alt.hn

2/6/2026 at 7:27:37 PM

Show HN: I spent 4 years building a UI design tool with only the features I use

 https://vecti.com

by vecti

2/6/2026 at 7:53:54 PM

> I kept finding myself using a small amount of the features while the rest just mostly got in the way. So a few years ago I set out to build a design tool just like I wanted. So I built Vecti with what I actually need...

Joel Spolsky said (I'm paraphrasing) that everybody only uses 20% of a given program's features, but the problem is that everyone is using a different 20%, so you can't ship an "unbloated" version and expect it to still work for most people.

So it looks like you've built something really cool, but I have to ask what makes you think that the features that are personally important to you are the same features that other potential users need? Since this clearly seems to be something you're trying to create a business out of rather than just a personal hobby project. I'm curious how you went about customer research and market validation for the specific subset of features that you chose to develop?

by crazygringo

2/6/2026 at 7:57:53 PM

I think a successful product strategy can be "build something you love, see if others love it too". If that's enough customers, you can judiciously expand out from there. The "fail honestly" method.

I think the Apple II is one example of this.

by nielsbot

2/6/2026 at 8:11:38 PM

This is the best way to build products imo. I'm like this, and I've been accused of being very "vibes-based." However, that's a way more tractable way of shipping stuff instead of "well Jim said he wants X, but Amy said she wants Y" so you end up just kind of half-assing features because you think they might get you users, instead of just being passionately all-in into a very defined product vision (which is a very Jobsian way of doing things).

It's also easier to run a feedback loop. If you implement Y, but Amy doesn't give you $5 a month, what are you going to do? Knock on her door? Users have no idea what they want half the time, anyway.

If you build a product and no one cares, it bruises the ego a bit more, sure, but if you self reflect, you can eek out your own bad assumptions, or bad implementation, or maybe a way to pivot that keeps your product ethos.

by dvt

2/6/2026 at 11:04:33 PM

In order for this to work, you have to possess good taste. Not everyone has it, and it often does not translate across domains.

by linkregister

2/7/2026 at 1:04:40 AM

Good taste is an incredibly powerful differentiator in competitive markets like software. Seems like there’s 3-5 decent choices for darn near anything I need, and usually 1 smaller team has the product that stands head and shoulders above the rest.

by nerdsniper

2/7/2026 at 2:32:40 AM

Unfortunately, good taste doesn’t matter for a successful software product.

First let’s look at B2B, there the “user is not the buyer”. The buyer doesn’t care about “good taste” they care about a lot of other things.

(“Where is my SSO support for multiple users, I’m not going to have my IT department worry about tracking down usernames when Bob leaves)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46919794

Second, if you have the feature that people need or a service or network effect, they will suffer through a bad app - see every Electron app ever.

That “smaller team” may not be around in a year and if you are lucky, you’ll get an “Our Amazing Journey” blog post. Does this product export to a format that my design team can import into Figma if this product goes tits up?

by raw_anon_1111

2/7/2026 at 7:35:29 AM

If you want to do the proverbial “moving upmarket” then yeah you’re going to have this and a lot of other problems. Taste does not sell (let’s be nice and add “on its own”) in that segment.

by Dansvidania

2/6/2026 at 8:29:19 PM

If ten people make focused tools covering different 20% subsets of the giant ones, there's a good chance of having a choice that matches what any given customer wants. And for most customers, that's going to be a better match than a big tool that does tons of other stuff they didn't want.

by thfuran

2/7/2026 at 12:00:19 AM

How do the consumers find which of the dozen tools support the 20% they need?

by dotancohen

2/7/2026 at 12:02:33 AM

By, get this, trying out the products. Revolutionary.

by Zopieux

2/7/2026 at 12:46:59 AM

How about less snark?

Especially when, who the heck has time for trying out a dozen products? That's at least a full day of work, which probably costs more than the software itself.

No, you just read a few reviews to find the best full price option and best budget option and figure out if the budget does what you need or not. And often go for full price just because you don't even know what features you'll need in 6 months which you don't need now, so safer to just learn the option that is the most future-proof.

by crazygringo

2/7/2026 at 7:43:00 AM

This post is about some highly interactive software with a lot of design decisions, and this thread is about finding whether or not your 20% feature niche is supported.

Let's be real, unless some soul somehow had the same 20% as yours and left a review somewhere, you won't know if the features you need, or their implemention, fit your need until you try.

by Zopieux

2/7/2026 at 3:44:08 AM

You're right. Even across stuff I _really_ use it's hard to bring myself to try.

