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Comment by 63stack | Hacker News Reader

The era of sharing some small programs that you made with others to benefit from is over imo.

You can just vibe code it yourself. If your requirements are narrower (eg. you only need support for 3 networks and not 12), you will end up with something that takes less time to develop (possibly less than a day), it will have a smaller surface for problems, and it will be much better tailored to your specific needs. If you pay attention to what the LLM is doing it will also be easier to maintain or extend further.

The surface for security vulnerabilities also gets narrower, since you "only" have to trust the LLM (which is still a huge ask, but still better than LLM + 1 random person).

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> The era of sharing some small programs that you made with others to benefit from is over imo. > You can just vibe code it yourself.

+1.

The password manager I use full time now is “Kenpass”, which has exactly one user: me. I have it on iOS/macOS/Linux, browser extensions, CLI and (native, no electron) UI for each, syncs with my homelab server over my wireguard tunnel, and it covers all my use cases. Took me maybe a week (a few hours total, spread around.) I feel no reason to share it with anyone, it does exactly what I need and I only need to fix the bugs I find, for myself.

We’re really living in crazy times.

> If you pay attention to what the LLM is doing it will also be easier to maintain or extend further

That's another nice part: I actually really enjoy feng-shui refactoring code to fit my tastes, and I've given the LLM's code a bunch of refactoring passes essentially "just for fun". I understand the codebase enough that sometimes I implement features myself instead of having the LLM do it, if I'm in the mood to. But I'd probably never have the time or energy to start such a project from scratch... having the initial MVP done in essentially one shot was a huge boost.

> kenpass

> username "ninkendo"

Absolutely checks out.

Please share more ken related software names you use lol

Everyone needs a to-do list: kendo.

If you want to organize more work items, you might benefit from a Kenboard.

Fun fact: this wouldn’t work in France where "ken" is slang for "f*ck".

> I have it on iOS/macOS/Linux, browser extensions, CLI and (native, no electron) UI for each, syncs with my homelab server over my wireguard tunnel, and it covers all my use cases. Took me maybe a week (a few hours total, spread around.)

A few hours including iOS? Don't you need to go through lots of hoops even if it's only for personal use? Isn't it time-limited or something?

It does require a developer account at $100 a year, yes. But that's it: Once you have that, the app is not time-limited or anything. I can just install it to my device (wirelessly) via Xcode and I'm done.

It's probably only worth the $100/year if there are other apps you want to make for yourself though. I have other ideas for apps for my family, so I figured it's worth the cost. It sucks that I have to pay at all though, I admit.

That's interesting - I thought apps that didn't go through the App Store but were in "developer mode" were time-limited, but maybe I confused it with "share with family" rather than pure personal solo use.

Sounds like you wrote it in Swift(?), did it also do a good job at the autofill code? That's what I'd expect it to potentially struggle at, as it could be a rare and particularly native feature. But then the APIs should be well standardized for iOS.

Very cool and inspiring stuff!

The autofill code is actually Safari's, not the password manager. The password manager basically just needs to impmlement ASCredentialProviderViewController (https://developer.apple.com/documentation/authenticationserv...) and include the "AutoFill Credential Provider" entitlement and safari will ask if you want to sign in with Kenpass for websites and apps.

For firefox (desktop) it's a bit harder, you have to actually implement login box detection. It works like half the time, but I don't really mind much, because it's not a huge deal to just use the clipboard. Even when using 1Password I would so often find that the password autofill was so broken (or would constantly offer me to save passwords I don't want to, or for things that aren't even login boxes) that I actually actively hated it. When creating logins, I much prefer taking an explicit step to activate my password manager to do so, and when prompting for logging in, it's not a huge deal to simply copy/paste when the simple detection doesn't work.

Nah, my whole Github is open. I've always "shared" what I do.

I just don't go run around different social media sites advertising my stuff. I built it for myself, if someone else likes it, they can use it.

If they want a feature they are free to suggest it, but I'm also free to ignore their wishes completely if I don't need the feature. It's an open license, they can fork it.

> The surface for security vulnerabilities also gets narrower, since you "only" have to trust the LLM (which is still a huge ask, but still better than LLM + 1 random person).

On top of which, any such vulnerabilities will be mostly low value: n different implementations, each with their own idiosyncrasies, 90% of them serving one person.

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