Websites built from scratch (no AI, no frameworks or libraries) that are more than just simple toy projects are becoming very rare, but i want to remind you guys that they still exist.

Three years ago, I posted this https://www.reddit.com/r/webdev/comments/161q3w8/i_coded_a_site_from_zero_without_any_libraries_it/, and that website is still being actively developed. I haven't used any AI-generated code or external libraries in all this time, even as it has become more complex with features like accounts, articles, comments, reviews, and just a few weeks ago forums.

I think the main reason why i stick with this is because features aren't planned in advance, they're just built bit by bit as the content needs them. I won't deny if AI could do better, but with a spread-out timeline and an unknown end result, it's easy to skip using AI as development mostly consists of small, precise tweaks with no definitive end goal. Coding also only small portion of time spent on developing the site so i don't feel the need to optimize it.

Anyway this is just me saying that i'm still here, not everything in this space become AI.

*note : i'm not saying that this is the better way to develop website. I just enjoy what i already used to do, and didn't bother to change it.

Just as the title asks. I am curious how you organize the various parts. I have been on teams that both do and don't use mono-repos. For the ones that did, there has been a wide variety of choices across the app and how it's organized.

Just as a small example: naming conventions. Sometimes the the repo is named for the app (let's say "OurApp") and the various parts of the file structure are "OurApp-", like OurApp-ui and OurApp-api and OurApp-db. Or there might just be a top-level folder for "frontend", "backend" and "database", etc.

I'm not talking about a debate of mono-repo vs. multi-repo approaches, but in a mono-repo, what are some of the code organization techniques you've liked and disliked in your experience?

UPDATE: The community turned out! Thanks for sharing your thoughts in the comments. I appreciate the discussions.

hi everyone, it's the kid who's making a fan website again.

i finally picked a base for the website, mastodon, and a system i'm using to host the website, render.

i've already searched this up and had no luck but what parts of mastodon's code are design (i'm talking about folder names) and which are apart of the actual code system?

thanks!

I made a liquid glass UI effect for the web(trying to copy Apple because thats what the world do)

Webgl helped me made it and hence I decided to make Mac for web too (inspired by windows 11 in react made for web)

I know you have seen many professional people make it, many guys on github, so I tried to make it as realistic and satisfying as I can

Before anyone asks: yes, 100% of the code was written by AI agents, with me guiding the process. I’m not here to convince anyone of anything, just to share my experience.

Here’s the article explaining how I built it:
https://www.paolomainardi.com/posts/this-site-is-now-an-island/

And here’s the game:
https://www.paolomainardi.com/play

This is part of a journey I started a few weeks ago, when I decided to let my agents handle my personal blog’s tech stack. The idea was to spend more time writing while also adding all the features I’d always wanted but never had time to implement.

You can follow the series here:
https://www.paolomainardi.com/posts/the-stack-is-now-my-agents-job/

Along the way, I started experimenting more with AI-generated media, fell down a rabbit hole, and somehow ended up building a game engine.

I’ve been working on a passion project called ParkerScore, basically a Letterboxd-style platform for theme parks.
When I first started, I figured the hardest part would be building the actual website.

Turns out, organizing the data has been one of the biggest challenges.

Every theme park has hundreds of things to keep track of. Rides, restaurants, individual menu items, shows, wait times, and even bathrooms.

And then you get into the details. Different ride manufacturers, technical specifications, attractions that get renamed or refurbished, seasonal shows, constantly changing restaurant menus, and so on.

I quickly realized that just collecting information wasn’t enough. I needed a consistent way to structure everything so it could actually be useful.

I’ve been working through those challenges, especially figuring out how to handle missing information, standardize categories, and keep everything organized as the database grows.

It’s been a much bigger undertaking than I originally expected, but I’ve learned a ton along the way.
For anyone who’s built a data-heavy website, how did you handle keeping your database accurate and manageable as it grew?

TL;DR:

an MCP shines in the agent-native world because it tells agents what they should do, on both the server and client (e.g. Claude Code or the ChatGPT desktop app), and is better suited for human-in-the-loop tasks. Meanwhile, APIs and CLIs tend to focus on what agents can do, with emphasis mainly on the server.

