N of 1 Software
Now that AI makes software basically free to create, I'm building tiny throwaway apps customized to an audience of exactly one: me.
Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash
AI got good… like mind-blowingly good. Sure it will probably never replace the frontier/fringe/wizard workers, but it is more than capable of handling an uncomfortably large chunk of the work SWEs used to be (and still are) paid big bucks to do. So, what should we do now that web apps are being commoditized? We go smaller and actually build out that long tail.
I used to fancy myself as an athlete in high school and college, but it’s been about a decade now of sedentary life. I stumbled on Hyrox when looking for something to motivate me to get back into better shape and health. Now I don’t know if I will actually do one of these races, but I do know that I spent about half an hour with Claude Code and now have a little SQLite-backed web app hosted on my private server that I can access on my phone or laptop to track my training program over the next 6 months in case I do decide to go through with it. If this happened a couple years ago I would…
- Probably not have built anything and just used Google Sheets
- If I did build something, it would have taken way more than half an hour and would have been way crappier
- And I probably would have built something more generic like an exercise tracker (I actually did build a multi-user exercise tracker back in the day)
What I have now is categorically better. It’s technically smaller in scope since it’s hard-coded to my current fitness level and a specific race happening in 6 months… so it is only useful for me at this exact moment in time… but having ephemeral software is totally fine now that it’s basically free to create.
Sure I could spend a month building out a fancy Hyrox training program app and try to launch a SaaS, but that would actually be worse for me than this little throwaway one I already have since it wouldn’t be completely customized around my current situation. Sure I might get super into these races and need a different training program app, but it’d be better just to spin up another short-lived one if that happens.
But what about money? If I’m only building ephemeral apps for myself, how will I ever launch a SaaS, make a boatload of money, and buy a sailboat?! I don’t know, but I’m pretty sure we’re going to see interesting new business models emerge… until then I’ll be here enjoying my “n of 1” tools.