Anecdotally I haven't tried Codex and use Claude Code. The day I try Codex will be when I hear from my friends/communities that it's much better. Same for IDEs, STT tools, etc

by ctxc

2/7/2026 at 5:28:53 AM

I tried codex on a whim when my Claude code rate limited me. Canceled my max subscription and stuck with codex

by Aditya_Garg

2/7/2026 at 7:37:02 AM

It’s amusing how much of a difference in experience I hear about this. Almost hilarious if you take into account what this thread is discussing.

by Dansvidania

2/7/2026 at 12:06:18 AM

“…good chance at having a match” might be a reach, as more use cases create a viable market.

Are your customers selecting one of five features in your product, or choosing any twenty from among a hundred?

by cwmoore

2/6/2026 at 8:07:19 PM

>”you can judiciously expand out from there”

Which is where the bulk of the other 80% of features come from. It’s a cycle.

You start as you describe, you expand, you end up with this enterprise monstrosity, everyone using a different 20%. New tool comes along, you start as you describe…

by reactordev

2/7/2026 at 12:22:44 AM

Assuming it's enterprise software.. then maybe?

Hopefully you can afford to say "No" a lot.

by nielsbot

2/6/2026 at 8:44:38 PM

> Joel Spolsky said (I'm paraphrasing) that everybody only uses 20% of a given program's features, but the problem is that everyone is using a different 20%, so you can't ship an "unbloated" version and expect it to still work for most people.

To me this is an argument for more apps that do less extremely well instead of a handful of apps that do everything poorly. There's nothing wrong with a tool that's honed for very specific user. They'll never hyperscale, but that's also fine.

Or then again maybe they can. Google Docs is plenty popular despite being closer to WordPad or TextEdit in terms of functionality than it is to MS Word.

by cosmic_cheese

2/7/2026 at 12:48:13 AM

Then you'll need interoperability of development artifacts to work with teams.

by Hammershaft

2/7/2026 at 1:11:04 AM

opendoc remembers...

by andrekandre

2/7/2026 at 2:33:41 AM

Nah it’s 2026, you have to have an MCP server.

by raw_anon_1111

2/6/2026 at 11:34:28 PM

Every now and then I stumble on video game developers who have been chugging along for many years, even decades with a handful of dedicated fans. They make obscure niche games that play so well into that niche that they can sustain themselves. Honestly this is something I'd aspire to get to eventually, building a niche product that I love and that just enough people love that I could live sustainably on it, not trying to please anyone but a little collective of people who all agree on what the product should be.

by TheGRS

2/7/2026 at 2:45:55 AM

Creeper World, am I right?

by moritonal

2/7/2026 at 6:41:28 AM

He was talking about Excel. Google Sheets with a tiny fraction of Excel features destroyed Excel except for a tiny minority of hardcore finance and Windows users.

by zaidf

2/6/2026 at 8:59:18 PM

A quick web search suggests that you are probably paraphrasing a newsletter [1] that Joel Spolsky published in 2001. He was talking about software like Excel (of which he was the Product Manager) and Word. Maybe a tool that is more focused on a narrower task (like UI design) can be less "bloated"?

[1] https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2001/03/23/strategy-letter-iv...

by Alex63

2/6/2026 at 10:43:10 PM

Agree. This quote is being used out of context here. Niche software can and does succeed especially when it’s only supporting a single dev. This isn’t trying to dethrone an adobe product, or doesn’t need to.

by conductr

2/7/2026 at 2:34:34 AM

A tool focusing on design is not “niche software” - every company of any size has designers. It’s trying to get professionals to use their software instead of Figma. Why would I move my team from an industry standard that they know or would be willing to learn because they know it will be important at their n+1 job?

by raw_anon_1111

2/6/2026 at 8:48:14 PM

"everyone is using a different 20%"

In my experience, what people use is very malleable to how easy/good the flows are they are presented with. Given 100 equal options, they might use 20, and nobody picks the same 20, but given 25 options, 20 of which present a very good experience, almost 90% will go with those 20 without complaints.

by PeterStuer

2/7/2026 at 5:38:18 AM

> what makes you think that the features that are personally important to you are the same features that other potential users need?

Good question, what's the pitch:

“Vecti is a browser-based UI design tool built from the ground up with one core belief, that creators deserve tools built specifically for them. Better performance, better privacy, and better alignment with their actual needs. A tool that just works, built by someone who genuinely cares about the people using it.”

Hmm. Did founders of Balsamiq or Figma not care about the people using it? And who if not creators were they built for?

“Share & Present - Set viewer and editor permissions at the team or project level. When it's time to present … let your work shine.”

