> Check back Friday for the next build — same download page, fresh features, zero cost.
I’m sorry to waste so many comments complaining about how people use AI but the phrasing above sits in uncanny valley for me.
I don’t know if the culture around consumption of vibe coded apps is different and the style used to describe projects is optimal for that audience , or if the projects simply don’t have an audience so the uncanny tone is just not an issue.
I think it's hard to say one way or another. My guess is the latter, or perhaps the audience isn't even aware it's vibe coded.
I (like many other software folks) are aware of AI-isms in writing, so when I see something that it so obviously AI generated in a project, it's equivalent to a giant red waving flag.
For someone who doesn't interact with LLMs regularly? I have no idea, maybe it sounds great to them. Most non-tech folks I interact with to don't seem to have as well-tuned AI sense, whether it be image, video or text
> perhaps the audience isn't even aware it's vibe coded.
Why does the audience care if it's vibecoded? So long as it works and does the job, does it matter if the POS software was written by humans or an AI? Does it solve their problem? Does it suck less than the alternatives? Is it cheaper?
I've been chewing on this for a while, but I don't think the thought is fully formed. I'll rough it out here anyways, it certainly isn't a novel or unique one.
I think my main issue with vibe coded apps is that the signal to noise ratio got flipped upside down.
Things that may have been positive signals in the past aren't really great indicators anymore. Maybe they shouldn't have been positive in the past, but they certainly aren't now. Broadly, things like polished website design, punchy language, clean branding, slick landing page, etc were all indicators. At a minimum, they at least meant that time and effort was put into it. It didn't really mean anything about the product, but it would display at least some level of time and effort.
Now, the outward appearance of a project no longer conveys anything about effort or durability, I can easily spin up a home page that would have taken me weeks pre-AI, then never touch it again.
The site states that it took roughly a hundred hours to develop. I have no real way of verifying that and I don't even think that it matters. The most evident signal that I feel I can still get a pulse on is when something is clearly, heavily AI written. All other signals that would supersede it require additional time to evaluate. Things like reading the docs, skimming the codebase, testing the product etc.
With a project like this, the ask made to the end user is to spend the time to, at a minimum, read the docs to see if it's a good fit. If they think it's a good fit, the next ask is to spend the time to integrate it with their current inventory. Then learn the workflow. Then learn the idiosyncrasies. All of these things involve, real human, time.
When an end user is asked to invest this time, there are only so many signals available to them to help decide if it's a good use of their time, energy and resources. For better or for worse, it seems like that list of signals is shrinking and right now, something that appears vibecoded is still one of the clearest visible signals.
it’s easy to agree with your point on the surface, but then we’d be handwaving a lot of negative subtle signaling. I think because HN is mostly developers on the inside we have to assume that a non-Technical audience might see it differently. That is of course true but one very realistic problem I see is that a vibe coded app with made up testimonials, figures, facts pretty much made-up everything is indistinguishable from an actual company. And we put this entirely on the customer to discern. That’s a terrible precedent, no different from posting falsehood on Facebook.
edit: OK I wrote this before I even opened the page and now that I seen i the entire persona is made up. Or it’s seeded in reality and then AI fills in the 80% to round it out, except it’s on the audience to trust. Sad.
I think “uncanny” is a good way to describe everything about this tool. I can’t say really whether the app itself is on target or not, but I have a feeling that without an iPad/mobile terminal that it’s DOA anyway.
I spend a lot of time with non-tech-industry folks. Since many in the USA have low reading levels and marketing teams keep telling me to write for 6th grade reading level maybe GenPop doesn't even notice this drivel in the middle of all the other advertising drivel?
Why does it need cloud AI to read invoices? Basic foss OCR can do this very well, so too the most basic local AI. Wrangling claude to read reciepts is using a tomahawk to kill ants.
Can i point it at a local AI server? Can i feed it a pdf that i make myself using my own OCR?
I don't know much about running a bar apart from being a regular and sticking around for closing time every now and then.
This looks like an opinionated frontend for a spreadsheet. There are tons of those already. Does this really reduce any of the complexity well enough to be better?
I think people would be more convinced with a demo compared to the existing workflows it's trying to replace.
It’s hopefully an alternative to paying a company like Orca $200/mo. (It used to be $5000 annually, sold solely on the value of potential losses saved.) https://orcainventory.com/
That still costs less than the revenue brought in from a single bar regular (~$100 a week). It also probably works better and staff are more likely to be familiar with it, etc.
I'm not saying SaaS is always the right answer, but that's probably why it succeeds at that pricing.
How an alternative is pitched really does matter. It's not enough to just point out flaws with the competitor. Open source also requires its own set of incentives to get meaningful contributions. It has to solve a set of problems that are interesting and impactful to the contributors.
This looks scary. Website is way too slick and it says something about being a Chrome side-something? Ah someone said vibe code, and I guess that explains the slickness and images too.
I'd prefer a plain text description of what the program actually does. A screen shot here or there might be tolerable but please, no splash screens or uninformative background pics.
> Check back Friday for the next build — same download page, fresh features, zero cost.
I’m sorry to waste so many comments complaining about how people use AI but the phrasing above sits in uncanny valley for me.
I don’t know if the culture around consumption of vibe coded apps is different and the style used to describe projects is optimal for that audience , or if the projects simply don’t have an audience so the uncanny tone is just not an issue.
