← All IntelClip / Developer ToolsWhy users can't customize apps: 25 years of server-side architecture
From Gadgets: Personal app vibe coding that is actually safe — Kenton Varda, Cloudflare · ≈3:30
“What if uh the developer could create their app, the first version of their app, give it to the users, and the users if they need a new feature could say that could ask their AI agent to write that feature just for them, add it to the app.”
AI Engineer
“You've got uh Apple and Google for the past 15 years uh gatekeeping their systems to the point where there's like five companies that can build mobile apps now and uh because everyone else has been banned.”
AI Engineer
“Fortunately, we have a workaround for all of that, which is the web. On the web, everyone can build whatever they want. And it turns out it's fine. It's not the security disaster that Apple and Google keep telling us would happen.”
AI Engineer
“when you distribute a web app, you run it on your own server like put it on your server and then users send requests to your server where the one version of your app, the one um you know blessed version runs uh for every single user.”
AI Engineer
“That's why we've done it is so the developer can make sure things stay updated and everyone's on the same version. But um it obviously means that users cannot customize their apps.”
AI Engineer
What’s in it
- Argues that the one blessed server-side version per app — plus mobile gatekeeping — makes user-side AI feature-writing impossible, and that vibe-coding platforms are all targeting this wrong infrastructure.
Clip transcript
So AI seems to present a new alternative to this. What if uh the developer could create their app, the first version of their app, give it to the users, and the users if they need a new feature could say that could ask their AI agent to write that feature just for them, add it to the app. Um, then everyone gets the features they need. No one is bogged down in everyone else's features. Uh, and the developer gets to keep the the core app nice and clean and beautiful. But there's a there's a problem with this, which is that none of the the infrastructure we build software on today is like remotely designed for this. You've got uh Apple and Google for the past 15 years uh gatekeeping their systems to the point where there's like five companies that can build mobile apps now and uh because everyone else has been banned. Um and it's almost like easier to in the United States to buy a gun than it is to like get access to your own phone to install unsigned software. You go to Google and you say, "I want to install unsigned software." And now they're going to say, "Oh, whoa, hold on, buddy. uh you seem upset. Uh you should uh go home and think about this. Uh if you still want that unsigned software in 24 hours, then you can come back and talk to us. Fortunately, we have a workaround for all of that, which is the web. On the web, everyone can build whatever they want. And it turns out it's fine. It's not the security disaster that Apple and Google keep telling us would happen. So you can build whatever you want on the web but there's a different problem on the web which is that for the past uh 25 years of uh cloud architecture we've been running in the wrong direction. uh when you distribute a web app, you run it on your own server like put it on your server and then users send requests to your server where the one version of your app, the one um you know blessed version runs uh for every single user. And so that's convenient for developers. That's why we've done it is so the developer can make sure things stay updated and everyone's on the same version. But um it obviously means that users cannot customize their apps. So you know last year uh vibe coding comes along and we have all these vibe coding um platforms out there and the most of them are targeting web apps because that's the easy thing to target but they're all targeting this existing infrastructure which is actually like not the right way to do it. Um, we need something entirely different. And hence my point. Do you uh do you like how the
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