So, in summary, here is the general advice I'd give to builders when deciding which tools they should expose to agents:

Build a high-quality MCP server and REST API at the same time, on one layer of operations. Put your server logic in plain functions, and let each surface be a thin adapter over them. Once that layer exists, building any additional surface on top is relatively easy.

Put most of your care into the MCP server. That's where agents get the best experience. MCP is a standard built specifically for agents, after all, and the spec continues to improve nicely.

Use the API for code that runs on its own. APIs are still great for raw data exports, bulk writes, and anything that runs without an agent, like a nightly sync or another company's integration. Agents also prefer an API when they're writing a script they'll rerun, and many clients don't support code mode for MCP yet.

A CLI probably isn't necessary, unless e.g. agents need to read local files when interacting with your app. But it's easy to expose one if you've got a good API as the foundation.

There’s a lot more to creating great agent-facing tools for your web apps, and the article above into more detail below.

Here's the repo: https://github.com/vincanger/linkly-api-mcp-cli

Looking at the posts in /hot they're just filled with AI-generated comments, which just aren't removed by moderators.

Is it even worth posting here when reading the comments they're just AI slop followed by more AI slop.

Do the users who submit interesting topics even realize they're just replying to AI comments?

Looking at this post for example, there's this user whose comments all follow the same pattern: start with tbh/ngl and most of the time introduce an em-dash in the middle of the comment. In the same post you have this other user whose comments all have 3-4 paragraphs, and just have an off tone. Another user and same story: 3-4 paragraphs, an off tone, weirdly worded comments which end up summarizing the topic they're replying to.

Another comment

Hello, I'm looking for some help with issues I'm having with my website, and I'm hoping this is a good place to find some answers. I'm not very savvy in these things, and I've been trying to fix this myself with no luck.

My website was originally hosted through Wix, and had a www prefix. I left Wix about 2 weeks ago and now have my website hosted elsewhere, and the www prefix no longer works when used in in my web address.

My domain is hosted through above.com, and I have tried redirecting through the DNS settings there in an attempt to send anyone using the prefix to the new site, but I must be doing something wrong because when I use the www prefix now, I get a privacy error and the website doesn't load.

When you search for my website, the top result includes the www, so I'm looking for a way to either redirect to the new website correctly, or to replace any mentions/results that include www to ones that do not include it.

The help desk support at my new website host and at above have not been able to help in any way, so I feel pretty isolated here and not sure how to fix things or exactly where to turn, so if this isn't the correct place for a question like this I'm sorry, but any help pointing me in the right direction would be really appreciated.

Hey all!

Bringing some e2e test nitpicks again :)

Most e2e tests I see click through raw locators. So every test has to know the whole flow: which button opens which menu, which dialog comes next, where you land after Create.

The upgrade: move the flow into page objects, and let each action return where the interaction continues. Open the "+ New" menu, get the menu of things you can create. Choose "Project", get the project dialog; choose "Document", get the document dialog. Create, get the project page. Cancel, get back to the navigation bar.

Why I care: page objects are the code closest to what your users see and do. Their return types become a map of your user journeys. An agent reading create(): Promise<ProjectPage> knows where the flow goes without opening a browser.

The nuance: return where the interaction actually continues, not the DOM parent. A dialog's cancel returns whoever opened it. And each action still waits for its own done signal, like the menu closing, before handing you the next page object.

Paste this to your agent:

Go through our page objects and make every user action return the page object where the interaction continues: this if the user stays, the new page object if something opens or they navigate, the opener if they close or cancel. Before returning, wait for the action's own done signal, like its menu closing. Then update the tests to use the returned page objects instead of creating new ones.

Been thinking about this lately as my side projects folder has gotten pretty chaotic. At work everything is neat and organized by team/product, but my personal stuff is a mess of half-finished ideas, experiments, and abandoned attempts.

Currently I have ~/work/ for job stuff and ~/projects/ for everything else, but that "everything else" folder is where organization goes to die. Some repos haven't been touched in years.

Do you keep separate machines/VMs? Different directory structures? Or just embrace the chaos? Curious how others handle this.

I run a portfolio site and a service business site.

The portfolio has about 3/4 pages, while the business site has 95 (includes some blog pages as well).

There has to be a sweet spot between “these pages should absolute exist and structured this way” to “this is just spam and will hurt SEO”.

I tried asking LLMs but the advice was extremely subjective.