Oh, right, for the people who pay the creator.

by Terretta

2/6/2026 at 10:26:56 PM

Maybe the problem with software is feeling the need to satisfy 100% of users instead of being OK with "only" 20%. Not everything needs to be a min/max problem.

by vitaflo

2/6/2026 at 11:25:09 PM

The point is that 20% of features doesn't satisfy even 20% of users. It's going to be only a tiny fraction of that because something like 99% of potential users are going to need at least one feature outside the 20%. And if a competitor has all the features they need, but you don't, then you lose the sale.

by crazygringo

2/6/2026 at 11:17:06 PM

As long as the 20% is enough to sustain your company, sure. You might have to charge more, however. Luxury brands do this, for instance (fewer consumers is actually a strategic choice to make the product more exclusive). “Pro” products also do this (though often “pro” means more features, not fewer).

by drob518

2/7/2026 at 6:49:09 AM

Assuming a big enough audience, that 20% can still be significant enough to build a business around.

by phyzix5761

2/6/2026 at 11:36:20 PM

Could it be more people want Instagram instead of Photoshop? Take a picture, choose from one of 10 filters. Have a ~12 adjustable settings. Vs Photoshop's 1000s of options.

Like lots of people prefer Trader Joes (limited selection) to a bigger super market

by socalgal2

2/7/2026 at 2:47:51 AM

> everybody only uses 20% of a given program's features, but the problem is that everyone is using a different 20%

This is a phrase that gets repeated and it sounds clever. But it's completely at odds with statistics, specifically the normal distribution.

We should say, people use 80-90% the same features, and then there's a tail of less common features that only some people use but are very important to them.

This is why plugin systems for apps are so important. You can build an app that supports the 80% with a tightly designed set of core features, and if someone needs to go outside of those they can use/build a plugin.

by esperent

2/7/2026 at 2:10:29 AM

> what makes you think that the features that are personally important to you are the same features that other potential users need?

I think this is a weird question. Sure he can't be the only soul in the world to need only those features. Those 20% people need gotta overlap. So I think a more generous way to read your question would be "what makes you think that the features that are personally important to you are the same features that the mass audience need?". If that's what you meant then I'd ask why appealing to the mass audience so important? Why maximize sales and risk making your product worse if the core of your product is to make things you care about?

by gchamonlive

2/6/2026 at 8:28:02 PM

I feel like HTML and CSS could remove 90% of the functionality and only affect 1% of developers, then we could get some actually good web browsers.

by dlcarrier

2/6/2026 at 11:21:04 PM

The issue here is backwards compatibility with web pages that will never be updated. Nobody wants a browser that works with “most of the web.”

by drob518

2/7/2026 at 12:04:25 AM

For this was invented Quirks Mode.

by dotancohen

2/7/2026 at 12:49:40 AM

Oh god. I world have been happy if I'd never heard that term again... flashbacks. :P

by crazygringo

2/6/2026 at 8:09:18 PM

Makes me wish more apps had feature toggles

by james2doyle

2/7/2026 at 12:02:14 AM

VIM does this perfectly. Not a single feature is exposed to the user. Every feature the user might ever want is supported, they need just Google for which keyboard incantation to invoke it.

by dotancohen

2/7/2026 at 3:52:01 AM

Or follow the directions on the startup screen and type :help.

by goosejuice

2/6/2026 at 8:21:51 PM

The testing that would be required to support toggles would be for 2^n. I’m not sure that’s a good solution.

by roberthahn

2/6/2026 at 8:25:38 PM

Makes me wish more apps followed the UNIX model of separating every feature into separate applications with well documented interfaces that only change when new features absolutely require it and otherwise are only updated for security patches.

by dlcarrier

2/6/2026 at 8:30:28 PM

Yeah I like that idea too. Theres a lot of people who would have trouble with that approach though.

by roberthahn

2/6/2026 at 8:47:26 PM

One common case I notice this is with FFMPEG. Everything that saves a video needs its own dialog with different settings. It would make a lot more sense if you had 1 single polished FFMPEG frontend that everyone just streamed data to.

On the other hand, I'm afraid that if this did happen that FFMPEG frontend would look like a GNOME app and I would hate using it.

by AlienRobot

2/7/2026 at 5:02:39 AM

I'm just glad that we have one very polished backend, in FFMPEG itself.

My favorite frontend is MPV, because I can generally forgo a GUI and just use single keystrokes to do everything.

by dlcarrier

2/6/2026 at 11:43:01 PM

This is something I like about lots of web apis.

Want to generate a video, it's just a few lines of code. Want to connect the user's camera (with permission), it's just a few lines of code. Websockets? About 4 lines of code.

