the-middle" model that has been eroding the traditional personal computing ownership model. Just discovered webxdc in another comment here! https://delta.chat/en/2025-01-23-webxdc-no-billionaires https://delta.chat/en/2025-01-23-webxdc-no-billionaires
    • mft_ 2mo ago
      > Clearly as already stated in the article, hosting and distribution is not free. If I write an app for myself there is no need for hosting or distribution - it costs Apple absolutely nothing, and they don't need to be in the loop. I've been able to run my own software on my computers forever, and still can on Windows, Mac, and Linux. It's just the mobile OSs that are different, and they shouldn't be. That's what sucks. --- Related, I've been wondering if this issue will hit more and more consumers as vibe-coding personal apps becomes available to more and more people. Apple may have to change this aspect of its model, in time.
  • Georgelemental 2mo ago
    > rooting a Pixel at my age Don't do that, that's a PITA. Put GrapheneOS on it instead—simple, no hassle, works great
  • epihelix 2mo ago
    It still holds for the desktop, though. LLMs have helped me quickly code new software for lab equipment (total users ~6), a research tool for my partner, and for several desktop apps I just use for me. Two apps fill niches that I've wanted to code myself (one, I've wanted to code for the last twenty years on and off), but have never had the time to do so. Now, the speed from thought to working prototype is insane (less than an hour); it then takes a few days of occasional work to turn that prototype into something architecturally sound and half-decent. And after that... well, I just keep improving, refactoring, refining, because it's so much fun.
  • matheusmoreira 2mo ago
    Which is why computer freedom is so important it needs to be enshrined into law. Stuff like remote attestation, locked down boot loaders and "app stores" need to be made literally illegal. Ownership of the computer should be a constitutional right.
  • fragmede 2mo ago
    Oh no! $99! If you're rich enough to have bought into the Apple walled garden, $99 is nothing. Can't go out for a nice dinner with the family for less than that these days. Yeah it would be great if Apple gave it away for free, but it's their walled garden that we've locked ourselves into. My bigger complaint about Apple is how overboard they've gone with the security stuff, making it it that much harder to develop software for their systems, on top of costing more. But, gotta go to where the users are.
  • rpdillon 2mo ago
    I ran across WebXDC this past weekend, and I'm intrigued. I've built a few apps on it already, and I'm very pleasantly surprised by how cleverly inverted the whole model is (in combination with ChatMail). Delta Chat is available on iOS, I believe. I use Arcanechat on Android. https://webxdc.org/ https://webxdc.org/ https://chatmail.at/ https://chatmail.at/ https://apps.apple.com/us/app/delta-chat/id1459523234 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/delta-chat/id1459523234 https://arcanechat.me/ https://arcanechat.me/ The beauty of the ecosystem is that apps are just zips of a webapp that is self-contained, and uses the webxdc api to message other copies of itself running on other folks' phones that are part of that chat group. Basically, the app communicates (and is distributed over!) the group chat (it's otherwise insulated from the internet). And because apps are just zipped webapps, they can be pulled apart, hacked on, and reassembled as needed for your group. ChatMail relays tend not to retain info - they aren't hosts, they just relay encrypted messages (the platform mandates encryption). This sidesteps all the approval/review processes, and there is no app store or developer fee or even SDK. It's just folks trading apps and running them together. It can't solve a lot of cases, but it solves some use cases (like a shared grocery list, or real-time card games, or games with leaderboards) really well.
    • aryehof 2mo ago
      Interesting. What apps have you built? How/where is state maintained?
      • rpdillon 2mo ago
        Yeah, it's a pretty fascinating architecture. I already have a side project called AppDeck where I've been buliding out a WebDAV server and a suite of HTML apps that know how to save modified copies of themselves back to the server. I've been using it for a couple of years, and the suite is growing - tools, apps, games, etc. My son had written a game like this called "Quantum Chain" that had basic leaderboard functionality. That was the first app we ported: the platform injects the webcdx.js shim, and we update Quantum Chain to post messages to it when someone finished a game with a high score. This is replicated out to the relays the same way every message in the group chat is. When the app fires up, Delta/ArcaneChat replay all messages that are typed for that app back to it, and it restores it's state that way. There's some localstorage caching to make this a bit more efficient as the stream grows. So it's a bit like several services reading off the same kafka stream to stay in sync. I've since ported over (and massive improved) my implementation of KenKen, which also has leaderboards. I then took on realtime gameplay: a card game my family likes called "Shithead" that supports 2-6 players. I built a first version in about 6 hours, and I'm still working out session management (so folks can join and leave games and everything syncs properly). Still a couple of edge cases to fix, but overall, it been trivially easy to bring over webapps to the platform that already exist, and a few hours of effort to create a new one. I'm pretty thrilled with the whole ecosystem, as it gets me away from all the BS the companies have layered on top of the basic "Apps with Friends" experience ArcaneChat offers.
  • mercutio2 2mo ago
    You don't need to pay Apple $99. You can make perfectly good apps that run great with a free account. They expire in a week instead of 3 months (for TestFlight builds). That's it. You can redeploy with minimal effort. You have to reauth with Apple every ~30 days. The reauth is the only part of that you can't have a cron job run (you need to authenticate the keychain). For normie folks, the hoops here are mildly annoying. But if you're someone making vibe-coded apps, we're talking about two scripts and a cron job, here. Or just run Sideloadly, which I hear works pretty well. There exist reasons to be annoyed by Apple's iOS security posture, but "I can't run my vibecoded apps" isn't an especially good one.
    • hard_times 2mo ago
      > You can redeploy with minimal effort every week No thank you
      • reolbox 2mo ago
        Indeed No thank you. Tried this with my personal habit tracker. Had to login again with my Apple ID so often and right when I needed my app it expired (good luck if you don’t have your laptop with you). Converted it into a PWA and be done with it. Weekly redeploys are a big PIA. A pity you cannot use an iPhone for personal projects.
    • mft_ 2mo ago
      > You can redeploy with minimal effort. Can I ask what your workflow is for this "minimal effort"? Maybe I'm missing something, as I thought it would require manual faffing with laptop, Xcode, etc. every week? (PS I've tried the two prominent sideloading approaches, but couldn't get either of them to work on my iPhone.)
