alt.hn

4/1/2025 at 3:06:11 PM

Launch HN: ASim (YC S21) – Mobile app that generates mobile apps

by dli123

4/1/2025 at 5:48:25 PM

love it. but that makes me think that development is no longer the bottleneck —distribution and positioning are. and my bet that the ASim fucntionality will find it place in the current media platfrom.

say, if tiktok launches an ai app store, it won’t be for complex software—it’ll start with low-friction, high-retention apps: ai-powered video enhancements (think face-swaps, lip sync, object replacement) or micro-utilities, something like ASim does.

for platforms, it’s obvious—more engagement, higher monetization, and a new vertical.

for creators, it’s a no-brainer—why funnel traffic to some app store when you can keep users inside tiktok, get them to install, and even monetize directly?

even the infamous 30% app store cut could be creatively sidestepped—imagine launching your own meme coin for in-app purchases instead.

by zkid18

4/1/2025 at 5:55:50 PM

thanks for the kind words! yep, this is exactly how we're thinking about this space as well! we think as software dev costs compress, it'll become a new modality of expression, similar to how we've seen images and video platforms take off as creation costs start to really compress.

by dli123

4/1/2025 at 9:46:33 PM

cool! happy to connect with you folks! my twitter: kidrulit

by zkid18

4/1/2025 at 5:57:49 PM

This reply would be a lot easier to read with some capitalization after punctuation.

by qoez

4/1/2025 at 9:39:40 PM

There at least 2 capital letters in that post.

by kridsdale1

4/1/2025 at 10:06:02 PM

The embedded mini-app ecosystem is a real model in China. Wechat being the most popular platform. Douyin also has a good share of it. You even see such ecosystem in payment apps like Alipay. I'm also certain there are special deals with Apple structured around this concept.

by gtr32x

4/1/2025 at 10:26:29 PM

ya - i think the replication of the wechat super-app has been attempted so many times in the west at this point, but maybe agi coding solves this...?

by dli123

4/2/2025 at 4:15:41 PM

the playbook works relatively well outside west hemisphere. grab, gojek, gozem, yassir scaled well beyond services to fintech.

by zkid18

4/1/2025 at 7:28:45 PM

Development hasn’t been the bottleneck for a long time people are just lazy

by deadbabe

4/2/2025 at 1:21:52 PM

It’s only the bottleneck for orgs that don’t know how to keep focus and bloated orgs with too many teams/managers/engineers.

And scrappy startups made by businesses school dropouts (and grads)

by dartos

4/2/2025 at 3:55:24 PM

[Answered]

Does it play sound at this stage? or other media (eg video, beyond still images and text and UI?)

EDIT Thank you for making and sharing this -- it is pushing the future closer to today (euphemisms are my superpower lol jk)!

EDIT 2: I see the "Enable Sound API/Access" toggle in the Gear icon, below my generation. Exploring this now.

EDIT 3: Behold the HORROR (Works in Desktop Browser) English -> Morse code with "Sound": http://asim.sh/s/160375

- tip: beware of playing long morse code sequences, there is no stopping it.

by ncr100

4/2/2025 at 5:55:36 PM

hahahaha i love it!!

sound and video generation are very very primitive compared to image gen. definitely something we want to beef up though!

by dli123

4/3/2025 at 3:00:46 AM

:-) I was surprised when it spoke aloud, myself!

by ncr100

4/2/2025 at 12:52:14 PM

I tried and keep stuck in a loop between "Oops! Simulation failed" and "Try Fixing".

It's always the same error but it's not displayed in full: "Error: 297:3:invalid statement encou..." ('encountered' probably? but where? how? why not show the full error?)