There could be 1000s of options for each of those but they mostly distilled it down to what most people need, and they're cross platform.

by socalgal2

2/6/2026 at 9:03:51 PM

Me, on the other hand, love ffmpeg, because I notice my ytdlp using it and my vlc player sometimes using it and I have two homemade powrshell scripts using it to convert flac to mp3 and whatever. I don't want to open a program and figure out it's UI for those things. It has a job, it does it well, you can sort of pipe things to it and I'm very happy.

by mylastattempt

2/6/2026 at 9:12:38 PM

I'm not sure you understood what I mean. I'm talking about applications like Krita using FFMPEG to export their data as video. Sometimes they include their own FFMPEG instead of using FFMPEG installed in the system. Each of them has its own dialog. The only way to input custom settings for FFMPEG would be to export in a lossless video format and then reencode using FFMPEG, when you should be able to just "connect" a data stream to an FFMPEG frontend as the input and the frontend has all the options you might want to customize how that data is turned into a .mp4 file or .mov file.

by AlienRobot

2/6/2026 at 9:54:24 PM

> The testing that would be required to support toggles would be for 2^n

I don't think that's really true, unless the behavior of each toggle is tightly coupled to the behavior each other toggle.

Case in point - most mature apps nowadays do have hundreds of toggles for various settings and features.

by wavemode

2/7/2026 at 1:34:19 AM

I for one, would certainly prefer a wider ecosystem of _more refined_, less bloated tools.

The current system of a near-monoculture of garbage sucks.

by FridgeSeal

2/7/2026 at 7:05:57 AM

Great work. As a European designer, really happy to see competition. Figma is slowly jacking up prices and companies are starting to lean on seats.

Figma has pretty much reached the point that they’re inventing features, pushing AI and expanding to other products (figjam, slides), because they’ve reached feature maturity on UI design long time ago and they need to make more money by expanding the other roles (PO, dev) from viewers to paid seats that actually use the tool.

So, you have a good fixed target here for Europeans: keep copying UI features from Figma and get European businesses to start switching over.

Your pricing is way too high.

World’s best UI design tool with all the extra tools? 16€. Your limited offer? 12€!

How about: 16€ ANNUAL. ”For the price of one month of Figma, get Vecti for the whole year.” - there’s a promotion text for the website too.

P.s. My list of must haves before I could consider switching:

- auto layout (w/ slots if possible!!)

- components

- very simple prototyping with click & scroll support

Prototyping is required for user testing, so I’d have to buy software for that if I’d use yours.

Edit: I want to follow your progress. Could you have a mailing list where you update your feature implementation progress - let’s say once a month?

by karhuton

2/6/2026 at 8:51:55 PM

Since this is a commercial product, I'm naturally inclined to compare it to other competing commercial products.

Why would I want to use this over figma? The sidepanels and floating toolbar are ripped directly from figma (to the point I would fear a lawsuit). Figma is already a very clean UI, which tries it's best not to shove too many features in your face. Whiteboard, presentations, dev mode are all hidden behind menus. "no plugin support" seems like a very odd thing to flaunt as a feature. Many of the most popular use-cases of figma, such as interactive prototypes, svg creation, html/css exports are all impossible in this tool.

Then, there is the problem of this being maintained by a single person. Components are essential to any serious figma user, good svg and image handling is important (svg is buggy in my testing), selection colors is vital, color palette is important. When can users expect to see these features if the maintainer is busy hunting down bugs?

This is a technically impressive product, but I struggle to see the market plan. I personally hate distractions in software, I go to great lengths to debloat and disable features to make my computer interactions smoother, yet figma is possibly the last program I would want to clean up.

by TonyStr

2/6/2026 at 9:52:53 PM

Thanks for your input. I'm happy that Figma works for you, and I'm not trying to put Figma out of business :) I’m sincerely humbled to be compared to such an iconic product as Figma.

I started this project as a personal endeavour to scratch my own itch during the pandemic, out of a personal desire to contribute to the field of UX design that I’ve always been passionate about, but at the same time I don’t intend on working as a solo developer for much longer.

Some of the features you’ve listed, are currently being worked on, which are going to be launched very soon.

by vecti

2/6/2026 at 10:49:43 PM

I applaud your effort, and I love to see others practice the love of building. Though my original comment didn't suggest this, I would love to see your project succeed and gather a user base. Competition is always good, and this is a very solid start for a project.

> endeavour to scratch my own itch during the pandemic

Was this an "itch to build something", or an itch as in an annoyance you had with an existing tool? I'm skeptic of whether bloated UI is an itch many users have with figma or similar, which is why I'm critical of presenting this as the selling point for Vecti. If you manage to find an itch many people do have, and you provide the salve, you'll attract paying users.

by TonyStr

2/6/2026 at 10:13:19 PM

Gotta say I love your humility in the face of challenges from prospective users.