      • forsalebypwner 2mo ago
        AltStore, Sideloadly, SideStore all have mechanisms for automating the weekly redeploys, to name a few.
  • ymolodtsov 2mo ago
    For most people I believe it's a good exchange for the value of a more secure device. But yes, I don't really want to pay Apple $100 a year just to run my apps. So I just have them as PWAs. Wouldn't work for many use cases, like when you need Apple Fitness data, but works for me and it looks fine.
• chrysoprace 2mo ago
  I'm building a podcast app just for me, because the podcast app I typically use (PocketCasts) is really good but there's just a couple of features I'd like and they don't bring out a lot of new features since it's not a monthly SaaS. LLMs are a good help here because side projects typically slow down for me when I run into bugs / troubleshooting. So while I genuinely believe struggle is necessary for learning, being able to get over that hump to build something I need makes a big difference. I'm not vibe coding the app though, since I actually want to know what it does. But I can see it being helpful for people who just need something and don't care about how it works.
  • SyneRyder 2mo ago
    > ...they don't bring out a lot of new features since it's not a monthly SaaS. But it is! The Patron level of Pocket Casts is $15.99 / month! I used to love Pocket Casts, but it didn't have the ability to easily add an RSS feed URL locally without submitting it to their index - which I don't want to do with my AI's personalised morning podcast (and that's another category, Podcast For One). I've had to use AntennaPod for that, but it's missing all the silence clipping and audio normalising features that Pocket Casts has. I'd love to see someone improve on it, and I've been tempted to do it myself too. Good luck!
    • chrysoprace 2mo ago
      It wasn't when I bought it and I was grandfathered into a perpetual subscription. I don't want it to be a monthly SaaS, I guess was my point. It does most of what I want it to do and that's fine. AntennaPod is good but it really lacks in UX polish / defaults. I say go for gold and make your own personal apps. My personal podcast app won't do what your idea of a personal podcast app should do so you can make the app that you want with an LLM subscription.
• EtienneDeLyon 2mo ago
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• EtienneDeLyon 2mo ago
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• roundwego 2mo ago
  Can confirm. I spent maybe 5-6 hours rebuilding an app I did in WinForms (originally Java… I forget the framework, Swing or something?) as a web app for a small business. Nothing fancy, basic CRM with existing database ported to SQLite and hosted on a cheapo VPS. Pure Codex CLI play none of that Cursor Orca rubbish. They’re very happy with it. Responsive, dark mode, works even without JavaScript. Nice unit test suite, simple server-side rendered. The traditional way. It’s the cats ass. Additional 2 hours for a couple of new requested features. Whatever! Easy peasy. At work the team is leaning be heavily into internal tooling. Doesn’t need heavy support. Doesn’t need a fancy designer. Duct tape glue and liquid wrench are more than enough. It’s quick enough that it’s throw away and so if need be we can always write a v2 without losing months or years of work. Just enough to be useful, and then back to actual work.
• pornel 2mo ago
  This mitigates problems with LLMs' low quality code. For a single user, the bar is much lower. The app doesn't have to have all the features that work for everyone's edge cases, implemented in a way that other devs can maintain. It only needs to be good enough for one user, and can be discarded and recreated when it gets too messy.
  • matheusmoreira 2mo ago
    Resolves the copyright nonsense too. Programmers want you to review and own the code or they'll dismiss it as slop. Then the lawyers come in and say that doesn't give you copyright over the result. Damned if you do, damned if you don't. Maybe it's better to just stop publishing stuff. If everything is uncopyrightable slop, the rational move is to just keep it to ourselves. So much for the free and open source software commons.
  • eviks 2mo ago
    > can be discarded and recreated when it gets too messy. That's the result of poor quality, how is wasting time redoing an app mitigate itself?
    • scotty79 2mo ago
      You do it better next time because you learned in more detail what you actually need.
  • pydry 2mo ago
    If you want toys then sure. If you want something that, say, reliably calculates your taxes you might want a little more...certainty.
• tptacek 2mo ago
  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?
  • what 2mo ago
    How are you counting calories from a 1-line description of your meal? Surely that’s not even close to accurate.
    • faangguyindia 2mo ago
      perhaps using ai.
      • whateveracct 2mo ago
        uh oh
    • keiferski 2mo ago
      If it includes all ingredients, cooking method, and weight in exact grams, it’s probably reasonably accurate.
• raajg 2mo ago
  the post on BoopSnoop was very impactful for me too! As a software engineer, it's drilled into your brain that you have to think about high scalability and user facing products. I used to have a lot of ideas, but the first instinct was always to build a paid user facing product. None ever got built. But after reading that post a few years ago, my mindset was completely flipped. Since then I've built umpteen tools, services, macOS menubar apps, tail scale services .. just for myself. And I love it!
• botiomez 2mo ago
  Yup! Can confirm, I wanted to blog, but I wanted it to work in a certain way to let me focusing on writing that no single system had, or cost too much. Now I'm actually doing it. I've had an idea for how I want to be social with friends and family (a website, but setup within my vision). Now it's done Could I have done all of these things on my own or just paid for existing services? Yes But now AI can do it for me while I watch TV. I just show up to test.
  • altmanaltman 2mo ago
    I get it but just a word of advice - also look at industry standards like how SEO works as well. Otherwise your blog or content wouldn't even be discoverable. But isn't it like super cheap to host a website in 2026? A lot of those builders are actual better if you just want to write. Otherwise you will have to maintain your website and also focus on writing, which would not allow you to just focus on writing. I am not saying this out of my behind. I have done the exact same thing and ran into issues. If you just want to focus on content, building and maintain your own website can be a big distraction
• tim-projects 2mo ago
  "building personal software won't require a developer's stack for much longer." I will if you are building anything good. What even is this statement?
  • farfatched 2mo ago
    They're suggesting you won't need an IDE and a VM to build a service, for example. You'll just prompt your LLM provider and they'll provision your software. It'll do testing, dependency updates, monitoring, and regular audits. If you want fixes/features, you'll prompt your LLM and it'll make it so.
    • ymolodtsov 2mo ago
      Which is completely right. For my latest several apps I never even looked at the code.
