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How and where will agents ship software?

instantdb.com

41–50 of 80 posts

Re: How and where will agents ship software?

#41
Please don’t use a vibe-coded app for anything important.

I use Claude. I like Claude. But I’ve backed away from having Claude actually write my code other than in the most limited circumstances.

I caught it copying one of my TS Interfaces, for example. And modifying, then using, the copy. So my type-checks pass, yay! But wait what?

It wrote a test for a tricky bit of code. The test wouldn’t pass. So it re-wrote it in a way that couldn’t possibly fail, mocking all elements inside the test itself.

I’m not anti-AI. But I wouldn’t trust anything vibe-coded above the importance of, say, Wordle.

Re: How and where will agents ship software?

#42
This is a massive business opportunity for whoever owns the market.

I have a friend who owns a small/medium sized marketing firm. They typically manage social media and advertising for local businesses (butchers, plumbers, NPOs, etc.). A major cost center for them is dev. They can generally handle developing assets (images, videos, text copy) and publishing them (Facebook, YouTube, Instagram) but if they need any kind of interactivity (even basic forms or CRM-like stuff) they used to hire programmers.

This friend is now "vibe coding" the simple interactivity that previously they had to outsource. In the last few months he has pitched, won and crucially delivered simple apps for a few clients. We're not talking complex web apps, it's mostly CRUD forms and basic workflows, the kind you see people go on about using n8n on Twitter. He's talking to me these days about React, Tailwind, DNS and all of that stuff.

His clients don't know, or care, how he delivers. The local butcher doesn't know about "best practices" or whatever. He just cares that if someone signs up for his newsletter that he gets a notification and that person gets his weekly meat deals email.

His firm is picking up more and more complex projects like these and saving a huge amount on costs. Turn-key services that enable guys like him are going to reap the rewards.

Re: How and where will agents ship software?

#43
post #21

I built an app (HN Clone, of course) with Instant's MCP hooked up to Claude Code. The experience was brilliant. Pros: + Fast + Easy + "Vibe coding on steroids" basically + The sense of 'wow' that comes very rarely with new tech Cons: - It used Instant as the database/backend, but I wasn't sure what it had done / how exactly it worked and had to spend a bunch of time asking Claude + reading the code to get it. It seem…

Would you mind sharing the code, as well as prompts if you're comfortable? I'm trying to sample anecdata to help re-baseline my intuition on these things.

> as well as prompts if you're comfortable?

This made me wonder: can I share Claude Code's conversation history? Turns Claude stores them.

So I made a full-stack "snippet" app with Claude and Instant. You can:

1. Upload jsonl files 2. Share them in a nice UI

(Going meta) here's the first conversation I had with Claude in order to build it:

https://claude-code-viewer.vercel.app/view/c4ca91ac-9624-40f...

After I deployed, I asked it to fix the tool use UI:

https://claude-code-viewer.vercel.app/view/faf9b2cc-c3cf-4d0...

I used Instant's auth to gate uploads. Views are public, but limited only to the snippets you know (i.e have links for).

If you want to upload your own conversations:

1. They live in ~/.claude. Head on over and grab a file 2. Go to https://claude-code-viewer.vercel.app and sign up 3. Start uploading : )

Some notes:

* Be careful when sharing log files. Claude can include secrets in there. Some hackers may notice an adminToken in the convo. I rotated it before we pushed.

* It was fun to see Claude use the query language. It thought we had a `$startsWith` modifier. Right now we only have $like. But `$startsWith` is a great idea, we may just implement it real quick!

Re: How and where will agents ship software?

#45
> Today we’re releasing an API that gives you and your agents full-stack backends. Each backend comes with a database, a sync engine, auth tools, file storage, and presence.

this is a hosted lamp stack, we had it 20 years ago. is cpanel is not fashionable anymore?

Re: How and where will agents ship software?

#46
post #45

> Today we’re releasing an API that gives you and your agents full-stack backends. Each backend comes with a database, a sync engine, auth tools, file storage, and presence. this is a hosted lamp stack, we had it 20 years ago. is cpanel is not fashionable anymore?

CPanel can still work great. But Instant is a bit different. Every query you write is reactive by default, it works offline, comes with a lot more batteries, and is multi-tenant.

Re: How and where will agents ship software?

#47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. Fun fact, Instant got the `create` method because of how many times LLMs hallucinated it.

Life imitates art: afar you’re describing there is basically _The Secret_ (I.e. if I wish hard enough for something then eventually it will come true), except it’s LLMs that get wish-fulfilment, not us.

This made me chuckle, you're right. In a sense it comes back to us, as LLMs are trained on our intuitions.

Re: How and where will agents ship software?

#48

This is a massive business opportunity for whoever owns the market. I have a friend who owns a small/medium sized marketing firm. They typically manage social media and advertising for local businesses (butchers, plumbers, NPOs, etc.). A major cost center for them is dev. They can generally handle developing assets (images, videos, text copy) and publishing them (Facebook, YouTube, Instagram) but if they need any kin…

It has been really interesting to see how non-technical people use agents. My girlfriend shipped a full-stack on the app store [1]. She was only familiar with basic HTML. Now she's building out an inspiration tracker that has file uploads, weekly todos, search, categories.

There's a lot more ideas and people who would love to put in effort to give to the world, then there are expert programmers to build them.

[1] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/go-deeper/id6745434359

Re: How and where will agents ship software?

#49
post #36

Fun software but the only issue with Instant is their pricing. Once they gain adoption, I expect them to significantly raise their rates, I can seen them charging over $1 per GB easily. And like with any vendor lock-in, you’re stuck paying whatever they decide to charge. Observe with caution I'd say

> vendor lock-in

For what it's worth, Instant is fully open source. The UI, the sync engine, and the multi-tenant database live here:

https://github.com/instantdb/instant

Re: How and where will agents ship software?

#50
post #39

The most frustrating problem I have had with Firebase Studio is Gemini 2.5 attempting to create firebase rules... it was completely unworkable in my experience - just constant permissions errors. I pivoted to Claude Code a few weeks ago with Prisma ORM and NEON db running on Netlify. It's been pretty good so far. I will give InstantDB a go soon I think.

Thank you!

> Gemini 2.5 attempting to create firebase rules

That is very interesting. I wonder if Claude Code would do better on Firebase rules.

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