Wishing you the best of success, really like seeing your vision and hope it bears out.

by cadamsdotcom

2/6/2026 at 10:49:13 PM

> The sidepanels and floating toolbar are ripped directly from figma (to the point I would fear a lawsuit)

No, a company can’t sue you (well they can try, but it has no legal standing) because you rip off their side panel design. Thank god the industry doesn’t work like this.

by gyomu

2/7/2026 at 3:21:03 AM

Adobe sued Macromedia because the floating palettes in Flash worked just like the ones in Photoshop. Flash MX had a much-revised, shittier UI.

by egypturnash

2/6/2026 at 10:59:58 PM

Figma sued AI startup Motiff in 2024 for copyright infringement and won[0]. Motiff had to reimburse figma, and redesign their product.

[0] https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/69166901/figma-inc-v-mo...

by TonyStr

2/6/2026 at 11:46:43 PM

Not relevant. Figma v. Motif was over allegations of stealing source code, apparently including known Figma bugs.

The design of the UI wouldn't be covered by copyright anyway; Figma would have had to file and be granted a patent, which has a much higher bar (IMO not high enough, but that's a different discussion).

by mortenjorck

2/6/2026 at 10:16:34 PM

This. As a heavy Figma user, I don't see why people want to pay $12/month for this product when Figma is as competitive in pricing and much more widely used

by g947o

2/6/2026 at 9:37:13 PM

People ship stuff that doesn't make sense at first blush all the time. But how are they ever supposed to even get into the space if they don't try something? Try to get some customers, see what people want. On day one, he's not saying he's going to compete with Figma. He's just getting it out there. Your comment—You could say you're just asking questions or giving constructive criticism, but it just assumes the negative on so many levels. I can criticize your viewpoint. Why do you think someone should have a product that's ready to compete with Figma on day one? Do you seriously expect him to have an answer for that?

by johnwheeler

2/6/2026 at 10:35:54 PM

I initially wanted to write a comment applauding the effort (making a performant web-based wireframe editor is a technically challenging task). But after testing the site, I got the impression that this is a commercial product trying to get a foothold (as opposed to a hobby project for the sake of learning).

At the time of posting, there were no other comments with criticism, so I thought it better to contribute some of my thoughts.

My main concern for this project is not that it doesn't have feature parity with figma, but that I don't see a well-thought out business model. Vecti sells a seat-based subscription model (same as figma), has almost directly ripped much of figma's design (a proclaimed ex-figma employee pointed out that this may be cause for a lawsuit in another comment), and the only distinguishing selling point is that it has less features than figma (the tool it's trying to emulate).

My opinion (which may be wrong) is that figma is already very good at stripping away features, hiding them behind modes, toggles or contextual menus. I'm a figma power user, but I have held a course in figma and managed to get 20 non-technical people to grok the tool and be able to create their own interactive designs in half an hour.

by TonyStr

2/6/2026 at 9:35:50 PM

There is space for this. The things you list as negatives are positives. Feature parity or similarity to a big competitor? A plus. Single developer? For a certain kind of consumer, a plus.

by popalchemist

2/6/2026 at 9:46:42 PM

I think you’re missing the point a bit. Not every tool needs to be Figma, and honestly, that’s a good thing.

I’ve been using Figma for a while, and true, it’s powerful. At the same time it becomes increasingly complex, difficult, bloated overall. Simple tasks now require navigating through multiple menus, and the learning curve for new users is steep (took me a while to understand it, and the same experience had it acquaintances of mine). Sometimes I just want to sketch out an idea or make a task without dealing with all that overhead.

The no plugin support thing actually makes sense to me. I’ve had Figma slow down or crash because of poorly maintained plugins. Having a tool that just works, consistently, without worrying about plugin compatibility or security issues? That’s valuable. And yeah, it’s a solo developer versus a massive company (that’s my understanding) but that is why it’s beautiful. Also it’s an uneven comparison if you ask me (but didn’t :)) ).

However, the fact that this is even being compared to Figma shows the quality of what’s been built. Not everyone needs enterprise features. Some of us just want a clean, fast canvas without the friction. Every new feature of Figma feels like an attempt to monopolize the entire market.

I think he did an incredible job. Good work. This has value.

by fastThinking

2/6/2026 at 11:04:24 PM

> Simple tasks now require navigating through multiple menus

I'm curious which simple tasks you're referring to?

> I’ve had Figma slow down or crash because of poorly maintained plugins

Why not uninstall those plugins? Is no plugin support really the best solution to this problem? Was there not a reason that you originally installed those plugins?

by TonyStr

2/7/2026 at 12:27:15 AM

Comparing the tool shared here to PenPot[1] might be more fair.

