[HN Gopher] Show HN: Breadboard - A modern HyperCard for buildin...
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Show HN: Breadboard - A modern HyperCard for building web apps on
the canvas
Hey HN! I'm Simone. We re-built Breadboard, a visual app builder
that mixes Figma-style UI design with Shortcuts-style logic so you
can build, preview, and publish interactive web apps directly from
the canvas. What it does Design UIs visually
with a flexible canvas -like Figma-. Define app logic with
a visual, instruction-stacked editor inspired by Shortcuts.
Live preview apps directly on the canvas -no separate preview
window-. Publish working web apps with one click. Why
we made it Modernize the HyperCard idea: combine
layout, behavior, and instant sharing in one place. Reduce
friction between design and a working app. Make simple web
apps approachable for non-developers while keeping power features
for developers. Build a foundation for LLM integration so
users can design and develop with AI while still understanding
what's happening, even without coding experience -in progress!-.
Try it -no signup required- Weather forecast app:
https://app.breadboards.io/playgrounds/weather Swiss Public
Transit: https://app.breadboards.io/playgrounds/public_transit
info: https://breadboards.io I would appreciate any feedback :)
Author : simquat
Score : 73 points
Date : 2026-02-16 19:18 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (breadboards.io)
(TXT) w3m dump (breadboards.io)
| Neywiny wrote:
| Many years ago, back when I was in high school and they started
| getting into things like 3D printing and electronics and stuff,
| the person in charge of all that was discussing the plans with
| me. I think because I was one of the only students who had
| electronics experience, at least that people knew about. Anyway,
| he said they were "going to use breadboard to prototype". The
| singular of the term was as if it was a product like this. He was
| so used to every product being a singular of an existing word
| that would otherwise be plural that when it wasn't a
| brand/company, he did it anyway. So while I wish you guys much
| success, feel free to find a name that isn't already a thing.
| d-us-vb wrote:
| Breadboard is an excellent name for this project: it tells me
| that I can snap preexisting components (analogous to ICs) onto
| a grid and make connections (analogous to wires) between them.
|
| Context, as always, is everything. I don't think that anyone is
| mistaking Peter Thiel for one of the elves of Valinor.
| gnodar wrote:
| Looks like a less feature-full version of livecode [0], which I'd
| argue is more of a HyperCard successor", since they were formerly
| revolution & MetaCard, and can import HyperCard stacks.
|
| [0] https://livecode.com/
| jhbadger wrote:
| There is also Decker (https://github.com/JohnEarnest/Decker)
| that is open source and feels much more "Hypercardy", although
| the retro dithering asthetic may put some people off.
| hyperhello wrote:
| Don't forget https://HypercardSimulator.com which includes
| all the content from the eighties and nineties too.
| davsti4 wrote:
| Nice - I like the interface, and its easy to navigate. I don't
| see a way to test the demo apps, but maybe I missed that?
|
| One thing that stands out is where does the app reside? It seems
| like it perpetually lives within your ecosystem/servers.
|
| For customers that have contracts with me, I'd then need to
| disclose Breadboard as a subprocessor given the level of
| integration in the supply chain, IF the apps aren't downloadable
| and independently auditable.
|
| You've also probably seen SaaS stocks taking a hit lately...
| simquat wrote:
| Thanks, really appreciate the feedback!
|
| In the playground the apps can only be previewed in the canvas.
| Exported/live apps are available here:
|
| Weather App: https://late-cat-2043.breadboards.app
|
| Swiss Public Transit: https://long-wind-1522.breadboards.app
|
| Live apps are hosted on Cloudflare, when an app is published
| it's stored and served from R2. Exports are not yet
| downloadable, but we'll add downloadable exports soon.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| I thought the whole point of HyperCard is that the editor is
| the live app, that live apps can flip into editor mode at any
| time, and you THE USER can edit them live, mash them up with
| other apps, create your own unique apps, that there is no
| difference between app developer and app user, between the
| editor and the live app, because they are one and the same.
| Anything less totally misses the entire point of HyperCard.
