[HN Gopher] Show HN: Vibe Coding a static site on a $25 Walmart ...
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Show HN: Vibe Coding a static site on a $25 Walmart Phone
Hi! I took a cheap $25 walmart phone and put a static server on it?
Why? Just for a fun weekend project. I used Claude Code for most
of the setup. I had a blast. It's running termux, andronix, nginx,
cloudflared and even a prometheus node exporter. Here's the site:
https://walmartphone.stetsonblake.com/
Author : stets
Score : 54 points
Date : 2026-01-03 19:39 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (stetsonblake.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (stetsonblake.com)
| utopiah wrote:
| Can you please explain why not solely Termux with nginx? I don't
| understand why Andronix or proot are needed.
|
| Actually for a static Website why not just
| https://f-droid.org/en/packages/net.basov.lws.fdroid/ or more
| modern
| https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.example.flutter_http_ser... ?
|
| Anyway glad you had fun.
| stets wrote:
| Termux alone seems really quirky to me. Andronix fakes "having
| root" as I understand and I was able to get more of the
| services I wanted running on it.
|
| https://github.com/termux/proot-distro looks really interesting
| too and I intend to test it in the future!
| M95D wrote:
| > Can you please explain why [...]
|
| I can't read the site - it won't load - but there's one obvious
| answer to your question: "No. AI did it."
| stets wrote:
| I think your comment is meant to imply I don't know what I'm
| doing.
| lytedev wrote:
| That seems to me to be one of the least generous
| interpretations, no?
|
| It could also imply that, for whatever reason, the LLM
| opted for those tools. Therefore there isn't necessarily
| "reason" in the asked sense.
| shibapuppie wrote:
| I mean, you said it.
| 101008 wrote:
| Do you? If someone asks you to change anything in the
| configuration, do you think you can do it without the help
| of AI?
|
| That's the difference between knowing and understanding. I
| may read a Math proof and understanding. That doesn't mean
| I can replicate it or adapting to other proofs (and that's
| basically the Advanced Calculus tests I used to take when I
| was in college).
|
| I think that's what happened to you. Someone/something
| (Claude) provide you with instructions you copy and pasted.
| You underestood them. That's different from knowing.
| eleventyseven wrote:
| > Can you please explain
|
| No, because they didn't program this or make these decisions,
| an LLM did.
| stets wrote:
| I had a vision for a fun project, made decisions, tried to
| understand why to make certain decisions or what was working
| or not.
|
| I didn't write the front page index.html and I don't want to.
| Sure, I prompted it how I wanted to look, though.
|
| tl;dr I had fun and learned stuff.
| hugs wrote:
| ignore the haters. this is cool. (and i've been vibe coding
| with claude code and termux for months. it's good stuff.)
|
| i would highly recommend you add guidance on automated data
| backups, though. my pixel phone went "black screen of
| death" on me and one of my projects is trapped in there
| until i can replace the screen.
| stets wrote:
| Thx! That's a good next step for sure. Rn git is my
| backup
| forgotpwd16 wrote:
| Because it's cooler setting it up on your own than having an
| app do it for you. (Could even skip Termux really.) And most
| importantly, this sets up a full Linux environment, which can
| be used from hosting a simple site to programming (even the
| site itself; don't know if that's what author did here or site
| was copied from their main system) and more.
| stets wrote:
| The site was all "written" + configured on the device itself
| :-)
| trvz wrote:
| Disingenious title, as the phone at 25$ is subsidized.
|
| Sure, you can properly buy a phone for not much more, but so can
| you a Raspberry Pi.
| stets wrote:
| Eh, nitpicking I think. It really was $25 and anyone in driving
| distance of a Walmart can pay 25 real USD and grab one. For
| sure they are losing money on the hardware in hopes that you
| subscribe to the plan.
| throawayonthe wrote:
| what do you mean by subsidized? do you have to buy a phone plan
| with it? i tried to add it to cart, and while it says it's
| locked to Straight Talk, it's not making me pay for a plan
| (though i'm not in the us so i'm not gonna actually order it to
| check)
| stets wrote:
| You do not need to buy a phone plan with it (although they
| hope you will).
| hedora wrote:
| Also, the llm that did the vibe coding did not run on the
| phone.
| stets wrote:
| Of course not, just the client. But it did make real tool
| calls on the client device and write + modify existing
| config, troubleshoot and get it running, which is still
| pretty damn cool in my eyes
| andy99 wrote:
| Does the cloudflare tunnel mean cloudflare is acting as a cdn and
| I'm actually getting the site served from them instead of the
| phone actually handling the request?
| stets wrote:
| Cloudflare is not acting as a CDN and every request is actually
| hitting the phone. Check out the CF-Cache-Status: dynamic
| header
| andy99 wrote:
| Thanks for the reply, it's surprisingly fast then!
| mikert89 wrote:
| I just restyled a full saas app thats doing 50k in arr per month,
| bootstrapped. I already shipped it to production. A major
| UX/element/component overhaul.
|
| It looks 10x more professional. I did it this afternoon, sitting
| on my couch. I took a raw css/html assets from a very
| professional saas app, and gave it to claude code. I wrote no
| code, and did not even review the code. This field is truly on
| its way to full automation.
| stets wrote:
| That's awesome! Totally agree.