[1]: http://penpot.app/

by bryanhogan

2/6/2026 at 7:38:15 PM

Congrats on launching. I spent a decade trying to build a design tool. I think I built almost 40 prototypes, to various degrees of completion. Never got to a point where I felt it was good enough to share. It's an incredibly difficult thing to do, so kudos to you for sticking with it.

by danielvaughn

2/6/2026 at 7:50:55 PM

Thank you, and I know exactly what you mean. I myself have rewritten the entire engine ar least three times until I was happy with the performance and the overall outcome. It’s been a long learning experience. As a developer at heart, this project scratched every itch I had from a software engineering perspective :)

by vecti

2/6/2026 at 8:32:49 PM

You should write about this, the gotchas and what you learned how to make things performant. Might drive some traffic.

by uxcolumbo

2/6/2026 at 8:28:47 PM

How much of this release was made easier with LLMs?

by written-beyond

2/6/2026 at 8:00:23 PM

Are any of your prototypes published or available to view?

by cobertos

2/6/2026 at 8:52:00 PM

there are various little things scattered around the github org - a js framework, a treesitter grammar, some old docs, a vscode extension, a vim-style editor, an AI-powered code editor geared towards design, etc.

https://github.com/matry

by danielvaughn

2/6/2026 at 9:56:24 PM

Are you still working on this? Because I like the words I see on your GitHub -- vim-style bindings, keyboard driven, sounds like you write a definition language for your designs, basically?

Lik Matry is to Figma as openscad is to traditional CAD (Fusion 360, etc)?

Though that does sound like a huge project to take on!

by airlocksoftware

2/6/2026 at 10:05:52 PM

I don’t know enough about CAD products to evaluate that comparison, but the core idea was to expose language as a design tool. First through code, then through keyboard commands (hence the vim idea). It’s still pretty fun, but LLMs have changed the conversation around what a designer even is, and I’m currently re-evaluating.

Matry might pop up in another form. I’m considering turning it into an actual browser for designers. Right now designers are getting into the code and using Claude/Cursor to make changes directly. But they still have to know how to get the app running locally, which is a hurdle. So if they could just navigate to the site, make some design changes directly in the browser, Matry could then take the changes and create a PR on GitHub for them. Designer wouldn’t have to fuss with any dev tools. Kind of a cool idea.

by danielvaughn

2/6/2026 at 9:21:40 PM

Isn’t this exactly the problem that Joel Spolsky wrote about a quarter of a century ago?

https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2001/03/23/strategy-letter-iv...

A lot of software developers are seduced by the old “80/20” rule. It seems to make a lot of sense: 80% of the people use 20% of the features. So you convince yourself that you only need to implement 20% of the features, and you can still sell 80% as many copies.

Unfortunately, it’s never the same 20%. Everybody uses a different set of features.

by raw_anon_1111

2/6/2026 at 9:55:47 PM

Trello was a successful product despite having way less than 20% of jira's features

by shawabawa3

2/6/2026 at 10:00:45 PM

And there are hundreds if not thousands of Show HNs and YC funded companies that have disappeared in a whimper trying to be the “smaller lightweight version of $x”

by raw_anon_1111

2/6/2026 at 10:49:50 PM

> and you can still sell 80% as many copies.

This is the key to that quote. If you resolve to selling less, you can still have a multimillion dollar product. If you resolve to it being a billion dollar product, then yeah you need every thing for everyone.

by conductr

2/6/2026 at 10:55:16 PM

The quote is taken out of context, he’s arguing just the opposite. Everyone has a different 20% and that 20% is an overlapping Venn diagram. It’s almost impossible to find the “right” 20%.

It’s just like the RAD tools - or Java or any of the other cross platform frameworks - there is always something that you need to use that the vendor doesn’t support.

by raw_anon_1111

2/6/2026 at 11:18:38 PM

There is no “right”. You build what you want based on what product vision or user pattern you’re aware of and you sell that. You can still build a healthy sized business on it if you tap into the right niche and have gotten close enough.

This space specifically is tough. Figma and adobe products are similarly cheap.

by conductr

2/6/2026 at 11:54:42 PM

And you still for B2B SaaS have to worry about:

1. Where does this fit in Gartner’s Magic Square? No one ever got fired for buying Salesforce/ServiceNow/Workday/well known company

2. “What if I don’t need feature $y now. But I might need it in the future?”

3. “Everyone in my industry already knows how to use $x, so it will be easier to onboard new employees. Even if they don’t know it, there are courses available”

In today’s world for any SaaS to be taken seriously, it has to have Slack/Teams integration and SSO logins with the company’s IDP - there is an industry standard so if you support one, it’s relatively painless to support all of them. So what is your enterprise sales story - even for small startups?

