A Figma clone built by GPT-6 Astra | Hacker News Reader

A Figma clone built by GPT-6 Astra

wieslawsoltes.github.io

6 pointsaghuang6 comments

More info from the author in this tweet: https://x.com/wieslawsoltes/status/2096360873270837346

The output is quite astonishing and makes me wonder if Figma and pure software companies could be in trouble with GPT-6 Astra vibecoding full working clones of products in minutes.

Yes, honestly anyone could copy a lot of SaaS companies with Astra. But what matters is distribution and the connections you can build.

If it's truly trivial to build a clone then people will just build their own apps to use themselves. In a couple of years regardless of how good your network it won't be possible to launch a successful SaaS app is unless it has a real moat. Distribution and network won't help, because you'll be competing with people prompting for a bespoke app that runs locally for free.

Yes people can make their own apps and run them locally. Yes there is competition. But all of this is assuming that the ai is not generating slop. For now atleast that is the case for many products. The products that are well established won’t get eliminated because they have adoption.

The products that are well established won’t get eliminated because they have adoption.

An existing customer base can be a moat if there's an effect from scale, like a game where you need there to be people on a server to make it fun, sure. In the case of an app like Figma though having more customers than someone else is irrelevant to the product.

If someone can make a passable clone that does the part they need they have no reason to stay on the product, so they won't. Even the most popular SaaS products are facing a very real threat from AI unless they're either something that benefits from more users, something in a regulated industry that people can't just run even if they can copy it, or something that has a secret sauce that can be kept a secret.

I have a phone and PC rapidly filling up with apps I've created myself because I'm fed up with subscriptions and invasive advertising. And they do exactly what I want them to do, not one iota more. And you don't need Alpha or Fable. Cheap models or local are now capable of doing the job if you are patient and know what you're doing. Calling this stuff AI slop is so short-sighted it's not true. :)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com