from Hacker News

Show HN: Tips.io – A Tailwind playground with AI, page management, and theming

by TIPSIO on 11/18/24, 3:19 PM with 62 comments

Hi HN!

My name is Nick and this is my fun side project. Please lay it on me. HN can think of Tips.io as a cracked out Tailwind Playground that has page management and amazing AI integration.

There are a few core ideas:

1) The HTML is the CMS

There are no fields or restrictions. Just hover, click, and start tweaking any HTML. Also, certain elements you click will have special easy edit abilities:

- <img> auto creates an uploader, stock photo picker (or HTML)

- <video> auto creates an uploader, stock video picker (or HTML)

- <svg> auto creates a big icon picker (or HTML)

- <div class="prose"> auto creates a WYSIWYG Editor (or HTML)

2) Slices

Think of these as just individual HTML sections of a page or lil baby single-file components. They are self-contained and isolated so you drag them around easily. The real power comes from reuse across your pages and linking them (aka, one HTML footer updates globally). You can also use "slices" from any other tips.io project for quickly expanding your site with more design options.

3) AI Elements, Not Pages

Another cool concept is you can select any element on an HTML slice an edit that individually vs re-streaming/rebuilding and entire component every time. We support 5 different AI models right now. Some other really intense/cool AI integration is coming soon.

4) Tailwind Everything, No Build Step, & Theming

We have a custom "themer" to make creating Tailwind config files near instant with real-time font trying, color palettes/preset trying, and more. All our Tailwind is automatic and requires zero config instantly. The same Tailwind that magic runs client-side will run server-side so quick no one knows a build step is happening. Tailwind and AI are also a match made in heaven.

Other features:

- Animations - Zoomable page tree - Basic Forms (yes on your static site!) - Analytics - Redirects, site passwords, and much more.

Tech:

- 100% Cloudflare Workers - Svelte - UnoCSS

Some resources:

- Promo video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s8U2rJJX-rk - Tutorial & demo video: https://tips.io/tutorial - Just launch: https://new.tips.io

  • by sriram_malhar on 11/18/24, 5:34 PM

    Good lord, man, this is a _side_ project? Most impressive. Nothing much to add except to say I am most impressed.

  • by tmpz22 on 11/18/24, 8:30 PM

    This is solid, I'll show my appreciation by giving constructive criticism. This is after giving it the "120 second glance" that I imagine is how most people scan projects quickly without a proper deep dive:

    * First impression: this is a website builder that looks and feels like many other website builders, with some advantages like low onboarding friction, and AI integration. As a solo project reaching par is a triumph. But I think if you continue to diverge your marketing page from a default SaaS startup style you can separate yourself more from the pack AND build a reputation as a better design tool instead of another design tool. Of course the product is more important than the landing page, but perception is perception. You do for example show personality in some of the loading pages which I personally enjoy.

    * I got about 4 hours of sleep last night. I was thrilled when I could click into your app and immediately play around without having to register or experience other forms of friction. But complex design interfaces are overwhelming to me. How do I learn your tool quickly? Why should I invest the time to learn your tool versus other great tools? These are questions I'm left with after a quick scan. There are a lot of developer tools vying for my time. And I imagine their all working on AI integrations if they don't have it already.

    * As a SWE I don't like Tailwind. I don't like the syntax soup, I don't like having to memorize less conventional syntax because my brain already has enough trivia in it, and I prefer small indie projects that are maintained by extremely small teams with limited resources. As a result I do not reach for Tailwind (despite having paid the $300 or whatever for their membership!). What about developers who don't want to use Tailwind?

    * As a potential business customer, can I depend on you? Where will this product be in multiple years? What's the process to transition from a competing tool? What's the process for transitioning to a different tool? Enterprise customers, where the real money is, care about consistency and managing liability sometimes (often?) more then the potential value of a new tool. Consider looking into various compliance licensing, industry audits, and enterprise features, that will be needed to attract investors who want returns based on enterprise sales, not consumer sales.

    I wrote this up because I like your project and hope you succeed. Hopefully it helps!

  • by _hl_ on 11/18/24, 5:49 PM

    Wow, this is ridiculously polished for a one-man-show side project. Massive kudos.

    Do you have a write-up somewhere of how you built this? I think there is a lot that I (and probably many here on HN) can learn from you.

  • by nidnogg on 11/18/24, 7:45 PM

    This seems like a very capable and solidly built project. Well done!

    That being said, I can't wrap my head around the naming. Why tips.io? What do tips mean in this context?

    (PS: Excuse me if it's covered in the promo video, I'm currently in a zoom call and I can't put any audio through right now)

  • by vivzkestrel on 11/18/24, 5:24 PM

    looks pretty sick, if you don't mind me asking. How long did it take you to build this and how are you marketing this? how many paying customers do you have so far may I ask

  • by 2024user on 11/18/24, 10:35 PM

    I'm curious to why FF isn't supported? What actually breaks it?

  • by csomar on 11/19/24, 2:18 AM

    1. Why does it open a new tab when creating an account?

    2. Why does it ask for my email in a confusing way later? If you are not going to let me play directly, just do the usual sign up process.

    3. I selected the Stripe option and I couldn't understand a thing.

    4. Then I went back, create a new page (slug?) and got the AI to generate some code. Clicked preview and instead got the Stripe pages? I later "figured out" that I have to click the "mouse arrow" button to get the preview.