Even if you work at a company that gives everyone a yearly stipend to get almost anything they want that will improve their work, you still have to get approval for any tool where the company’s info is sent to a third party.

These are all things that most people don’t think about when they want to turn their passion product into a business

by raw_anon_1111

2/6/2026 at 11:12:09 PM

I like your website design, especially the two-column layout in most sections once I get past the hero image (full size screenshot). I found myself looking at all the images. The downside is that I did not really get any motivation to try it out or really understand how it could help me.

I am a backend software engineer so I'm always on the lookout for a way to easily and simply create a professional looking landing page. Therefore I'm always asking the question... is there a template I can choose from and just start filling it in? Just yesterday I found a figma template hosted on figma.site and I used chrome devtools to edit the hero text and navbar and got instant results .. as in I sort of liked it. Typography, spacing, use of color, detailed data presentation (ie bullet points, 2 column layout, etc), and fill-in images are my starting point (as an amateur designer). I could spend hours tweaking a design but I would rather just copy some existing component designs and call it a day. Hope this helps.

by jonnycoder

2/6/2026 at 8:13:27 PM

Godspeed! This is the software design philosophy that I support! As someone building my own design utility, I'm impressed by the quality of yours.

by catapart

2/7/2026 at 5:00:56 AM

Congrats! I tried it and some feedback:

1. Every action seems slower than Figma and Sketch-my main tool

2. Some short cuts didn't seem to to work, like how I can't copy and paste a canvas. It was hard for me to forego muscle memory

3. Is there a way to try it without signing up for an account? Like a sandbox? I tried to delete my account but because I logged in via Google and it requires me to enter a password (I don't know), I can't delete.

by phmagic

2/7/2026 at 5:02:04 AM

I press the button on the website and it wasn't even animated, worse, it didn't have an active state.

Not that I like to see that stuff but you did animate the text and feedback does help usability.

by econ

2/6/2026 at 7:59:25 PM

Any chance this will be open-sourced or have a self-hosted version available?

I'm interested in modding tools in this space in pursuit of finding weird new ways to create and work with UIs

by cobertos

2/6/2026 at 8:31:53 PM

If you're looking for an open-source and self-host option then you might to checkout https://penpot.app/

by uxcolumbo

2/6/2026 at 7:32:50 PM

How does it compare to https://github.com/penpot/penpot?

by tarcon

2/6/2026 at 8:48:27 PM

Thanks for this question. I'm humbled by the comparison. I have been following penpot for a while and I appreciate the work they've been doing.

The main difference lies in the rendering engine. Penpot relies on an SVG engine, which limits performance as project complexity grows.

Vecti is built on canvas and WebAssembly (the same architecture used by Figma). This gives us raw performance advantages, allowing you to handle complex, heavy design systems without the lag you might experience in SVG-based tools.

by vecti

2/6/2026 at 7:47:59 PM

Maybe its obvious but I can't tell it this is an image editor, a React builder, an HTML/CSS designer, ...? What does it make?

by contrast

2/6/2026 at 8:15:23 PM

It's a wireframing tool akin to figma. You create the design for your website/app there, then hand it over to a programmer who implementd it in html/react/flutter/wpf/etc

by TonyStr

2/7/2026 at 3:58:35 AM

I have one observation that doesn’t seem to be reported on this thread. The home page is very heavy, loading several MBs of images. It took half a minute to load completely for me on mobile.

by AnonHP

2/6/2026 at 8:02:24 PM

Congrats on your launch! My impression is that this looks quite polished. Can you elaborate on your tech stack?

by codethief

2/6/2026 at 10:20:23 PM

Thanks!

On the frontend: typescript, react, webgl with an emscripten/c++/wasm engine

On the backend: Python, postgres, redis

by vecti

2/6/2026 at 11:51:57 PM

My biggest issue with Figma and most vector apps is how they handle groups. Only Illustrator seems to offer group isolation. You can double click on a group, enter the group and just edit the elements inside that group.

It's such a simple feature but it massively improves the workflow of working with vectors. Never understood why Figma, Sketch, or Affinity Designer never implemented it.

by pier25

2/6/2026 at 8:16:51 PM

Nice. My gripe with designer apps is that they are online first. I'd want to save designs to files, close to other files of the project. I'd want to open each file in their own window, not in browser tabs.

by aerzen

2/6/2026 at 8:19:05 PM

Sketch is offline first but has a really stellar online app as well.

by aabhay

2/6/2026 at 10:44:19 PM

Plus you can buy Sketch outright without the subscription.

by vitaflo

2/7/2026 at 2:11:48 AM

I use some basic analytics (page views, referrers) but zero tracking inside the app itself. No session recordings, no behavior analytics, no third-party scripts beyond the essentials

Take my upvote

by rkagerer

2/6/2026 at 7:56:22 PM

Congrats on launching, looks cool for sure, I'll certainly check it out!

