Your app subscription is now my weekend project • Hacker News Board

Re: Your app subscription is now my weekend project

#221

Post by heavyset_go » Fri, Jan 23, 2026, 6:24 AM UTC

spaceman_2020 wrote: post #68

Shank wrote: post #5

First of all, I’m skeptical about these being free. Time isn’t free, and the tokens to make these projects certainly weren’t free. Second of all, all of these SaaS apps that don’t actually have a need for recurring charge probably should be paid one time. I don’t use Loom — I use CleanShot X and it was a one-time $30 payment and has a lot of great features I benefit from. I can’t reimplement it in $30 of tokens or $3…

How are you completely disregarding the data integrity and privacy aspects of rolling your own tools? I vibecode an app that only I use and store data locally. That means my data never leaves my device, I never have to share my email with anyone, never have to enter my credit card info anywhere You buy SaaS and you have to then login, share credit card info, and have your data stored in the cloud somewhere with godkn…

Another way to look at this is that you're giving away all of your source code as context, and probably a lot of things you don't necessarily want to share, if you aren't using self-hosted models.

Especially with agents that slurp up files, have access to databases, etc. You're literally giving access to your computer, your network and your data to third parties and letting them run code.

Re: Your app subscription is now my weekend project

#222

Post by matusp » Fri, Jan 23, 2026, 6:26 AM UTC

gabriel-uribe wrote: post #218

I'm very bullish on vibe coding generally, but I dont expect this will become a trend. Most people don't make or maintain their own things, period. Vibe coding will mostly cannibalize expensive B2B contracts from a pre-LLM era where integrations and maintenance were expensive.

I think it's a question of how polished the process is. Imagine a new fully functional app popping up in your phone after a single prompt. Then, imagine you can edit this app while you are using it by saying what you wish it should do.

There might be a lot of people interested in all kinds of small apps for their particular hobbies, interests, jobs, etc

Re: Your app subscription is now my weekend project

#223

Post by YetAnotherNick » Fri, Jan 23, 2026, 6:38 AM UTC

Bishonen88 wrote: post #7

Shank wrote: post #5

First of all, I’m skeptical about these being free. Time isn’t free, and the tokens to make these projects certainly weren’t free. Second of all, all of these SaaS apps that don’t actually have a need for recurring charge probably should be paid one time. I don’t use Loom — I use CleanShot X and it was a one-time $30 payment and has a lot of great features I benefit from. I can’t reimplement it in $30 of tokens or $3…

Most apps rationale for subscriptions is "Ongoing development" without an option like jetbrains etc. to fall back to a perpetual license. In practice, regardless of whether an app needs ongoing development or not, this is the best way to try to guarantee continuous income and make a living off of a project I guess. Perhaps LLM's will force developers/companies to change their stance and to stop users from recreating…

I just don't understand this naive argument against subscription. If I have to pay same amount of money, I will pay in subscription than paying one time. So let's say average subscription time is 2 years, they can make $400 onetime or $20/month to get the same revenue. As a consumer I will prefer the second option.

For $40 product, I will rather pay $1/month than $40 once. It keeps the incentive aligned. I think most people just assume that if the devs move away from subscription they would be fine with lower revenue and would charge less.

Re: Your app subscription is now my weekend project

#224

Post by quesomaster9000 » Fri, Jan 23, 2026, 6:45 AM UTC

kylecazar wrote: post #2

Yeah. Part of why this is possible is simply that there are tons of subscription apps out there that were never really justified in requiring a recurring payment and are actually fairly trivial. It used to be that you offer subscriptions only if there are ongoing costs, and a one-time payment if not (utilities, local, etc). SaaS kinda ruined that. I'd welcome a boom in DIY vibe-coded utilities for personal use.

The subscription craze is getting worse where often the features I need are locked behind a recurring fee costing hundreds to thousands of dollars over its useful lifetime, or are only available in 'enterprise' versions where the sales people laugh me off for not having $30k to spend and won't even let me trial the software (because inevitably I'll just RE it and make a crack)

The most recent example is I wanted a simple home security system with presence detection and a private control panel, none of the free ones hit my requirements, or require custom hardware, or lock you into a cloud, or assume you can spin-up some containers - or are super enterprise grade stuff.

