Vibe code to production perhaps not, but vibe code for regular personal use doesn’t seem out of the realm of possibility already.
Unless there is inherent complexity in the problem (and assuming subscriptions don’t get pricey soon) I can see nontechnical people getting into designing their own apps.
It makes me think of 3d printing. A lot of people got into 3d modeling because of it. And a lot of people publish cute baubles 3d models (analogous to vibe coded ai wrappers?) but there is genuinely useful stuff that people not in the fabrication or 3d design industry create and share, some even making money off of it.
I just can’t think of a way saas margins will stay as high as they are now.
3d printing is something I think about. LLMs do their best work against text and 3d printers consume gcode. I’ve had sonnet spit out perfectly good single layer test prints. Obviously it won’t have the context window to hold much more gcode BUT…
If there was a text based file format for models, it could generate those and you could hand that to the slicer. Like I’ve never looked, but are stl files text or binary? Or those 3mf files?
If Gemini can generate a good looking pelican on a bicycle SVG, it can probably help design some fairly useful functional parts given a good design language it was trained on.
And honestly if the slicer itself could be driven via CLI, you could in theory do the entire workflow right to the printer.
It makes me wonder if we are going to really see a push to text-based file formats. Markdown is the lingua franca of output for LLMs. Same with json, csv, etc. Things that are easy to “git diff” are also easy for LLMs…
There is a text based file format for models. It's called OpenSCAD. It's also much more information compacted than a mesh model file like STL - e.g. in OpenSCAD you describe the curve, in the mesh file like STL you explicitly state all elements of it.
It's just gimped to the point that you can basically only use it for hobbyist projects, anything reasonably professional looking is using STEP compatible files and that is much more complex to try to emulate and get right. STEP is a bit different - it's more like a mesh in that it contains the final geometry, but in BRep which is pretty close to the machining grade, while OpenSCAD is more like what you're asking about - a textual recipe to generate curves that you pass into an engine that turns it into the actual geometry. It's just that OpenSCAD is so wholly insufficient to express what professional designs need it never gets used in the professional world.
Trying to get a small Saas off the ground by adapting a script I wrote for friends to help them schedule their teams -> https://skeda.app
and also Backseat Writer, a creative writing text editor that uses AI to impersonate your audience and give you feedback https://backseat-writer.vercel.app/demo which is more of an anchor for my own writing practice than anything else, but I find it fun
Hold up. This is a funny comment but thinking should be free. It’s when they are trying to sell you something (looking at you “all the AI CEOs”) that unsubstantiated claims are problematic.
Then again the problem is that the public has learned nothing from the theranos and WeWorks and even more of a problem is that the vc funding works out for most of these hype trains even if they never develop a real business.
The incentives are fucked up. I’d not blame tech enthusiasts for being too enthusiastic
It's not the public, the general public would like to see tech ceo heads on spikes (first politician to jail Zuckerberg will win re-election for the rest of their short lives) but the general attitude in DC is to capitulate because they believe the lies + the election slush fund money doesn't hurt.
I'm fine with free thinking, but a lot of these are just so repetitive and exausting because there's absolutely no backing from any of those claims or a thread of logic.
Might as well talk about how AI will invent sentient lizards which will replace our computers with chocolate cake.
If you want to do the proverbial “moving upmarket” then yeah you’re going to have this and a lot of other problems. Taste does not sell (let’s be nice and add “on its own”) in that segment.
You might become guilty. Sometimes you might want to be guilty. Morality and law sometimes disagree. Often IMO.
I might be hitting a ideological belief of mine here, because I honestly can’t think of someone who would honestly state otherwise. Or that couldn’t be brought to agree with some explanation. Am I tripping ?
Hi HN, I have been trying to ways to use AI that make sense to me and to my activities, other than coding agents that is.
This is my first attempt at something that I believe might actually be useful. Not letting the AI write for you, but poking holes and making suggestions that you may or may not take. Fact checking and gathering sources are next on my list.
I hope you give it a spin, I know that BYOK is a bit of a hurdle and I apologise.
I am divided between wanting to make the snarky comment that the picture is basically an ad[0] for continuing to use a smartphone..
..and the subsequent intrusive thought of "you don't always have to carry your typewriter with you, just write at home, it's good to bind activities to specific places"
Day to day I toe the line, between purchasing dumbphones[1], removing color saturation from my iphone 13 mini's[2] screen, blocking all the doom websites and apps, and realising that i need ente auth to survive modern life (sigh).
[0] a typewriter? really?..
[1] of which I bought 3, and all sit in a nostalgia box somewhere with polaroids and ex girlfriend's letters
[2] I refuse to carry a bathroom tile worth of glass in my pocket, please someone make small smartphones again
Unless there is inherent complexity in the problem (and assuming subscriptions don’t get pricey soon) I can see nontechnical people getting into designing their own apps.
It makes me think of 3d printing. A lot of people got into 3d modeling because of it. And a lot of people publish cute baubles 3d models (analogous to vibe coded ai wrappers?) but there is genuinely useful stuff that people not in the fabrication or 3d design industry create and share, some even making money off of it.
I just can’t think of a way saas margins will stay as high as they are now.
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