    • tim-projects 2mo ago
      > If you want fixes/features, you'll prompt your LLM and it'll make it so. I've been using the agents since the day they came out. This, does not work. It works if you want an app that looks like it works if that works without any testing. If you use the app in any way that isn't boiler plate it will break. Because you can't prompt ai with a simple feature no matter how small and have it cover all the important cases. What these models do is the absolute bear minimum to satisfy the user even if it means cheating. And anyone who doesn't look thinks its miraculous. It really is not. So, you absolutely can prompt it to add a feature, but you need to prompt it 10-20 times to get the actual feature built. If you don't know this yet rip. And before we continue, also known that when you prompt for the next feature. There is a high chance the last feature you built will be altered or deleted.
      • farfatched 2mo ago
        I'm not a sophisticated LLM user, but nor do I have tricky usecases. Opus 4.5 with a plan mode is enough for me: it asks clarifying questions to map out the design space, it covers fiddly parts, it generates good unit/integration tests. I have seen it cheat by deleting existing tests, since it's single-mindedly focused on the problem I give it. I've not used an LLM-to-review-an-LLM, but when I've used an LLM to review my own work, it notices when there are unrelated changes in my commit/working copy. Besides, all of your critique is how I've heard product managers speak of human developers! And a tool needn't be perfect for it to be useful.
• JeffRosenberg 2mo ago
  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.
  • what 2mo ago
    This person seems insane. You don’t need to pay a “sleep consultant” to make a plan for your child’s nap times. It’s really not that complicated.
    • rrvsh 2mo ago
      If you want to optimise and have the money to spare, I think it's fine. There are going to be people in the world that are better than you at most given tasks, and if working on those tasks is not fun for you and delegation is not a net negative, why not? It's why personal trainers exist (though I don't like them for separate reasons)
      • a2800276 2mo ago
        Its clearly a net negative, though, because missing a nap is now causing tremendous anxiety to the point where they'd rather spend a week chatting with Claude to build an app which handles the consequences of missed naps than just spending some time with their infant, maybe reading to them so they fall asleep.
        • wartywhoa23 2mo ago
          The best comment in the whole discussion yet.
        • fragmede 2mo ago
          You chat with Claude while the infant is asleep in your arms, not instead of holding the infant.
    • 2mo ago
• satvikpendem 2mo ago
  I thought the opinion of this article was widely known by now, as every thread about AI here talks about personalized software built with vibe coding.
  • Diogenesian 2mo ago
    Even in early 2023 people were talking about this as a use case for ChatGPT copy-paste coding. Arvind Naranyan (AI As Normal Technology) used it to build edutainment applets for his kids.
• rrvsh 2mo ago
  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.
  • deleted 2mo ago
    [deleted]
  • ymolodtsov 2mo ago
    That's what I did after I realized how much I'd pay for managed databases and auth. I now have 3 VPS on Hetzner that run about $14/month in total (the old pricing, thankfully). I mostly got three so I wouldn't worry about wiping one if something terrible happens. Works like a charm. Even with the new pricing, Hetzner or DO would be cheaper than what OP uses. And the maintenance isn't that hard. Easier to leave vulnerabilities but you can also do it on Vercel and Neon.
  • esskay 2mo ago
    Yeah Vercels an awful service for stuff like this, paying $20/mo may not seem like a lot but its $15/mo or $180/year more than you need to be paying. It still baffles me why the heck people pay for services line neon and supabase as well. Utter madness imo. If you add that on to something to get rid of OP could've saved $540 per year.
  • assimpleaspossi 2mo ago
    Almost $2000 a year is beyond ridiculous and would make me question the author's ability to write software on his own (but I'd get downvoted for insulting him or not realizing some kind of time savings they help with). I spend $2/month on my VPS, write my code in HTML/CSS/Javascript with Posgresql along with other Unix (FreeBSD) tools and the standard languages and get similar things done.
• faangguyindia 2mo ago
  Many people build calorie / macro tracker like OP but they don't build maintenance calorie tracker. Your app tracks calorie intake, doesn't keep track of total calorie burn of the day (maintenance calorie tracking) And no, calorie burn from watch is not good enough! >A 2020 systematic review by Fuller et al. found that consumer wearables often perform poorly at estimating energy expenditure, even when they measure steps and heart rate reasonably well. Across brands like Apple, Garmin, Polar, and Withings, calorie burn estimates frequently showed substantial error, often in the 15–40% range and sometimes exceeding 50%. Wearables can still be useful for tracking trends, but not for precise calorie calculations. Here's completely free one i built, https://macrocodex.app/ https://macrocodex.app/ 16,000+ users already.
  • EEBio 2mo ago
    If the smartwatch data isn’t precise enough to estimate energy expenditure, what data does your website use that is so much better? Also, how much better it is? How do we even know it’s better? (I am not necessarily doubting it’s better, I am just interested in metrics you used)
    • faangguyindia 2mo ago
      Method is explained here: https://macrocodex.app/knowledge/rethink/adaptive-tdee/ https://macrocodex.app/knowledge/rethink/adaptive-tdee/ The actual method used in the app is a bit more complex than this, but I think this explanation is good enough to convey the core idea for now. Later, I plan to publish a more detailed write up. >Also, how much better it is? How do we even know it’s better? Very simple! If a car salesman tells you that they use space technology in the engine to improve fuel efficiency, how do you know whether they are telling the truth? You fill the tank with a specific amount of fuel and drive. If the fuel lasts much longer, you know the technology is actually improving efficiency. The same idea applies to MacroCodex. When you eat at maintenance you do not gain weight, when you eat above maintenance you gain weight, when you eat below it, you lose weight. If you set a goal in the app to gain 1 lb per week and consistently eat the calorie target prescribed by the app, then your actual weight gain should match that rate. If it does, you know the maintenance calories calculated by the app are accurate. You can choose to set "maintain" or "lose" or "gain".
• tom2948329494 2mo ago
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• ifh-hn 2mo ago
  My first thoughts on reading the article and even now after is: sleep consultant?
• CalRobert 2mo ago
  “ The app took him a week to build, half of it lost to code-signing purgatory” Maybe Google is eliminating sideloading to force people to not make their own apk’s now that it’s easy to do so.
• __rito__ 2mo ago
  Agree with the general spirit of the piece, but the examples that he gave create more problem than solving problems. > A fitness app that sizes my smoothie to that morning's run I don't feel I need more than the phone's calculator app for this particular problem. Other examples could be solved by the Notes app, I feel. I deliberately avoid creating new "apps", and make do with existing apps and solutions and create workflows rather than apps. I write scripts, add features to scripts and understand all lines of them. There are very few exceptions to this, like, I vibe coded a visual PDF cropper app that also handles scaling, merging in a GUI built with PyQt and GTK. Having entire apps create maintenance burden and headaches.