Also, what are 'Agent' and 'Genius'? (two different app candidates?)

by bambax

4/2/2025 at 5:56:34 PM

will take a look at this loop.

yep, agent and genius are 2 distinct pipelines we're testing.

by dli123

4/2/2025 at 6:16:03 PM

user id is 'bambax' just like here

by bambax

4/1/2025 at 7:13:29 PM

Cool, aSim - it's a0.dev + Expo?

by aaurelions

4/1/2025 at 7:21:10 PM

yep, you could describe it like that!

by dli123

4/1/2025 at 4:30:17 PM

Looks awesome! How do you plan to monetize down the road?

by realprimoh

4/1/2025 at 4:33:23 PM

we're currently planning on adding the ability for app creators to charge users, similar to Roblox/Robux if you're familiar, and that revenue will be shared between us and the app creator

by dli123

4/1/2025 at 9:39:39 PM

So where do the 'apps' you generate live? On my Google Play account or just inside of Asim?

by ddxv

4/1/2025 at 9:42:26 PM

currently they only live inside of aSim, but we are playing around with the idea of being able to export apps. the Android APK export is definitely doable, but the iOS side is definitely more challenging, so unsure if we will commit to it.

by dli123

4/1/2025 at 11:57:44 PM

What about monetization? Do you think integrating ad networks or IAP and then sharing ad monetization revenue or IAP revenue with developers is a good way to go?

by ddxv

4/2/2025 at 1:23:39 PM

I’d say this is more a tool for prototypes.

You could secure angel funding off a simple prototype.

You could also make something funny and share it with friends, if it doesn’t need to be monetized.

I wouldn’t use tools like this for long lived products though.

by dartos

4/1/2025 at 6:51:02 PM

Would like to try it out but I’m not receiving the verification code on my UK number.

by leonhard

4/1/2025 at 6:54:59 PM

we're definitely under heavy load right now - might be hitting some rate limits. can you try again now? if it still doesn't work, hit me up at dli@asim.sh or on our discord https://www.asim.sh/discord and i'll get you sorted!

by dli123

4/1/2025 at 7:23:46 PM

Looks like many of those mobile app generators these days:

https://asim.sh/

https://bolt.new/

https://replit.com/

https://a0.dev/

https://www.create.xyz/

https://www.tempo.new/

Seems like most (all?) are making react native apps using expo.

by pzo

4/1/2025 at 7:27:36 PM

We’re a bit different than these since our apps are instantly deployed, not deployed through expo. So right after generation, you tap on your app and it loads and is usable, kinda like a webpage.

React native definitely seems to work the best! I think the current generation LLMs have just seen so much js/ts they can just about do anything in those languages.

by dli123

4/1/2025 at 9:40:31 PM

This all feels like Dreamweaver + 25 years, to me.

by kridsdale1

4/1/2025 at 9:58:04 PM

wow I haven't heard someone bring up dreamweaver in probably a decade. brings back memories of coding on my cow colored gateway laptop :')

by dli123

4/1/2025 at 9:42:47 PM

I think you're missing some too. I've been vaguely following and have seen very few that actually seem to have any apps on the app store and those that I found were basic examples.

by ddxv

4/1/2025 at 10:00:43 PM

yea there's a ton now that i've stopped trying to keep tabs on them. i agree that most 'vibe-coded' apps are still really, really basic, so we try to lean into that. give some cool apis that make certain things easy, and make it easy to create kinda dumb, but fun apps. the sweet spot is usually some kind of meme, or something with your friends, like https://asim.sh/@rish/s/157178/create-a-cute-gamified-app-ca...

by dli123

4/1/2025 at 9:46:24 PM

There's at least one that generates Flutter now.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43342101

Also Lovable, which the above is inspired by!

by Apocryphon

4/2/2025 at 4:04:11 AM

Wonder if there will ever be a .net maui one

by insaider

4/1/2025 at 9:37:07 PM

We need a generator for mobile app generators.

by Apocryphon

4/1/2025 at 10:02:07 PM

i think i've seen this prompt at least 5 times today in the logs lol

by dli123

4/1/2025 at 10:14:21 PM

congrats on launching. how are you handling backend needs? firebase? supabse? whats good/whats missing?