I think it's hard to say one way or another. My guess is the latter, or perhaps the audience isn't even aware it's vibe coded.
I (like many other software folks) are aware of AI-isms in writing, so when I see something that it so obviously AI generated in a project, it's equivalent to a giant red waving flag.
For someone who doesn't interact with LLMs regularly? I have no idea, maybe it sounds great to them. Most non-tech folks I interact with to don't seem to have as well-tuned AI sense, whether it be image, video or text
> perhaps the audience isn't even aware it's vibe coded.
Why does the audience care if it's vibecoded? So long as it works and does the job, does it matter if the POS software was written by humans or an AI? Does it solve their problem? Does it suck less than the alternatives? Is it cheaper?
I've been chewing on this for a while, but I don't think the thought is fully formed. I'll rough it out here anyways, it certainly isn't a novel or unique one.
I think my main issue with vibe coded apps is that the signal to noise ratio got flipped upside down.
Things that may have been positive signals in the past aren't really great indicators anymore. Maybe they shouldn't have been positive in the past, but they certainly aren't now. Broadly, things like polished website design, punchy language, clean branding, slick landing page, etc were all indicators. At a minimum, they at least meant that time and effort was put into it. It didn't really mean anything about the product, but it would display at least some level of time and effort.
Now, the outward appearance of a project no longer conveys anything about effort or durability, I can easily spin up a home page that would have taken me weeks pre-AI, then never touch it again.
The site states that it took roughly a hundred hours to develop. I have no real way of verifying that and I don't even think that it matters. The most evident signal that I feel I can still get a pulse on is when something is clearly, heavily AI written. All other signals that would supersede it require additional time to evaluate. Things like reading the docs, skimming the codebase, testing the product etc.
With a project like this, the ask made to the end user is to spend the time to, at a minimum, read the docs to see if it's a good fit. If they think it's a good fit, the next ask is to spend the time to integrate it with their current inventory. Then learn the workflow. Then learn the idiosyncrasies. All of these things involve, real human, time.
When an end user is asked to invest this time, there are only so many signals available to them to help decide if it's a good use of their time, energy and resources. For better or for worse, it seems like that list of signals is shrinking and right now, something that appears vibecoded is still one of the clearest visible signals.
it’s easy to agree with your point on the surface, but then we’d be handwaving a lot of negative subtle signaling. I think because HN is mostly developers on the inside we have to assume that a non-Technical audience might see it differently. That is of course true but one very realistic problem I see is that a vibe coded app with made up testimonials, figures, facts pretty much made-up everything is indistinguishable from an actual company. And we put this entirely on the customer to discern. That’s a terrible precedent, no different from posting falsehood on Facebook.
edit: OK I wrote this before I even opened the page and now that I seen i the entire persona is made up. Or it’s seeded in reality and then AI fills in the 80% to round it out, except it’s on the audience to trust. Sad.
I think “uncanny” is a good way to describe everything about this tool. I can’t say really whether the app itself is on target or not, but I have a feeling that without an iPad/mobile terminal that it’s DOA anyway.
It's one of claude models.
We've seen it a lot so it' become extremely grating to us. And it's always the same speech patterns.
I really can't stand it. I don't even think it's intentional from anthropic.
I don't catch that as AI voice.
I spend a lot of time with non-tech-industry folks. Since many in the USA have low reading levels and marketing teams keep telling me to write for 6th grade reading level maybe GenPop doesn't even notice this drivel in the middle of all the other advertising drivel?
Why does it need cloud AI to read invoices? Basic foss OCR can do this very well, so too the most basic local AI. Wrangling claude to read reciepts is using a tomahawk to kill ants.
Can i point it at a local AI server? Can i feed it a pdf that i make myself using my own OCR?
They’ll fix that two Fridays from now. But deploy on Monday. Never Friday.
Great looking app tho. I could not run in on corp. laptop due to blocked PS. HOwever, python server.py works...
If this is all AI, I'm speech less.
I don't know much about running a bar apart from being a regular and sticking around for closing time every now and then.
This looks like an opinionated frontend for a spreadsheet. There are tons of those already. Does this really reduce any of the complexity well enough to be better?
I think people would be more convinced with a demo compared to the existing workflows it's trying to replace.
It’s hopefully an alternative to paying a company like Orca $200/mo. (It used to be $5000 annually, sold solely on the value of potential losses saved.) https://orcainventory.com/
That still costs less than the revenue brought in from a single bar regular (~$100 a week). It also probably works better and staff are more likely to be familiar with it, etc.
I'm not saying SaaS is always the right answer, but that's probably why it succeeds at that pricing.
How an alternative is pitched really does matter. It's not enough to just point out flaws with the competitor. Open source also requires its own set of incentives to get meaningful contributions. It has to solve a set of problems that are interesting and impactful to the contributors.
It sounds like an uphill battle for this project.
I’m sorry this looks like junk.
Why? The app looks great imo.
This looks scary. Website is way too slick and it says something about being a Chrome side-something? Ah someone said vibe code, and I guess that explains the slickness and images too.
I'd prefer a plain text description of what the program actually does. A screen shot here or there might be tolerable but please, no splash screens or uninformative background pics.
Another option in this space: https://barassistant.app/