  • hard_times 2mo ago
    To me it just sounds like we need an even higher level language for these sort of 'software for one' apps. There is still tons of boilerplate. Declarative is king.
• mac-mc 2mo ago
  Funny he said "Good APIs matter more than ever". My software for one these past few weeks has been my mega archive project, making an APIs & UIs out of 50+ providers whether they like it or not. I'm calling it clump chart. I even got into my turbotax TaxML files.
• hamdouni 2mo ago
  Genuine question: how will this "software for one" outlive its creator? I realize that if it were truly intended for just one user, it wouldn't matter, but in this specific case, the software is used by family members, so...
  • a2800276 2mo ago
    The "one" in "for one" likely is the creator, so it really doesn't need to.
  • swiftcoder 2mo ago
    Yeah, this is a fear I keep bumping up against. Even relatively simple things like setting up pihole for my home network has pretty severe bus factor - if I get hit by a bus, no one else in the family would be able to fix the internet, short of chucking all the current hardware and asking the ISP tech to set up from scratch...
• chr15m 2mo ago
  Clay Shirkey has a great article from 2004 about this called Situated Software. https://devonzuegel.com/situated-software https://devonzuegel.com/situated-software
• ymolodtsov 2mo ago
  Same thoughts here. About four years ago I started building an RSS reader that was supposed to use an algorithm. The problem is, I didn't code in years and wasn't familiar with the modern web stack. I had to drop it, although was still able to sell the domain I got for $500 (nice). And then, with Codex and Claude, I finally built it this year and enjoy it every day, along with 30 other strangers, since I made it public. It's a great feeling. I now finally have an app that I use to save both links and articles to read, sort of in-between of Readwise Reader and Raindrop (and it does sync with Readwise). I write my blog posts in a little browser-based note-taking app with sharing. It's minimal and looks great but has all I need. I built a few Chrome extensions that I really wanted but couldn't find (well, couldn't find beautiful options). I don't think everyone will do this. And getting the audience is a major pain, always has been, but now most of your early adopters just go and build their own things just like you. I'll still take it.
  • LtWorf 2mo ago
    wait for the hackers to find it
    • ymolodtsov 2mo ago
      Find out what? These apps are as protected as they could be. Always could be a zero-day or a package vulnerability but that's the same for everyone.
      • LtWorf 2mo ago
        Every single person with no experience thinks that.
        • ymolodtsov 2mo ago
          Your replies so far haven't been useful.
  • eliasson 2mo ago
    This reader of yours sounds interesting! Is it public?
• swiftcoder 2mo ago
  > sleep consultant I'm not sure I believe this is a real job. Do we really need to pay consultants to tell us that babies need naps?
  • te_chris 2mo ago
    No, it’s a plague on anxious, over-optimised middle class parents. The idea that someone can send over a schedule in advance is pure voodoo. Much like huckleberry, the ml app that makes new parents insane over wake windows.
  • a2800276 2mo ago
    To me it sounded like they're paying someone to plan not only their kids' naps but also their own AND spend their spare time writing an app to help keep up with the recommended nap schedule. Just take a fucking nap, maybe after going outside for a walk in the park.
    • wartywhoa23 2mo ago
      Gosh, going outside for a walk in the park doesn't buy conversion for AI companies, that's such a luddite thing to propose to someone who's got skin in the game.
  • MagicMoonlight 2mo ago
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  • dhotson 2mo ago
    Unrelated, but I highly recommend this short sci-fi-ish story by Robin Sloan :) https://www.robinsloan.com/stories/sleep-consultant/ https://www.robinsloan.com/stories/sleep-consultant/
    • Atreiden 2mo ago
      Thanks for sharing, this was lovely
  • 2mo ago
• croisillon 2mo ago
  honestly happy for him, but i wish he would have written the article before posting it
• deleted 2mo ago
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• p2detar 2mo ago
  Building software steadily becomes accessible to non-developers. A freelance client I had now does most things alone with chatgpt. As a developer I have less and less the urge to build software. Instead I lately started doing more hardware stuff - flashing devices, setting up RPis and antennas, learning to solder. I hope I can keep my software dev job until retirement, but I‘m a bit pessimistic on that matter.
  • ShinyLeftPad 2mo ago
    They basically inserted themselves between clients and developers. A few corporations ingested developer work and offered clients to pay a fraction, not giving anything back to developers.
    • MagicMoonlight 2mo ago
      [dead]
    • p2detar 2mo ago
      Indeed, but it probably won‘t get any easier for us devs when clients also get easier access to open weight LLMs. I mean from personal experience 40 tok/s on an M3 pro with gpt-oss-20b holds up quite well for lots of tasks. Thinks are changing so fast.
      • ShinyLeftPad 2mo ago
        Probably zero of your clients would run them locally (you might, but this is a tiny minority). Also they will never be as good as commercial models. And legality/ethics is still questionable if it is trained on GPL code but is offered under AL2.
• deleted 2mo ago
  [deleted]
• stared 2mo ago
  Apps for one, but when I think there is even a mild potential others may use it, I share. * Doom launcher and Megawad Steam-like library for macOS: https://github.com/stared/rusted-doom-launcher https://github.com/stared/rusted-doom-launcher * TRMNL X e-ink screen vibe coding usage screen: https://github.com/stared/trmnl-x-claude-codex https://github.com/stared/trmnl-x-claude-codex * And weather in Warsaw: https://github.com/stared/trmnl-x-weather-warsaw https://github.com/stared/trmnl-x-weather-warsaw (here's location is hardcoded, so the expected use is fork and vive code to match both your location and visual preferences) * Image upscaling script for a thermal camera, https://github.com/stared/thermal-upscale https://github.com/stared/thermal-upscale And many, many others I did not share, mostly because they were too peculiar, really unlikely to be useful for anyone else than myself.
• cryo32 2mo ago
  Been doing this sort of stuff for 30 years. Mostly in Excel. Hasn’t cost me anything.
