Single-file HTML apps | Hyperclay

But it’s better than a story, because I can interact with it as I’m coding

Most of the things I build transform some data into a more useful format

For example,

Static websites are the obvious place to host these simple tools

But static websites fall short in one annoying way: changes to them are ephemeral

This is frustrating because the problems I want to help solve are not ephemeral

With physical objects, ephemerality is shocking — changes are supposed to persist

But there’s no obvious digital counterpart to physical objects

Static websites are great, but changes users make to them reset

To get digital objects to act more intuitively, we need to build a whole persistence layer around them

In practice, this means a server with a database, API, templates, and user accounts

That’s a lot of effort to mimic what we take for granted with physical objects

This is frustrating because I want to focus on making the actual thing, not the persistence layer

I’m like a writer who wants to create experiences for readers, but I have to keep fixing typewriters

It would be a great to ignore all the noise of modern web dev and just build the experience I want

What I need is a primitive concept that’s so obvious it feels like a single, shapeable object

Let’s take an example: a personal dev log I can update over time

There’s a surprising amount of work in getting this simple digital object online

Updating it can be a cumbersome process too, when it should be natural and instant

The best workflow I can imagine is the ease-of-use of a local desktop app you open and edit, but its changes are persisted online

If only my UI had the power to permanently update itself

When I’m done updating it, people can view it

It would be a better digital object: malleable, shareable, cloneable, persistent

Think about how many digital objects are designed specifically for this workflow:

This is the lifecycle of:

What kind of thing could encapsulate this workflow in a single, small package?

Of course! Most web apps already use HTML, with a few extra steps in the middle

What if we cut out the middle steps?

We’d be left with a simple, easy-to-think-about stack:

HTML becomes the all-in-one database / API / UI, flattening all levels of the stack into one layer

It’s a lot less to worry about:

We’d get a full web app with the same amount of code that a static website requires

It’s easy to think about!

It’s a new primitive: a single, shapeable object

Introducing Hyperclay, a place to host self-modifying HTML files (e.g. HTML apps)

Hyperclay gobbles up ordinary HTML pages and makes it so changes made to them persist

Here’s how simple your online, editable, shareable journaling app could be:

div contenteditable>
My new blog!
div>

Or you could build a way to track the extra hours you worked this week:

For something more complex, see my personal dev log:

(To persist changes, request access to Hyperclay)

HTML apps unify UI, state, and behavior into one concept

But best of all, shaping these HTML documents feels like shaping something real, like a physical object

Not in the mood to go down endless rabbit holes just to build a simple idea?