| Otherwise it's just another version of Flash.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44212267
|
| DonHopkins 8 months ago | parent | context | favorite | on:
| Bill Atkinson has died
|
| Flash completely missed the most important point of
| HyperCard, which was that end users could put it into edit
| mode, explore the source code, learn from it, extend it, copy
| parts of it out, and build their own user interfaces with it.
| It's not just "View Source", but "Edit Source" with a built-
| in, easy to use, scriptable, graphical, interactive WYSIWYG
| editor that anyone can use.
|
| HyperCard did all that and more long before the web existed,
| was fully scriptable years before JavaScript existed, was
| extensible with plug-in XCMDs long before COM/OLE/ActiveX or
| even OpenDoc/CyberDog or Java/HotJava/Applets, and was widely
| available and embraced by millions of end-users, was used for
| games, storytelling, art, business, personal productivity,
| app development, education, publishing, porn, and so much
| more, way before merely static web page WYSIWYG editors (let
| alone live interactive scriptable extensible web application
| editors) ever existed.
|
| LiveCard (HyperCard as a live HTTP web app server back-end
| via WebStar/MacHTTP) was probably the first tool that made it
| possible to create live web pages with graphics and forms
| with an interactive WYSIWYG editor that even kids could use
| to publish live HyperCard apps, databases, and clickable
| graphics on the web.
|
| HyperCard deeply inspired HyperLook for NeWS, which was
| scripted, drawn, and modeled with PostScript, that I used to
| port SimCity to Unix:
|
| Alan Kay on "Should web browsers have stuck to being document
| viewers?" and a discussion of Smalltalk, HyperCard, NeWS, and
| HyperLook
|
| https://donhopkins.medium.com/alan-kay-on-should-web-
| browser...
|
| >"Apple's Hypercard was a terrific and highly successful end-
| user authoring system whose media was scripted, WYSIWYG, and
| "symmetric" (in the sense that the "reader" could turn around
| and "author" in the same high-level terms and forms). It
| should be the start of -- and the guide for -- the "User
| Experience" of encountering and dealing with web content.
|
| >"The underlying system for a browser should not be that of
| an "app" but of an Operating System whose job would be to
| protectively and safely run encapsulated systems (i.e. "real
| objects") gotten from the web. It should be the way that web
| content could be open-ended, and not tied to functional
| subsets in the browser." -Alan Kay
|
| >[...] This work is so good -- for any time -- and especially
| for its time -- that I don't want to sully it with any
| criticisms in the same reply that contains this praise.
|
| >I will confess to not knowing about most of this work until
| your comments here -- and this lack of knowledge was a minus
| in a number of ways wrt some of the work that we did at
| Viewpoints since ca 2000.
|
| >(Separate reply) My only real regret about this terrific
| work is that your group missed the significance for personal
| computing of the design of Hypertalk in Hypercard.
|
| >It's not even that Hypertalk is the very best possible way
| to solve the problems and goals it took on -- hard to say one
| way or another -- but I think it is the best example ever
| actually done and given to millions of end users. And by
| quite a distance.
|
| >Dan Winkler and Bill Atkinson violated a lot of important
| principles of "good programming language design", but they
| achieved the first overall system in which end-users "could
| see their own faces", and could do many projects, and learn
| as they went.
|
| >For many reasons, a second pass at the end-user programming
| problem -- that takes advantage of what was learned from
| Hypercard and Hypertalk -- has never been done (AFAIK). The
| Etoys system in Squeak Smalltalk in the early 2000s was very
| successful, but the design was purposely limited to 8-11 year
| olds (in part because of constraints from working at Disney).
|
| >It's interesting to contemplate that the follow on system
| might not have a close resemblance to Hypertalk -- perhaps
| only a vague one [...]
| davidmurdoch wrote:
| I bought breadboard.ai like 11ish years ago and ended up giving
| up on in the venture (AI voice assistant hardware built into a
| house via standard US 120V outlets and light switches, basically
| Jarvis). Anyway, the logo is begging to be a lowercase b, like
| this:
|
| *
|
| *
|
| **
|
| **
|
| But the dots are small rectangles, like on a breadboard.
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