Have you considered adding an MCP server? I've had good results recently using the Figma one just

by jmkni

2/6/2026 at 8:14:24 PM

An MCP server is definitely on my radar. I've seen some really cool workflows coming out of Figma too. Being a one-man show though, prioritizing what to build next is always the tough part. But it's on the list, appreciate your suggestion!

by vecti

2/6/2026 at 8:58:34 PM

Yes 100%

by jmkni

2/6/2026 at 8:42:09 PM

Comparing this to penpot, which is free as long as you self-host.

Not sure why I would pick this over a self-hostable battle-tested option.

by ramon156

2/6/2026 at 10:40:34 PM

Congratulations on shipping a beautiful product

by replwoacause

2/6/2026 at 8:13:28 PM

Love the domain name. How did you manage to snag it?

by jasonsb

2/6/2026 at 10:07:35 PM

When I started the project I was having a hard time finding a good domain name for the project. Some time later, I came up with this name, and found it for sale on some website for ~800€. I figured it was something I could do, but fortunately I ended up on dynadot's website where it was for sale for a fraction of the price. I think I got lucky while doing all the work :)

by vecti

2/7/2026 at 1:57:55 AM

That domain is definitely worth more than $800, good find.

by _el1s7

2/6/2026 at 7:37:34 PM

Beautiful design! (makes sense for someone that does UI design). Congrats, I'll check it out.

by willparks

2/6/2026 at 8:04:01 PM

Great job, congrats on the launch!

by pawelwentpawel

2/6/2026 at 10:17:40 PM

Your pricing makes it seem like $12 for a year.

by dhumph

2/7/2026 at 3:57:02 AM

That’s exactly what I thought too when I saw “$12 annually”. Then I read the “$15 when billed monthly” and realized this is a monthly price. OP, please correct this.

by AnonHP

2/7/2026 at 4:38:53 AM

Done

by vecti

2/7/2026 at 4:38:44 AM

Fixed

by vecti

2/6/2026 at 10:01:40 PM

It looks really nice, but it is subscription based, so ... no thanks. I refuse to give in to this horrible cycle started by Adobe, lo so many years ago.

by NoSalt

2/7/2026 at 3:23:28 AM

Bravo

by RobRivera

2/6/2026 at 10:27:26 PM

I wait for someone to comment that he could pull it off with an Opus 4.6 agent team in 24h of so.

by tuhgdetzhh

2/6/2026 at 7:33:00 PM

Fun submission, will have a look :)

by mettamage

2/6/2026 at 9:27:29 PM

Congrats on launching!

by th3o6a1d

2/6/2026 at 7:42:36 PM

Just tested a few things and I gotta say its fairly easy to pick up and do things. UI does feel like Figma for better or worse.

Congrats on completing this project and good luck.

by falloutx

2/6/2026 at 7:32:08 PM

It's beautiful. Great job. Congrats on having the persistence to see this through.

by popalchemist

2/6/2026 at 7:36:01 PM

Thanks a lot. I appreciate it. It’s been quite a journey.

by vecti

2/6/2026 at 10:01:24 PM

Ex-Figma.

I'd be worried about a lawsuit here, primarily due to the overall app architecture and property panel on the right. While there are differences between your implementation and Figma's, it's close enough that things are very clearly Figma-inspired. There've been a lot of Figma copycats, and Figma does have a track record of successful lawsuits against them.

Great work with the backend architecture (a lack of a proper wasm renderer is why penpot will never be competitive), but you're in dangerous territory with the UI.

by jjcm

2/6/2026 at 10:45:43 PM

Wasn't Figma's side panel just a ripoff of Sketch's? Always felt that way.

by vitaflo

2/6/2026 at 11:29:38 PM

Heavily influenced by Sketch's UX for sure. Sketch paved the way for the new wave of design tools. There were some significant architectural differences between the approaches though.

Just for comparison, here's a side by side of each: https://image.non.io/940a433a-3c25-4610-88e8-4eec810f2235.we...

by jjcm

2/6/2026 at 8:23:09 PM

[dead]

by arkforge

2/6/2026 at 7:44:29 PM

[dead]

by arkforge

2/6/2026 at 9:07:46 PM

I think you're 4 years too late bro. With AI, you can pretty much get 80% of the way there in a minute. I don't understand why anyone nowadays would build anything from scratch.

by thrownaway561

2/6/2026 at 11:23:09 PM

With so many ready meals to choose from I don't understand why anyone nowadays would cook anything from scratch.

by augustk