• a_c 2mo ago
  Writing code with real use is very different from writing code for the sake of writing (looks cool, sounds cool). Writing code with one user is the base case of a “why am I writing this” recursion - because I use it. Every action leads to next insight. For me, a browser extension that provides a table of content to chat interfaces because I always need to scroll up and down to read preview queries. Writing browser extension leads me to writing a RSS reader navigating with only keyboard. Writing RSS reader leads me to writing a virtual book shelf that visualize Goodreads record on a virtual 3D bookshelf. Writing virtual book shelf lead me to making a virtual climbing gym where I scan my local climbing gym into 3D model where I can map climbing videos on it. And it is just one chain
  • coriocactus 2mo ago
    Especially when the primary motivation is not specifically monetization I find that I'm less likely to be discouraged when an action leads to an uncomfortable insight of "no one else would use this"
• lloydatkinson 2mo ago
  The article is also obviously written by Claude too. I’m starting to hate the internet.
  • xyzelement 2mo ago
    Who cares? Is the article interesting/ relevant or not? If not, doesn't matter if it's ai slop or human slop. If yes the. It's good that the author could use AI to get it out vs not writing it.
    • lloydatkinson 2mo ago
      I care.
• nicbou 2mo ago
  I think that also extends to "software for few". It lowered the bar for building calculators and widgets for my users. Instead of lengthy explanations, I can just build little calculators and decision trees for my small user base. Maggie Appleton said that it would enable "barefoot doctors" to bring helpful software to small communities. I have seen a lot of those underserved groups in my dev career. I am not too happy about AI killing my business and inserting slop into every aspect of my life, but I am very hopeful about that aspect. --- I also made some apps for one in the pre-AI days, and now I can quickly add features I've been procrastinating for ages. I can finally process data that I've been collecting but had no time to write code about.
• mattjhall 2mo ago
  I think it's sad that an article that to me was about sacrificing your own time to bring your family together has turned into sacrificing nothing to hyper optimise your life.
• afro88 2mo ago
  I've got a few of these. There's one in particular that I use quite often and have for about a year, vibed for myself: it's a chat interface that walks you through processing an emotional or difficult moment, following a process / workflow. Supports Martin Seligman's ABCDE and Byron Katie's "The Work". Two techniques that I found most useful to improve my thinking and responses to difficult situations. You converse with it, and it leads you through the stages of the selected flow. More than a system prompt - it tracks and progresses through the workflow at the right times, and you download a consistent pdf of key details from the "session" at the end for your records. The thing is, I can't sell it. I don't even think I can open source it. It's mental health (minefield of legal and ethical issues), and would probably breach copyright, trademark etc law. Yet it's very useful to me. I guess it's the equivalent of making a system to do these things at home, like prompt cards or key points taken from the books, with a well formatted note taking structure. Except it's way easier because you just chat like you're talking to someone. I would never have spent time building this. But now it's so cheap and easy to do.
• ragebol 2mo ago
  Since the advent of these coding assistants, I gathered a list of software tool ideas I usually discarded due to lack of time. No more! Main one on that list: grocery assistant, with a barcode scanner for empty packaging to order new stuff, inventory management, coupling to recipes and most importantly: automatic ordering for delivery. There's existing stuff for this but making a personal extension to this should be very well possible too.
• sylware 2mo ago
  It is never really for "One". If it is open source and published, It may be use by others... not to mention coding AI ML (Machine Learing), then for many. I have written so much software for one... I cannot recall everything. I use some of it daily: - I have my custom elf(glibc)/linux distro - I use my own ffmpeg based x11 media player (will have an update for wayland). - Since the "geniuses" at gogol blocked all accounts not using whatwg cartel web engines and blocked all self-hosted SMTP servers (I do not pay the DNS mob, then IP literals, which is stronger than SPF) to exchange with gmail.com users (now prisoners), I have my very own simple noscript/basic HTML servers (messaging, file transfer, openstreetmap browsing, etc). Unfortunately, most are C written from linux instead of assembly (at least, I removed most of the time the libc dependency with direct syscall programming). IPv6 is making everything internet software muuuuuuch easier to implement: I am lurking at an IPv6 only, super idiotic and real time voice/video/text/file transfer protocol, probably based on SIP (the main issue are randomly generated IPv6 addresses from mobile internet, which may require a mini-server for IPv6 address exchange, BAAAAAAAD!). - Ofc, I still have my own minimal SMTP server (and a SMTP client to send emails), because there are still honnest people on internet. mutt forever. - I am trying to build a RCS for linux, aka a Reduced Command Set with near direct hardwiring to linux syscalls. I lose comfort, but knowing that I removed giga tons of bloat feels so much satisfying it is worth it by light years. I will have to code my own command shell one day. I still have C code since I currently need portability on IP-LOCKED ISAs (arm and x86-64). But I wish for RISC-V to be a success, namely as a modern, very often hitting the 'sweet spot' in technical design compromises, NON-IP-LOCKED ISA. I am writting much software in RISC-V assembly now... which I run on x86-64 with a small interpreter (written in x86-64 assembly)... trying to fix the bloat and kludge from corpo-like open source software (including the SDK). Right now, I am writting my own wayland compositor using that framework. I was not expecting window management to be a bazillion of little things to do everywhere. And even if a wayland compositor is several orders of magnitude smaller and leaner than a x11 server, it ain't that a small project (ofc, I implemented myself the wayland wire protocol, no external libs here). In my 'trying to fix the bloat and kludge' from corpo-like open source, I force myself to use my own exe/dynamic lib format for modern hardware (so lean, a simple RFC will be enough, and no more loader bloat/kludge). But I am scared at the abominations which are all the requirements of classic computer languages to run: I would like a mesa vulkan driver, but there is still c++ (super BAD) in there which makes porting to an alternative dynamic lib format a living hell, non trivial C won't be that easy neither (for instance the abomination of the ISO __thread keyword, amazing bright minds there). Taking perspective from that, I wonder why anybody sane would add on top of that a big runtime requirement?? And what people doing that have to keep in mind: IRL can put a violent stop to all of this.
