What you’re building
buni is an AI-powered web app builder (that builds itself!)
Who it’s for
Initially (first few months):
- buni speeds up workflow for a frontend dev. Does 80% of the work for you.
- Best for people starting new projects or interested in modifying an existing template.
How it plays in the existing landscape
vs Cursor, Copilot
Short term: frontend app generation
- buni is highly opinionated:
- solely focused on web dev vs general-purpose programming
- open by default
- Enables introspection of buni core and outputs by other people and LLMs
- better for de novo exploration instead of building on top of your existing codebase
- buni is batteries-included:
- hosting, version control, auth, database, APIs
vs Wix, Squarespace, Webflow
Medium term: integrate LLM capabilities
- buni builds apps (reactive, data-driven), not just websites
- buni will support technical LLM workflows (text, imagegen, agent architecture)
vs Twitter, Substack, Slack
Long term: widely distributed ecosystem/network of interoperable consumer & “LLM” apps
- ecosystem & moat come from the new data format that underlies buni
- buni probably integrates a native currency, similar to Manifold’s mana
notes
- Matt: “this is where you share apps”, apps as a temporary, ephemeral thing seems pretty interesting
- Many things that would have been text/pictures should be an app. Thinking of apps as cheap primitives.
- [p] Similar to the tweet sent — generative AI enables more creation than things that used to be more permanent
- Pippa: more concrete articulation of who it’s for
- You’re using precious time to frontload your building, you’ll learn
- Better to build it into v1, rather than doing more work unwinding
- Matt: Depending on where you want to take it
- Is there an initial thing that a lot of people want to make, the thing you want to double down on
- Blank page problem blank textbox, what you solve?
- Be opinionated
- Templates: easy ways to understand
- Send out survey to see what kind of development — within the first few weeks of
- [a] Unclear if the early EF is the best cohort
- [matt] Maybe first use case has to be “funner”. Ephemeral sharing thing
- User group might not be people who have huge demands
- Maybe more like “giphy” for apps — creativity, self expression
- User personal of giphy for apps? idk, would choose a community
- Matt: just ship something! No downside, just make it so that people can play with it, see what they do.
- Pippa: Sooner you can ship the better
- Hm, think Monday seems good
- Matt: Thing that’s missing and adding would help: Step after you generate
- If it’s going to be fun, shareability feels pretty key
- Figure out some mechanism that makes it more seamless to share
- [a] Yeah it’s embeddable — embedding in text or whatsapp
- Slack would be interesting
- Discord?
- Mechanisms for virality, would be hard to go viral just as a website, easily enable people in a network
- Who does visual design — internal Nick
- Nick Williams
- Send us what we’re doing on Monday
- Something about shareability
- Why Matt likes the analogy with Twitter or Substack. If you own the feed, you can own the experience.
- Maybe not worth it