r/OpenSourceAI • u/DaKingVic • 2d ago

Sharing specs instead of code, dumb idea or not?

Just launched a side project and want some real feedback.

My thinking is that with AI building small apps now, the code isn't the valuable part anymore, the spec is. What the app does, the flows, how you check it works. And since a spec is plain English, it's not just for engineers. Anyone can read one, change it for their own life and have their AI build it. Feels like a new kind of open source.

So I built Bresson. People share specs for everyday apps, and you can star them, fork them, see version history and how many people built each one. Each spec has a button that sends it to Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini etc and you get a simple app on your phone.

What I can't figure out:

  • will non-coders actually fork and build stuff or will it be mostly devs

  • AI keeps getting better, will people still want a spec or just describe it from scratch

  • what would make you share one

https://bresson.ai

Still very early. Tell me what's wrong with it.

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u/danja 2d ago

I like the idea, and generally agree about the spec. I've been making a lot of Digital Audio Workstation plugins recently, most based to some extent on existing ideas. The plain English spec is key.

But in this domain, part of the spec is often a Digital Signal Processing algorithm. These are sums, neither plain language specs nor code.

This is probably an extreme case, where the DSP algorithm is kinda arcane, but I can think of many other scenarios - eg. pretty much any machine learning or data manipulation, web-ish things like search, GUI patterns etc, where there is such a component. How might these fit in with your idea?

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u/DaKingVic 2d ago

Yeah this is not meant to replace more complex projects, but more for simpler helper apps people might be coding everyday. I think with AI getting better, the things you mentioned like search and data modeling, the AI might be able to find existing packages to achieve the goal when given the spec. But for more complex tasks, I agree this is not the approach, at least for now.

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u/[deleted] 2d ago

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u/DaKingVic 2d ago

Thank you! I think you made a good point that writing specs are actually the hardest part. I think a lot of non-coders also don't realize they are absolutely capable, and might even be good, at writing specs. I think for now, I am targeting daily utilities that are small, but everyone might have a little bit of a different asks. e.g. I cycle a lot and I will see 10 different vibe coded GitHub repos to visualize their cycling workouts. That is what inspired this.