by swyx

4/1/2025 at 10:25:21 PM

thanks! we just use good old fashioned postgres running on azure, paired with a node server and blob storage in r2. i like how simple it is, and logs show up in places i'd expect without having to remember how to navigate some ui. queuing was something that took a bit to figure out correctly, but pg-boss ended up being the most straighfoward/easy to deploy on our infra.

by dli123

4/2/2025 at 12:05:41 AM

oh man sorry i didnt mean YOUR backend, i mean the backend of the apps that you make. in the demo video you showed something about Yikyak clone. whats the backend of that?

by swyx

4/2/2025 at 1:26:20 AM

haha oh, these kinds of clones are mostly just built on basic KV stores that we store in our postgres db! there's a couple different types of KV stores we give the app generations, but it's mostly just differing auth types (global, private, shared w/ friends).

by dli123

4/2/2025 at 6:06:03 PM

decent solution for now. curious the tradeoffs of storing the kv in postgres vs a dedicated db. doesnt matter til the apps take off i guess!

by swyx

4/1/2025 at 7:13:10 PM

While that’s interesting, what I’m really after these days is a Mobile App that generates Mobile Apps that generate Mobile Apps

You can never have too many mobile app generators

by purple-leafy

4/1/2025 at 7:20:35 PM

will be taking a note of this and putting into consideration for our next venture!

by dli123

4/2/2025 at 2:54:18 PM

Think endless currying

by econ

4/1/2025 at 8:01:58 PM

Perhaps you could loop it back and make a quine, too.

by Rendello

4/1/2025 at 8:08:27 PM

hmm, kinda like a... y combinator?

by dli123

4/2/2025 at 11:53:38 AM

I'd love to see this adapted for desktop apps. Any plans on doing that?

by sirjaz

4/1/2025 at 5:35:20 PM

Ironic that I end up competing with an AI app generator for work...

by asim

4/1/2025 at 5:41:29 PM

haha i think it's been a great namesake!

by dli123

4/2/2025 at 2:52:37 AM

nice april fools joke!

by compootr

4/1/2025 at 3:30:42 PM

This is so wild. Definitely one of the cooler uses of AI I have seen, especially for a consumer/app/game.

by lukaskf

4/1/2025 at 3:33:48 PM

thank you! we've definitely had a blast building it, hope you enjoy it!

by dli123

4/1/2025 at 4:40:52 PM

[flagged]

by dostick

4/1/2025 at 4:45:40 PM

haha no (at least not to my knowledge)! just following in gmail's footsteps of launching on april fools

by dli123

4/1/2025 at 3:54:39 PM

Have to provide a number just to try someone else's app, hard pass.

by 999900000999

4/1/2025 at 4:17:44 PM

Thx for the feedback - didnt have a chance to implement email otps (will start that now!) and even less didn’t want to figure out sign in with google/apple

by dli123

4/1/2025 at 4:28:32 PM

Why do I need to sign in at all to view ?

by 999900000999

4/1/2025 at 4:32:22 PM

unfortunately we've already been targeted by a small scale DOS attack (or wallet attack?), and account creation on our most expensive model was the only way we could solve the problem for now :/

by dli123

4/1/2025 at 8:48:43 PM

I've worked in the anti-bot space for a while. Friction to real users is a huge cost. I strongly recommend a better solution.

by OsrsNeedsf2P

4/1/2025 at 9:47:46 PM

We need an AI app that generates and manages throwaway sign-ups with a single click so we can use AI apps that generate mobile apps.

by Apocryphon

4/2/2025 at 4:57:52 AM

Wouldn't adding either of those be quite straightforward leaning on AI?

by prawn

4/1/2025 at 6:50:55 PM

[dead]

by hashmelons

4/1/2025 at 6:42:13 PM

[dead]

by hashmelons