• Havoc 2mo ago
  That's literally 100% of my vibecoding...writing software I need
• cyanregiment 2mo ago
  There’s software for one and then there’s “Apple Watch type shit” which is tech that is highly personal and seems useful on paper but is absurdly extraneous - like calorie tracking, step counting, and being able to check things that are already easy to check. Not for me. I like software for people, and in terms of affordances and utility mass buy-in and standardization is part of the point. I can invent a new kind of key. I could…
• morganf 2mo ago
  In my line of work, we convert words to numbers, and we have a codex that defines meanings for the numbers; that way, we can write publicly but (in making sure we choose words that, when converted to numbers, convert to numbers that have the second meaning we want) our public writing will only be understood on this second level with this second meaning only by those who use this system and codex. It's something like a form of real/human language cryptography: write for the world to see but only those who know the key will see what we're also saying to them. This was traditionally very hard to do for anyone who didn't grow up in a family that did this naturally from when they were kids. And I vibe-coded tools to make it easy. It's been amazingly helpful and worth its weight in gold :)
  • alchemist1e9 2mo ago
    What?
  • flymasterv 2mo ago
    “Line of work”? I’m fascinated by this. Diner waitress? Cop? Carnie? Cockney bingo caller?
    • morganf 2mo ago
      Hahaha! I love the list! Lots of professions have methods to send messages that simultaneously speak to various different audiences (while the bigger audiences don't know there are also other audiences as well, who will derive other meanings from the same message). The world is an interesting place full of surprises - and even to smart people, the text or image you are seeing might have meanings invisible to you, since you're not the intended audience for the secondary meaning.
  • aquariusDue 2mo ago
    > It's something like a form of real/human language cryptography ... I believe the actual term in this case would be steganography.
• Diogenesian 2mo ago
  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." 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." Ugh. The most depressing thing about the AI boom is watching tech people devalue human experience.
  • fragmede 2mo ago
    If someone spends an hour in the kitchen making you food, and they choose to use the microwave to heat up the veggies because it's healthier than boiling them on the stove, that's devaluing the human experience? What's more human than listening to another person's problems and then making something to help them with that problem? It could be a chair or a meal, or now, a bit of software.
    • deleted 2mo ago
      [deleted]
  • kaechle 2mo ago
    You're arguing semantics; maybe missing the point entirely. The writer is using the analogy to emphasize personalization, not quality, or some other nebulous characteristic applicable to artisanship.
    • mb_thd 2mo ago
      A home cooked meal isn't necessarily good or high quality. There are plenty of people who're bad at cooking but do it anyway. But 'home cooked' implies that someone spent time and effort to make a dish from scratch instead of (for example) heating up a microwave dinner.
  • echion 2mo ago
    So many people proving your point by missing it.
• penandledger 2mo ago
  The examples in this thread are all personal-life software (music, calories, thermostats). What I keep wondering about is the other end: the boring business admin that self-employed people carry — invoicing, chasing late payers, expense categorisation, tax set-asides, quoting. That's "software for one" too, except the stakes are money and most people seem to limp along with a spreadsheet plus a shoebox of receipts. If you freelance (design, illustration, photography, writing, or solo dev): which part of that would you most like to never think about again, and what did you try that didn't stick? Genuinely curious rather than pitching anything — I don't have a product, I'm trying to figure out whether the real pain is the bookkeeping itself or the decision-making around it (pricing, when to chase, what to set aside).
  • kelvinjps10 2mo ago
    I work as an interpreter (independent contractor) and recently built an automation with google sheets and apps script with claude code, funny enough Claude end up being better than anything google offers for their platform. Basically the agency I work pays every two weeks and the time between I receive an assignment and the the time i get paid for that assignment is about 45minutes. I built an automation, that when I get a new assignment it automatically adds the assignment to my calendar, to the spreadsheet and it calculates the mileage using google maps API. Then the spreadsheet calculates how much I’m gonna get in the following 2 paychecks and the one that’s currently running.
  • harryf 2mo ago
    I recently had a mind blowing experience recently building an app with Claude for someone that suffers with autism. Their basic complaint was "I can't work with most software. I think in colors". So I built them an PWA browser-based app designed specifically for the way they think, launched and updated via Github pages, with all data stored locally on their laptop. Then I did something similar for my son, giving him a targeted job search app specific to his Gen-Z brain responds to, again launched off Github pages as a PWA, but this time with WebRTC to allow iPhone to laptop data syncing. And along the way I realised there's probably whole host of people for whom software has never really worked. And I can built them things on a highly personalized basis that have only minimal reliance on cloud-based services. And then I went a bit crazy and created a manifesto which I've done nothing else with https://harryf.github.io/reclaim/ https://harryf.github.io/reclaim/ ;)
• dorianmariewo 2mo ago
  [dead]
• yen223 2mo ago
  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.
  • cavoirom 2mo ago
    The signal to noise will be so high that we will resort to technical magazine to find out useful apps. Just like the old day without search engine.
  • tsylba 2mo ago
    Tangential but I've recently discovered that an app I've written and published on F-Droid has been forked and put on Google Play with ads on by some Chinese forefront along side a lot of other open source apps without any mention of their GPL of course (and Google making it ridiculously difficult to take down thoses for normal folks, having to use a legally binding DMCA form). Thoses marketplaces are filled with cheap softwares made to make a quick buck by any means without a thought for the whole user experience, with no way to flags grifters for a better community driven experience. The economy must thrive I guess.
  • zh3 2mo ago
    cat /dev/urandom > /dev/dsp
  • runarberg 2mo ago
    I mean white noise generators are literally less then 20 lines of JavaScript. I wrote one (without an LLM) just now in less then 10 minutes: const audioCtx = new AudioContext(); const sr = audioCtx.sampleRate; const buffer = audioCtx.createBuffer(2, 2 * sr, sr); for (let channel = 0; channel < buffer.numberOfChannels; channel += 1) { const data = buffer.getChannelData(channel); for (let frame = 0; frame < buffer.length; frame += 1) { data[frame] = 2 * Math.random() - 1 } } const source = audioCtx.createBufferSource(); source.buffer = buffer; source.loop = true; source.connect(audioCtx.destination); const button = document.createElement("button"); button.append("Play"); button.addEventListener("click", () => { source.start(); }); document.body.append(button);
• smokel 2mo ago
  It's somewhat unfortunate that programming is still pretty hard to start with. Early home computers would boot up with BASIC. Granted, the user experience was horrible, but at least you could start programming right away. What is stopping us from creating an operating system that has programming as a first class citizen? There is JavaScript in the browser, but that still feels as an afterthought, and incurs all kinds of security problems. Why must we wait for AI to work around this? Is it really true that only very few people are interested in programming? Why not teach it in primary school, along with reading and writing?
