Why write code if the LLM can just do the thing? (web app experiment)
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I spent a few hours last weekend testing whether AI can replace code by executing directly. Built a contact manager where every HTTP request goes to an LLM with three tools: database (SQLite), webResponse (HTML/JSON/JS), and updateMemory (feedback). No routes, no controllers, no business logic. The AI designs schemas on first request, generates UIs from paths alone, and evolves based on natural language feedback. It works—forms submit, data persists, APIs return JSON—but it's catastrophically slow (30-60s per request), absurdly expensive ($0.05/request), and has zero UI consistency between requests. The capability exists; performance is the problem. When inference gets 10x faster, maybe the question shifts from "how do we generate better code?" to "why generate code at all?"
HN · launched Nov 1, 2025 · 436 upvotes (top 2%) · 0 views
Niche: computer and browser automation agents · 127 launches, 0 in the last 7 days ▼ -100% · Explore this niche →
Category and tags
- Horizontal
- Agent / copilot
- Developer
- AI-native
- Hobby / open-source project
Visit website ↗ Source listing ↗
More like this: all 127 launches in computer and browser automation agents →
Could you build this?
Yes This is a lightweight experiment that routes HTTP requests to an LLM with basic SQLite and HTML-rendering tools, which can be implemented in a few hours using standard AI APIs.
Discussion
20 comments analyzed.
Concerns raised: AI energy consumption not justified by 5-30% productivity gains, LLM non-determinism and inconsistency make them unsuitable for critical workflows, Training costs and ongoing compute requirements are prohibitively expensive, Quality and hallucination issues prevent convergence to reliable solutions, Jevons Paradox: efficiency gains lead to increased total resource consumption
Feature requests: Temperature and flow control separation for shower systems, Persistent code generation with automated quality oversight and testing, Deterministic workflow processes instead of LLM-decided outcomes
Competitors
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Attention rank: #7 of 386 (itself plus its competitors, highest first, normalized so YC and Product Hunt are compared fairly).
Launched 2 days after the earliest competitor.
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