| cpursley wrote:
| What do you mean by "I took a raw css/html assets from a very
| professional saas app"?
| F7F7F7 wrote:
| I'll fill in the part between OPs story and "then they all
| clapped" that he left out.
|
| He's likely talking about "Save As"ing or scraping the DOM
| for rendered HTML/CSS and feeding that to an LLM to convert
| to actual in app wired up components.
| kimixa wrote:
| Add in presumably ignoring the license of the scraped
| documents.
| mikert89 wrote:
| eventually you will be able to generate a database
| schema/api by just feeding saas app html to an llm. you
| wont get everything, but you will get close
| Natfan wrote:
| sorry but isn't this just theft2?
| quintu5 wrote:
| Well you see he ran it through in through an LLM, but LLMs
| are lossy, so who can say if the output was a direct result
| of the copyrighted code or if the model focused on his unique
| prompting words and conjured the output from its own latent
| space without referencing copyrighted input at all? /s
|
| Alternatively, we could take the model makers' view and say
| that if they didn't want their code reused, they wouldn't
| have made it publicly accessible on the internet.
| premiumLootBox wrote:
| I believe the OP already said he used AI.
| mikert89 wrote:
| the time is coming when you can take screenshots of an app
| and generate a full backend. we are no where near the limits
| of what we are about to see happen to software. idk whats
| legal, but its soon an irrelevant question
| hackerInnen wrote:
| > This field is truly on its way to full automation.
|
| What do you even mean by that? Full automation of irrelevant,
| simple as hell, saas apps? Maybe yes. Everything else that
| actually needs some thought? Nah, not happening anytime soon -
| given that no genius with a brand new architecture comes around
| tomorrow. LLMs just ain't getting any better really. It's just
| micro steps by now
| lukan wrote:
| "LLMs just ain't getting any better really. It's just micro
| steps by now"
|
| The models itself, maybe yes. But the agents mixing model
| input and output with classical programming to achieve
| whatever you programm them to? That just has started to show
| it's potential.
| mikert89 wrote:
| we are no where near the limits of models with regards to
| software
| llmslave2 wrote:
| I can't imagine ever voluntarily divulging this kind of thing
| to others. Anyways, drop a link so we can see what an afternoon
| of vibe coding is capable of.
| mikert89 wrote:
| divulging what? its not far from taking a screenshot and
| generating a backend. which will probably be possible some
| time in 2027, and is mostly possible now. the moat on
| software is gone for people that know how to use the tooling
| HWR_14 wrote:
| I mean, I can take the assets from very professional software
| and use that to make a clone even faster than one afternoon.
| Copying on disk is quick.
| MangoToupe wrote:
| > 50k in arr per month
|
| Annual recurring revenue per month? Which is it
| forgotpwd16 wrote:
| More like " _Setting_ a static website on a _budget Android
| phone_ ". Unsure where the vibe coding is relevant, and Walmart
| Phone is basically a placeholder.
| stets wrote:
| Claude Code made the simple little home page and did much of
| the configuration of the system inside andronix. The phone is
| available at Walmart for $25.
| MangoToupe wrote:
| Clause code is a saas no? None of the work happens on the
| local device. It's not like they got deepseek working on a
| smartphone... impressive as that might be
| stets wrote:
| LLM inference is remote, yes, but tool calls happen locally
| on the device. So CC knows it has access to modify files,
| perform bash commands, etc.
| forgotpwd16 wrote:
| Mean that essentially article is instructions on setting up
| the server & link to the cool site* hosted on it. Whether a
| LLM was used or not doesn't appear to have such relevance to
| be on title**. If article had the prompts or transcript
| showcasing how was done then could see it being there.
|
| *Which doesn't appear static with information like memory,
| storage, requests, etc. More interesting than what title
| makes it seem.
|
| **On the contrary, would want it to be in article itself.
| e12e wrote:
| > I used Claude Code for most of the setup. I had a blast.
|
| So, most/all of TFA is copied from Claude code? Or in other
| words, what you did was prompt Claude - not actually following
| the instructions on this page (they are the output of Claude)?
|
| Feels weird reading a sort of fictional/parallel reality
| description - if you follow these instructions you will arrive at
| a similar result as I got - only this is not how I did it...
| stets wrote:
| I opened Obsidian, wrote down the steps that I performed +
| pieces claude did. Most of what I did was little
| troubleshooting bits or hooking things together.
|
| That + every little quirk or weird thing I ran into (eg:
| phantom process killer, which I actually did setup via adb)
| that I felt was worth mentioning and might help.
|
| Then I told Claude to organize the document better, read it
| over myself, asked for edits or things to add, etc.
| daniel_iversen wrote:
| So cool - built-in internet and UPS :) wonder if it'd be very
| easy to use it as a remote webcam on a farm as a bit of a fun
| little project?
| stets wrote:
| Definitely, but with just standard playstore apps. You really
| can't get much hardware access from Andronix/Termux AFAIK so
| GPS, camera, etc don't work.
| hebelehubele wrote:
| I always read that if you keep a phone plugged in for long
| periods of time, its battery will eventually fail and expand
| into a spicy pillow, which often deforms the frame, or worse,
| causes fires.
|
| The solution seems to be removing the battery and keeping it
| running on the charger.
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(page generated 2026-01-03 23:00 UTC)