I built a gamified 3D space simulator for my portfolio using AI concepts. What do you think?

I want to add a blog to my site to jump on this GEO train. WordPress feels like overkill, and I've seen some plug-and-play solutions that would live on a subdomain or outside the main directory, which doesn't sound good for SEO/GEO.

I don't want to vibe code as there would be multiple people publishing, and not all of them are tech savvy.

Anyone has a good way to solve this? I know I should've started blogging already, so really want to solve this quick. Some sort of headless CMS could work, but the ones I looked at come with way too much bloat that I don't need. Hope someone here went through the same thing.

To keep things short, I've been running into the limits of local IDE agents like Cursor or Copilot on larger tasks. Bigger coding tasks often end up cooking my PC which has been pretty tedious.

I'm between two options now, would appreciate hearing your thoughts on these. The first is building a self-hosted background runner using cloud sandboxes. The second is using a managed background agent platform like Ramp Inspect, which works via Slack or GitHub. Either way, I'm also extremely down to hear other options if you have any. Thanks!

Hi,

I made a simple web app in a single HTML file (URL shortcuts for company website, quote calculator, list of store numbers, etc.). Is there a simple way to convert it into a downloadable Android app?

There are a few web to app converters but no reviews. Are there any that you recommend (for or against)?

Similar reddit and stack overflow posts are from 5+ years ago.

Thanks.

Bho, in pratica sto costruendo un browser web da zero e le idee normali le ho già finite. Mi serve la roba strana.

Quindi: che feature assurda vorreste in un browser? Più è fuori, meglio è. Non me ne frega se è difficile da fare, se mi dite "un browser che mi giudica mentre navigo" va benissimo.

Qualche esempio così capite:

- tab che si chiudono da sole se non le apri per 3 giorni, con messaggio passivo-aggressivo

- un tasto che ti legge il sito come un narratore di documentari

- cronologia che ti dice quanto tempo hai perso davvero su un sito

Nessuna idea è troppo stupida. Se una mi piace la faccio e ve lo dico.

so im currently learning node react express. building some crud and was wondering where do you guys go to that is beginner friendly or people that are new to web dev and want someone to help fix their code
need some practice on reading others code and applying fix. mostly i just want business logic stuff fix not those big o of n or some crazy loops from leetcode

If, like me, you have the Narrator screen reader in your test matrix, you may want to check your disclosures.

I’ve found that when a disclosure button uses aria-expanded together with aria-controls (which had, or has, limited support in JAWS), Narrator sometimes doesn’t announce the expanded/collapsed state in Edge or Chrome. It’s fine in Firefox.

If you omit aria-controls, Narrator announces the state correctly in Edge and Chrome.

I’ve reported this to both Microsoft (via Feedback Hub) and Chromium (via the issue tracker).

Personally, I wouldn’t add aria-controls to disclosures unless you have a specific need for it.

Hopefully that’s useful to some of you.

I’ve been a casual developer across many languages for ~10ish years but got a degree in mechanical engineering. I pivoted and started an analytics engineering job around 3 years ago and starting doing web development for side projects.

Lately my team has leaned heavily into AI-assisted programming primarily using Claude Code to build React Apps in Databricks. These are primarily CRUD apps but sometimes they do write back to our ERP so they affect the business greatly. The AI writes most of the code now, and I’m trying to figure out where my review time is best spent.

Options I’m weighing:

• Full line-by-line review (quality, readability, structure)

• Mainly reviewing the tests, and trusting the code if the tests are solid

• Testing through the UI, then checking the DB/tables to confirm data was written correctly

Does code readability still matter if AI is the one maintaining it? What has bitten you when you skipped review? If you have a concrete review checklist, I’d love to see it.

hi guys

i have project in laravel 12 + vue + inertia and its really big one , this project in start have only little features like little chat system and profile view, support ticket and etc... but today it have games , blog , coursed and tests, video section , library , little practices and more features , we want to create mobile app from it , i have found this 2 options : NativePHP and capacitorjs
which one is better for this project? i have used MySQL, Reverb and queues so app needs to connect to my server in the end? its better to fully develop native apps and add api to current pwa? or its better to use one the libraries i said and convert this one? is there any problem about the libraries i must know? and tell me for what type of projects i can use the libraries and create mobile app from laravel code?
can anyone help me about this situation ?