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Show HN: Capsule – Single-file web apps that save their data into SQLite

withcapsule.app

61–70 of 175 posts

Re: Show HN: Capsule – Single-file web apps that save their data into SQLite

#61

With the battle of AI versus human agency raging I have a prediction that local-first desktop apps are going to make a comeback. It's nice to see something like this make it easier.

I know that I personally have a handful of personal local only apps under development, that in the past I would have reached for a web solution.

Re: Show HN: Capsule – Single-file web apps that save their data into SQLite

#62

An idea for a killer feature: Make it so that auhors can expose their capsules to the internet, and the people whoe wants to use them(lets call them users) can type the name(lets call it address) of the caplsue into the app, and your program will pull that capsule in the the users device..

Hear me out. Here is the name

PWA : Probably Web Again

Re: Show HN: Capsule – Single-file web apps that save their data into SQLite

#63
I don't know, this seems like an idea that maybe works in a specific context being generalized past the point of the original idea making sense.

If the user needs to download a specific application to run this these web apps, then why not just send them that initial application in the first place? Why jump through the hoops of using Capsule when the same hoops can be jumped through to get to the same endpoint?

If this was a near-universally adopted application, then it'd make sense. But it's not, and the closest thing we have to that are browsers... which already do what you're describing?

Bundling data with the application makes sense, but is also only appropriate in pretty narrow circumstances. If I'm willing to ship my data with the web app, then I'll just embed the data in the HTML file. If the expectation is that the user will modify this data, then I don't think I'd want to ship it like this.

Re: Show HN: Capsule – Single-file web apps that save their data into SQLite

#64
post #13

Many big companies are starting now to test agentic coding to automate business processes. This could be a nice tool to distribute apps for workflows that aren't big enough to justify the operational overhed of maintaining a traditional web app backend. Nice!

This sounds like the modern take on MS Access.

Re: Show HN: Capsule – Single-file web apps that save their data into SQLite

#65

With the battle of AI versus human agency raging I have a prediction that local-first desktop apps are going to make a comeback. It's nice to see something like this make it easier.

In preparation for the upcoming [Android lockdown](https://keepandroidopen.org/) I've started vibe-coding some PWAs for apps that I like so I can have a webby version of them with no ads and no Google/iOS lock-in. I like this, it feels like a good direction.

Re: Show HN: Capsule – Single-file web apps that save their data into SQLite

#66
It kinda reminds me of MS Access, which ended up being a pain in the butt for IT departments, but also covered a need within some department with limited resources.

Really curious to see where this goes. Do you plan to open-source the client, or simply make the file specification open when stabilized?

Re: Show HN: Capsule – Single-file web apps that save their data into SQLite

#67
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'd think so, but web browsers are downright lobotomizing the ability for local HTML files to run any meaningful javascript code. Want to run a JS file from the same directory? CORS ERROR!!!! Hence 200MB applications that are complete copies of the Chromium browser to run under 1MB of actual web code.

Isn't that the price of a relatively well sandboxed experience by browsers? I've experienced the same limits building small tools for myself and friends that I wanted to contain in a single HTML file without external dependencies... but I understand why the same project without these restrictions could easily become malware, and ones that could be easily propagated.

I wish the browser would either allow local-only or internet-only, then only make up its mind after the first attempted request. Fetch an image from the internet? No script access for local files. Fetch a JS from elsewhere on the hard drive? No internet access. That could provide the sandbox while still being flexible.

Re: Show HN: Capsule – Single-file web apps that save their data into SQLite

#69

I love this idea! One of the fallouts from widespread AI adoption that I've seen: They're very good at creating visual artifacts, but if you ever have to provide data in those artifacts, you don't really have a great way to share it without hard coding it. > One downside with this approach is that multiple people working on it will create different copies. To make it possible to merge different copies of the same fil…

Each document record is saved with UUID and timestamps. When deleting a record the data is removed but the record keeps a tombstone so only the ID remains. For conflicts currently the newest one is used, but there will be a merge like UI in the future to confirm which one to use.
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