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

Re: Your app subscription is now my weekend project

#281

Post by fragmede » Fri, Jan 23, 2026, 11:25 AM UTC

Shank wrote: post #194

spaceman_2020 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> You buy SaaS and you have to then login, share credit card info, and have your data stored in the cloud somewhere with godknows what security practices I'm speaking more about fake SaaS "we have an app and we charge monthly for it and license it." Obviously, a tool with cloud-based storage and sharing will be a different beast. But do you trust a vibe coded app to do cloud-based storage and sharing better than a co…

If I vibe coded it? Absolutely. I can definitively answer what S3 buckets are in use, and that public access is disabled! Like, that parts really really not that hard, and people keep fucking it up. Plus the threat model for the Todo so that my small friends/family group uses is totally different from the problems google keep faces.

But that's cheating because I do this stuff professionally. Would I trust a vibe coded Todo app my uncle's son Jimmy who smoke a lot of pot uses? I'm not saving my bank account number to it, but I'd have no problem using it for reminders that my aunt's birthday is coming up so I need to buy a gift. If it gets popular within in the family unit, uncle will have me talk to his son and take a deep look at it anyway, try and encourage Jimmy to go back to school and look for a job and all that stuff too.

Plus, theres nothing stopping the company and indie developer from vibecoding as well.

Re: Your app subscription is now my weekend project

#282

Post by fragmede » Fri, Jan 23, 2026, 11:30 AM UTC

KronisLV wrote: post #273

gf000 wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

During development you don't use prod data, though. So I don't see much problem here, even if I'm developing something where I would store sensitive data later. (If there is a bug though which I would want to debug and if I were not a developer, then your concerns are more valid)

> During development you don't use prod data, though. I’ve seen projects where testing is done in prod and also projects where API keys for some external services (e.g. Mapbox) are shared across prod and dev. Or cases where credentials end up in Git repos (edit: wrote GitHub originally, but meant typically non-public repos on any platform) due to ease of use and how inadequate secret management solutions can be. Luck…

honey pot that shit. attackers, security companies, GitHub themselves, are all crawling GitHub for leaked credentials and will tell you that they've been leaked. GitHub very much knows what a GitHub API key looks like. So you stick a GitHub API key with the least useful permission you can think of into your secrets file. If that file ever gets uploaded to GitHub, they'll cancel the key and email you about it, so then you know the rest of the keys in that file have been leaked as well.

Re: Your app subscription is now my weekend project

#283

Post by fragmede » Fri, Jan 23, 2026, 11:31 AM UTC

karl_gluck wrote: post #184

cosmic_cheese wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Data privacy is a real concern, but any SaaS provider worth their salt is using Stripe or similar for payments, not rolling their own. That's not as good as not providing the info in the first place but that makes it much less likely that your CC info is going to turn up in an S3 bucket with bad permissions or something.

Yes, but at this point I'd almost rather have my CC info exposed than my personal info. There is law and consequence for fraudulent charges that protects me from loss (if not inconvenience) but there is basically no protection for playing fast and loose with my PII--in fact, it's the opposite! They sell it!

privacy.com let's you generate per-merchant credit card numbers and put limits on them, limiting the damage a leaked CC number can do.

Re: Your app subscription is now my weekend project

#284

Post by ncruces » Fri, Jan 23, 2026, 11:32 AM UTC

What this tells me is that these should never have been a subscription.

A trial, and then a $5 or $10 one time purchase. If ever you're missing some feature that gets added in a later version, then maybe a $5 upgrade.

But why would a simple text or video editor need a monthly subscription?

Re: Your app subscription is now my weekend project

#285

Post by fragmede » Fri, Jan 23, 2026, 11:34 AM UTC

bandrami wrote: post #197

spaceman_2020 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> That means my data never leaves my device I mean, if you vibecoded it you don't actually know that, do you?

vibe code manifest.xml to disallow network access. If you're really paranoid, you can use Google search to look up the permissions names instead of relying on an LLM to do it.