Within about 2 days I had an android app for my tablet, Google FMDN integration, fingerprinting of my other devices, all controllable via Telegram from any of my phones with alerts that "just work" wherever I am and include an inline gif snapshot.

What I wanted didn't really exist as any individual product, so I absolutely see the appeal of DIY vibe-coded stuff, and a day of the build time was optimizing the OpenGL motion-detection pipeline with shaders & DMA which in itself was good to learn about.

Re: Your app subscription is now my weekend project

#225

Post by tossandthrow » Fri, Jan 23, 2026, 6:46 AM UTC

Shank wrote: post #5

First of all, I’m skeptical about these being free. Time isn’t free, and the tokens to make these projects certainly weren’t free. Second of all, all of these SaaS apps that don’t actually have a need for recurring charge probably should be paid one time. I don’t use Loom — I use CleanShot X and it was a one-time $30 payment and has a lot of great features I benefit from. I can’t reimplement it in $30 of tokens or $3…

The time argument is countered in roughly the same manner as when you do home improvement.

Yiu don't pay taxes on the time spent on your own projects.

There is no alternate I've cost, as the time would usually have been spent watching television if not doing these projects.

Re: Your app subscription is now my weekend project

#226

Post by tuananh » Fri, Jan 23, 2026, 6:50 AM UTC

it doesn't have to be free. it can just be a lot cheaper or open source.

Re: Your app subscription is now my weekend project

#227

Post by jxhdbdbd » Fri, Jan 23, 2026, 6:52 AM UTC

tossandthrow wrote: post #225

Shank wrote: post #5

First of all, I’m skeptical about these being free. Time isn’t free, and the tokens to make these projects certainly weren’t free. Second of all, all of these SaaS apps that don’t actually have a need for recurring charge probably should be paid one time. I don’t use Loom — I use CleanShot X and it was a one-time $30 payment and has a lot of great features I benefit from. I can’t reimplement it in $30 of tokens or $3…

The time argument is countered in roughly the same manner as when you do home improvement. Yiu don't pay taxes on the time spent on your own projects. There is no alternate I've cost, as the time would usually have been spent watching television if not doing these projects.

This argument is brought up a lot against using opportunity cost for private projects, but I don't buy it

If you are dedicating a considerable amount of time on a project, there is of cause opportunity cost, since that's time

- not spend on improving health - not spend on improving skills - not spend on improving other projects

Seldom one decides between a side project and starring into the void

Re: Your app subscription is now my weekend project

#228

Post by svenmalvik » Fri, Jan 23, 2026, 6:55 AM UTC

I made Vissper which is essentially the same. Have a look, it's open source svenmalvik/vissper-oss on GitHub.

Re: Your app subscription is now my weekend project

#229

Post by edu » Fri, Jan 23, 2026, 7:10 AM UTC

JusticeJuice wrote: post #146

piskov wrote: post #139

> Reel does exactly what I wanted Loom to do: I can record my camera, I can move it around, and I get to trim the video after it’s done (I don’t remember being able to do that with Loom). But that’s not what Loom is about. It’s about streaming the video. Before: Capture something with likes of quicktime. Transcode it so that it doesn’t take a few gigabytes. This takes considerable time and resources (though OBS can d…

Loom does also have a trim and edit after recording feature, I use it all the time

The also have a nice trimming feature where you can trim the video by editing the transcript

Re: Your app subscription is now my weekend project

#230

Post by theshrike79 » Fri, Jan 23, 2026, 7:28 AM UTC

figers wrote: post #213

theshrike79 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would they "eventually break"? In what situation would a simple script or helper app just suddenly rot away and stop working? Of course it's POSSIBLE to vibe together a massive monstrosity of an everything-app, but that's not what the author is doing here (nor me).

If it's tied to web APIs, libraries, or OS version feature APIs that are deprecated it will suddenly stop working.

Non-subscription paid software will rot the same way too, so there's no change.

With a agentic llms I can just tell it to fix it. With a commercial solution I'm fucked and either have to find something else or pay for a license (or keep paying every month).