Can I vibecode Snapchat?
price $3.99/moyou'd save $47.88/yrbuild time closest consolation build: one sittingcategory social-mediareplaced by 0 people
NOT REALLY
MOATnetwork effectsproprietary modelsscale infra
Camera-first messenger where snaps, stories and streaks disappear · the app is the friend graph
The Build Prompt
copy it and go buildready to paste · 1,922 chars
Build me a private ephemeral photo-messaging app, snaps for one friend group that opts in. Requirements: - Node 22 + Fastify + better-sqlite3, and a vanilla-JS installable PWA served from /public with no build step: manifest, service worker, an offline shell that caches the UI but never caches snaps. - Core loop: open the camera with getUserMedia, capture a photo, type or draw a caption overlay on a canvas, send it to one or more friends. - A snap is viewable exactly once for up to 10 seconds; the server deletes the image file immediately after the view and keeps only a minimal sent/opened log row. - Accounts are invite-code only: the admin seeds codes with a CLI script, signup is username plus passcode, sessions are httpOnly cookies. - Per-pair daily streaks tracked server-side, shown next to each friend. - Group stories: a snap posted to my story is visible to all members and hard-deleted after 24 hours by a sweep job. - Media lives as files on disk outside the web root; metadata in SQLite with WAL mode. - Web push for new snaps behind a permission prompt; the app must work fully without it, and the README says iOS web push is best-effort. VAPID keys and session secret in .env, with a documented script that generates them and a .env.example. - HTTPS is required for camera and push: document local dev with a self-signed cert and production behind Caddy on a cheap VPS. - Be honest in the UI: label view-once as deleted from our server, and state plainly that screenshots cannot be detected on the web. - Tests for delete-after-view, the 24-hour story sweep, and streak day-boundary math with a fake clock. - Out of scope: AR lenses and face filters, Snap Map, Discover or Spotlight feeds, video calls, screenshot detection, analytics, and third-party auth. - README: setup, deploying, where data lives, how deletion actually works, and how to invite the first two friends.
What you lose
- ✕the people: everyone you snap with is on Snapchat, not on your server
- ✕AR lenses and filters backed by years of face-tracking models
- ✕screenshot detection · a web app cannot see or stop screenshots
- ✕Snap Map, Discover, Spotlight and the creator ecosystem
- ✕reliable mobile push · web push on iOS is best-effort, not messenger-grade
Prior art / alternatives
Why it still works
the graph is the product; lenses are frontier computer-vision models; snaps ride a global media pipeline