Re: Your app subscription is now my weekend project

#286

Post by xyzsparetimexyz » Fri, Jan 23, 2026, 11:36 AM UTC

robotsquidward wrote: post #67

Just sucks that instead of buying a piece of software now we're going to send $100/mo to an AI giant so we can build our own crappier bespoke apps.

I agree that spending money on claude code is stupid. But the default opencode models are free. I used one last night to replace the ad-filled alarm clock android app I use with a 90% ai written one.

Re: Your app subscription is now my weekend project

#287

Post by xyzsparetimexyz » Fri, Jan 23, 2026, 11:37 AM UTC

CurleighBraces wrote: post #16

It’s easy to overlook what I think is the real value of these “home-built” tools. We can now produce products and apps that are tailored to our own preferred ways of working. Regardless of the cost of generating them (which can be as low as $20 per month for a ChatGPT Plus subscription) or the effort involved (sometimes less than an hour of “vibe coding”), we’ve reached a point where the resulting product can be sign…

> which can be as low as $20 per month for a ChatGPT Plus subscription

That's way too much money. The opencode default models are free

Re: Your app subscription is now my weekend project

#288

Post by ncruces » Fri, Jan 23, 2026, 11:40 AM UTC

Spivak wrote: post #206

robofanatic wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly! It’s like I saw you selling pre-cut fruit for $7 so I decided to cut my own fruit every week.

I think the difference is I was buying pre-cut fruit for $7 every week so I spent two days and now my fruit magically cuts itself forever. He turned an ongoing expense into a one time expense. And bonus he likely had fun doing the labor.

It's more like he was renting a knife to cut fruit for some reason and now, and instead of just buying a knife, he built one from scratch.

(1) Let's hope he doesn't cut himself if the knife breaks apart while in use.

(2) Why is it so hard to just buy knives these days? Why does every knife maker suddenly feel entitled to charge rent?

I'm all for DIY instead of hiring others, but the insanity here is the rent vs. buy thing going on in the industry.

Re: Your app subscription is now my weekend project

#289

Post by goopypoop » Fri, Jan 23, 2026, 11:44 AM UTC

throwup238 wrote: post #248

goopypoop wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you need to recalibrate because charmin is fucking lol

Who am I to argue about toilet paper with a user named goopypoop ! I assume you use vintage fire hoses from the Birmingham campaign to clean down there?

well it's hard to find quality chamois these days, but tbf since i joined the human centipede i haven't looked back

Re: Your app subscription is now my weekend project

#290

Post by fragmede » Fri, Jan 23, 2026, 11:47 AM UTC

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #261

sjw987 wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems like an incredibly defensive take for vibe coding personal apps. Replacing some subscription app like Any.do, Google Calendar, fitness/diet tracking or basically any other CRUD-centric app, needn't be insecure, and a semi-competent developer can easily host it, continue further development (with or without vibe coding) and secure it. There's huge benefit for software developers that do find themselves usin…

>There's huge benefit for software developers that do find themselves using many of these apps with active subscriptions to make their own, tailored for themselves, and cut down their spending. I guess if you're unemployed or in an area with spectacularly low wages, and don't have any ideas of your own that seem monetizable. >Most people will continue spending $1.00/month here, and $2.99/month there. If I make 100 do…

Now be the teenager with no college degree that you were before you ever made $100/hr. Most of your options then paid The vibecoded threat isn't from Devin, the threat is from 15 year old nerds who no mortgage, partner, or responsibilities. Powered by insecurity, pride, and spite, plus a generous amount of teenage hormones. I would love to see What I could have built if I had Claude back when my reflexes were still powered by youth.

Plus, if you made an app that other people were paying $1/month for. Sell yours to people for $2/month (or $0.50/month, you decide!) and you'd recoup your money much faster than 51 months.