  • s20n 2mo ago
    I really want to use a scheme based operating system where all processes are continuations and people boot into a REPL instead of a unix shell. something like a modern version of the symbolics lisp machines. Instead of using fork() and exec, spawning a new process would be a call/cc. can you imagine?
    • zahlman 2mo ago
      Is that not just Emacs?
  • ben_w 2mo ago
    > What is stopping us from creating an operating system that has programming as a first class citizen? Isn't that just any computer booting into a terminal?
    • smokel 2mo ago
      That would be the 1980s approach. I would be more interested in being able to read an email and then say something along the lines of: in context/mail: when today/evening: if content excites me: send alert This should be available directly by pressing some code button, and there should be some kind of user interface that makes it trivial to enter these commands.
      • 2mo ago
• storus 2mo ago
  This is nice, but Apple essentially blocks sideloading (outside test flight environment) and Google is moving there as well. While it has never been easier to produce individualized software, it was never more difficult on the official platforms, unless one wants to create their own OS (at some point that might be possible as well).
  • erelong 2mo ago
    maybe we need more like raspberry pi smartphone-sized tablets projects so people can sideload whatever they want like like "RasPad" (or other devices like the Pinephone)
    • callc 2mo ago
      s/sideload/install/g Sideloading implies a subversive action, which we should not be primed to think.
      • storus 2mo ago
        Sideloading also means installing an app you don't want to publish on any marketplace (for your own or family/friends use). Is there a better word for it?
        • callc 2mo ago
          Installing. The ability to install software on your own device should be independent of any marketplace.
  • dreamcompiler 2mo ago
    What's the current state of web apps on IOS? Does Safari yet support local databases well enough to build useful web apps? Pretty much every app I can think of building for my family could just be a website iff local browser-resident persistent data was a thing. (And in some cases I wouldn't even need that if they were going to be always-online.)
• jbjbjbjb 2mo ago
  It still sounds quite complicated because you’re creating all this stuff but there has to be some overhead of keeping it all running, repos, hosting, builds etc. I feel like there needs to be a mash up of agents-cloud-MSAccess to actually make this into an accessible way of building for the average person. People build spreadsheets to provide them themselves with “apps” all the time, so it needs to be at that level of ease.
  • worldthruword 2mo ago
    I have two observations : We have so much compute power sitting idle, finally with the help of AI we can get what we need for solving personal problems. Most of the time, our problems require emphemeral solutions. e.g. building a complaint management app for my building. or something simpler. Another observation : I expect in future the UIs could be dynamic, fluid, AI-generated and personalized. Old person, here's big font for you. You need to just know current balance, here's the number.
• matusfaro 2mo ago
  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 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/ 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/ 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.
  • runarberg 2mo ago
    Did you want to learn Mongolian or did you want to play a video game where you pretended to learn Mongolian. Because if it was the former, plenty of resources have been available for you for years. You could have walked into your local bookstore and bought a textbook, hired a tutor on italki, downloaded an anki deck, listened to MNB broadcasts etc. etc. I think LLMs are pretty similar to DuoLingo. It is a tool that makes you feel like you have accomplished something without you putting in the work you need to actually accomplish anything. Worse still, you still need to put in the time. So in effect you end up wasting a bunch of time without learning anything new. These machines, are dopamine generators, kind of like cigarettes, or slot machines.
    • kubanczyk 2mo ago
      My anecdata is that both Duolingo and LLMs are useful in learning. Yes, you have to put in the work. Seeing the usual HN hate on Duolingo specifically, I wonder whether it's blind. I might have missed scientific research about it causing cancer.
      • up-the-hill-4 2mo ago
        Responding with my own anecdata: Duolingo is not bad, but better options exist, in with a gap in quality and quantity that you might as well just use those (admittedly, I have been learning Spanish and Japanese, languages that have a lot more resources than Mongolian). Speaking with anyone who has intensively learnt languages, FSRS is the best way to remember vocabulary (you will need a separate source to actually learn it). And I've found that books often offer more structured practice and introduction. After you've outgrown books, picking up words from real conversations / media is much faster and makes you more likely to actually remember them. And for Duolingo, there are many things to nitpick about. The obsessive gamification, the hearts (and the current energy) system that prioritizes getting answers correct by guesswork and cheating or being limited to a few minutes a day, the company firing chunks of it's core translation and language staff. Duolingo is more than adequate, however, if you plan to do 5 min / day and just want to keep a streak going. I have seen people who have gotten real results from it too.
• stillpointlab 2mo ago
  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. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FoxPro https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FoxPro
• Kuyawa 2mo ago
  I've been doing the same, building apps for myself, one per day, for stuff I only care, crypto stocks, baseball betting, medical ai assistant, gym trainer, pickleball rallies, raffles, coding assistants, some as full fledged apps, but lately as single page apps in plain html, css and js so I can use them anywhere, like a portable sudoku.html file you can drop anywhere and start playing
• bastawhiz 2mo ago
  I love this and agree with it so strongly. But I'm also shaken to my core that there's a $30/mo Neon bill for personal software. Even if it's being used for "slightly larger projects" as well that's a ton of overkill for what seems like mostly read only data. I'm the sort of person who leans on Postgres instead of sqlite, but I'll put aside the sqlite argument for now because the fruit is so low hanging here. These use cases could probably work just fine with something far less robust. A redundant cluster of two db.t4g.micro RDS instances is ~$20/mo. But you probably don't even need that. Even just a container with a persistent volume seems like it would do the trick. With a little bit of caching, all of this could probably fit in the AWS DSQL free tier. And it brings me no joy to say that using AWS managed offerings is the operationally cheaper option. I love Neon and think it's an incredible service, but this is some Heroku-ass pricing.
  • fragmede 2mo ago
    Shit, Cloudflare'd probably do it for free.
    • mannanj 2mo ago
      I think they already are.
• lilerjee 2mo ago
  Go away from AI marketing article Too many marketing persons. Let them talk to themselves
• deleted 2mo ago
  [deleted]
• padjo 2mo ago
  Two of my most commonly used apps are my personal nutrition and workout tracking apps. Vibe coded and hosted on a Raspberry Pi. They're exactly customised to my usage pattern so infinitely better than anything I could buy, and they cost me a few hours and a basic Claude subscription.