    Honestly, overall, I couldn't make any sense of the interface. It's not intuitive. Lots of buttons all over the place. I don't know what's happening, where my files at, and how everything fits together. I also can only see this being useful for creating a very simple landing page. So maybe I am just not the target market for this.

  • by codetrotter on 11/19/24, 2:40 AM

    Constructive feedback:

    I created a free account and dragged four “slices” on to what I thought was a page.

    When I clicked save it told me it was out of space and I have to upgrade to premium or clear out space.

    I then went to the dashboard dropdown, and selected pages, and added a page slug, and dragged a “slice” to it. Tried to save, same message.

    If I go to billing, it says that the free plan has a 5 page limit. But I don’t seem able to create any pages.

    I’m wondering if it automatically counts the “slices” that I have to choose from in the theme I chose as being part of the page limit? It looks like there are 16 slices to choose from in the theme I picked.

    If it’s because of the slices that came with the theme that I’m out of available pages, I would suggest not counting included slices from the theme toward the page limit for the free plan.

  • by ramesh31 on 11/18/24, 9:27 PM

    Front end devs are officially on notice at this point. If you're someone who makes their living doing little more than design -> code (and there are many of us still), it's time to upskill or be left in the dust. The days of writing markup/styles by hand are over.

  • by ryanchenkie on 11/18/24, 3:35 PM

    Really cool! Is it strictly a playground? Entering a subdomain at the start gives me the impression that I can use the result as an actual website, perhaps there's already a path for that but I wasn't sure.

  • by nedt on 11/19/24, 10:10 AM

    You might want to work a bit on the getting started. I picked a subdomain and clicked and it made it red. An error message of what is wrong might be helpful.

    Found a name that works only to get the message that I should be using Chrome.

    Tried to start with AI but got the message that it's not available yet.

    So I picked a theme only to get the message that it's premium and will be deleted after an hour.

    By that time I really felt not super welcomed. I know it's all free and it looks nice, but at every step it was like I did something wrong.

  • by jillesvangurp on 11/19/24, 5:32 AM

    Nice. Reminds me a bit of a product by a friend of mine that is doing similar things: veryfront.com.

    It's a web based IDE for react based applications as well as a solution that builds and hosts your project. He's been doing lots of work on that for a few years and it has a bunch of nice features like live previews, support for custom react libraries and styling solutions, pulling in libraries from Github, exporting stand alone builds, etc.

    My friend has actually been experimenting with AI code generation as well.

  • by DrBenCarson on 11/18/24, 9:10 PM

    No image uploads on the free plan is tough. Might drive more upgrades but makes using the free plan untenable for me

    Might be smarter to limit to a few images because 0 will likely push a lot of people away

  • by gloosx on 11/19/24, 8:57 AM

    Cudos for making an email-less one-click trial! Looking quite robust, but I did not understand AI feature.

    I selected a menu element, and tried some prompts like "make it shine" "make it see-through" "make it cool" and "make it rock", and I saw it rewriting exactly same code for menu every time, changing some of these tailwind ciphers but with no effect on actual look & feel. What am I supposed to get or prompt there?

  • by afrnz on 11/18/24, 6:29 PM

    Congrats on launching! I love the design and the clever loading messages ("Harambe would love this"). Do you plan to support an export option if I want to self-host?

  • by polishdude20 on 11/18/24, 6:46 PM

    This looks sick! How easy is it to add custom stuff into the pages? Say I've got a really cool three.js project I want to showcase. Is there much work to add it in?

  • by mdolon on 11/18/24, 6:35 PM

    This is incredible work for one person. Keen to try it out but like the website might be getting hugged.

  • by flashgordon on 11/18/24, 9:54 PM

    Come on. This is soo not cool. You cannot call something this amazingly effing polished - a "side" project. As someone who struggles with FE I went into a mini depression mode! really amazing work. Please please put a write up on how you built this (if you are willing to share). Im really interested in the FE magic!

  • by block_dagger on 11/18/24, 6:56 PM

    I like how in the icon demo, it shows how you can replace X (formerly Twitter). Nice.

  • by phaedryx on 11/18/24, 6:56 PM

    Looks really nice.

    Some very minor feedback: the animations are a bit too busy for my tastes

  • by replwoacause on 11/28/24, 7:38 PM

    Any plans to allow BYO API key?

  • by ado__dev on 11/18/24, 8:03 PM

    Nick! Congrats on the launch. Super solid. I tried getting ado.tips.io but looks like domain needs to be at least 4 characters long :(

  • by WuxiFingerHold on 11/19/24, 4:52 AM

    Very well done. And very impressive for a side(!) project, or what started as a side project.

  • by wusel on 11/18/24, 10:53 PM

    Very cool. Post it in the Svelte subreddit, I am sure they‘ll enjoy this.

  • by zoooey on 11/19/24, 6:17 AM

    As a backend engineer, I think I'll fall in love with it. :)

  • by mjwhansen on 11/18/24, 9:45 PM

    This is awesome!

  • by makk on 11/18/24, 5:33 PM

    Who is it for?

  • by goldengoddennis on 11/19/24, 7:44 AM

    You might want to add some moderation.

    https://sex.tips.io/

    PS: I am sorry, but I could not resist.