Both apps involved email for magic link features, but then both apps genuinely insist on harvesting your email for instantdb before you can view them?. Gotta love living on the post-shame internet.

Congrats to your girlfriend! Actually shipping their own app is a feat that many programmers never achieve, instead spending their entire lives working on projects for others.

I'm going to jump on this to think aloud about the unlock this ability gives the world for customized apps. My neighbor is a landscaper and he is constantly complaining to me about invoicing software. He has gone through 10+ apps trying to find one that fits his particular set of requirements. He was telling me recently that he spent several phone calls with a developer who had shipped an iOS app that was close to what he needed trying to explain what he wanted. He knows I am a programmer and is always hinting that I should develop an app that would meet his requirements.

But I know better. Invoicing/scheduling software is really difficult, especially to appeal to everyone. Each small business has so many tiny requirements that are specific to their business and their personality. You can't just have one piece of software that appeals to everyone, that meets all of the requirements, without it becoming bloated and complicated. And if I built to his particular requirements, I would have exactly 1 customer, which isn't sustainable as a business (I mean, he wants to pay ~20/month).

But now we have a world where that kind of highly customized software will be possible. As more and more LLM-ready building blocks emerge, custom software may become the norm rather than the exception.

I'm super into this idea. Programmers (us) used to be gatekeepers... and that's less true now. It means my salary goes down, but also means that the world is going to build more, cooler stuff quicker.

Claude code now has an /export command for this use case. You can run it from within a session.

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.

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

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.