• scotty79 2mo ago
  I postulate that most software of the future will have userbase of one.
• zackham 2mo ago
  single author, single user software is the one place where there is no rev limiter on ai. i spend the vast majority of my time on the computer steeped in my personal software now. some i publish for others to use, or so friends can point their agent at to adapt/rebuild: https://stepwise.run/ https://stepwise.run/ Portable workflow orchestration for agents and humans https://github.com/zackham/aloop https://github.com/zackham/aloop Embeddable Python agent loop for integrating LLM agents into your projects. Multi-provider (OpenRouter, OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Groq), built-in tools, hooks, ACP server, and persistent sessions. https://github.com/zackham/plat https://github.com/zackham/plat An embeddable infinite canvas to build on. Bring your own node types; drag, zoom, edges, auto-layout, and undo come free. Host-agnostic storage, runtime API built for agents. https://github.com/zackham/seance https://github.com/zackham/seance Shared live workspace for humans and agents — multi-pane terminals, notes, and a control plane for co-working in the open. deep dive docs for my personal agent system i've been developing since dec, and using constantly: https://vita-docs.ham.xyz/overview/ https://vita-docs.ham.xyz/overview/ browser replacement for stuff i control: https://vita-reports.ham.xyz/s/2119130b0b6b https://vita-reports.ham.xyz/s/2119130b0b6b a snapshot in time of the education system i run for my kids: https://vita-reports.ham.xyz/s/e7036ae931a7 https://vita-reports.ham.xyz/s/e7036ae931a7 if you want to talk about any of this stuff, or have a related project you think i'd appreciate, hit me up zackham@gmail.com or @zackham on telegram. abundance is here for personal software. take advantage of it and have fun!
• rambleraptor 2mo ago
  Personal software has been my passion project for the past few months. Part of my journey has been building out a platform for my apps to live on. Most web frameworks don’t have enough opinionated machinery built into them. You need user authentication, permissioning, MCP endpoints, database access, easy deployment. All of your apps could use this infrastructure and it’s what lets you focus on the actual fun stuff. I’ve been working on [Homestead](myhomestead.dev) as my OSS solution to all of that.
• trane_project 2mo ago
  This is the only app I've built for myself: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/the-mirror-timer/id6760243207 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/the-mirror-timer/id6760243207 It's basically an adaptive timer for remaining oneself to be mindful and aware throughout the day, which is a prerequisite for my main practice. When it rings, it asks you if you were mindful since the last timer and adapts the next interval based on your answer. I've wanted to do this for a while, but a physical device is beyond my skills and I never wanted to bother to learn mobile development. So having the computer take care of all the nonsense was ideal. Very different experience using LLMs when you don't know the technology, but all the nonsense behind creating and publishing mobile apps did not inspire me to learn it.
• xixixao 2mo ago
  I built myself a package tracking web app. Only cost is LLM sub (Cursor at like $20/m). OpenAI API is free (sharing data). Rest is tailwind+shadcn+Convex - Convex’s free tier is plenty, and it gives me a db and hosting as well now.
• razyoudude 2mo ago
  With the same mindset i've build screenshot tool to replace shottr and paid license to cleanshot x, added missing features that I wanted to have for years (doing bunch of screenshots and videos daily) and i love this tool
• dwedge 2mo ago
  I've built a lot of software like this over the past year. It's always kind of there but not quite and over time feels dirty. I don't think I'm still using any of it.
• moralestapia 2mo ago
  I've written about that, and the rest of that spectrum of apps, here: https://blog.moralestapia.com/posts/application-paradigms-enabled-by-ai/ https://blog.moralestapia.com/posts/application-paradigms-en...
• adoltech 2mo ago
  [dead]
• p0w3n3d 2mo ago
  Is this boopsnoop available? I could use one but can't find it anywhere
• efortis 2mo ago
  For the backend of my personal webapps I’m using Nginx with its WebDAV module. WebDAV is a protocol for managing files. So I basically have plain json files I read and overwrite. GET /mydata.json PUT /mydata.json For auth, Basic auth, which is built-in in the module and in browsers. so it’s just a text file with a username and a hashed pwd. On the phone, I “Add to Home Screen” from Safari For backups, in my home router I have a cron that rsyncs the json files. The VPS costs $12/mo
• ceritium 2mo ago
  I really believe in this software for one, or at least, be able to customise it as you need. On that premise, I started building during a weekend, thanks to Claude, a small platform so I and, in theory, my family could deploy easily complex apps with a DB, emails, crons, background jobs, image processing, etc and without the risk of getting bitten by the cloud. My family never used it, of course, but I deployed around 14 apps for me, friends, and family on a single VPS with 256 MB. https://onvibe.run/ https://onvibe.run/ Later on, I discovered lovable and other services... when someone told me, " Hey, you just built lovable! However, I really enjoyed the "design" of this system, and it's been useful for me. I am somewhat proud of the meta thing because Onvibe exposes an mcp, that allows you to build apps that can also expose MCPs...
• ajwaxman 2mo ago
  Quite the nice surprise to see this hit the front page after getting back from a long road trip that included explosive diarrhea from our son on the last pitstop Love seeing all the other personal apps people are building
• rahulthakurpina 2mo ago
  [flagged]
• nektro 2mo ago
  this thread is nightmare fuel
• toplinesoftsys 2mo ago
  I love this approach. Simple ideas, specific problems, clean interface, right on point, took a week or one weekend to build. This is what software development industry was missing for sooooo long.
• colenikol2 2mo ago
  Loved reading your story. Personal apps are great even they have only one user - the creator itself. But if only a handful people use the app and it stores data to a single device does the app need authorization / 2FA / login at all as these usually needs a 3rd party service or API (you need to pay for?). So I've gone a bit different path and cut the costs to about 0$ 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/miniproductivity/ https://nonconfirmed.com/app/dataset-toolset/ https://nonconfirmed.com/app/dataset-toolset/ https://nonconfirmed.com/fisher-boy/ https://nonconfirmed.com/fisher-boy/
  • dugmartin 2mo ago
    I've been building these same personal apps but on Firebase. They have a generous free tier that includes hosting and you can add real user auth, again all for free.