A bit of a different approach from the classic use case of docker-compose that is often orthogonal to the production infrastructure in some sense.

One thing I've used to great success though is taking an existing project or example docker-compose and simply asking the coding agent to translate it to Specific's IaC. Works a treat, especially as the coding agent can read all the code at the same time and connect it all together.

(also it looks like we were in the same batch!)

Our approach is having our CLI handle port assignments (and pass any connection details/ports along as env vars) and that way being able to spin up “isolated” copies of the local dev environment. Has the added benefit of us being able to deploy the same config straight to production and switch in production database connections strings and anything else needed.

Part of this is a reimplementation of PostgREST, but as a Typescript library. The big difference is that this is designed to help you migrate away from the auto-generated and to an API that is better designed for your actual use case. That’s why this is a library so you can integrate it as part of your backend and gradually replace the PostgREST parts

The storage part is really only for Supabase-js, yeah. The idea being that folks will eventually move to a model where they integrate directly through S3 (if they want)

There has been a lot of talk recently about the reliability of Supabase and migrating away to other database providers (or even hosting Postgres yourself).

I'm a big proponent of writing actual backend code rather than locking yourself into frameworks like Supabase. If you already built all your client-side code around it though, then migrating is not a trivial task.

Replacebase is designed to help with that. It's a Typescript library that you can plug into actual backend code that exposes a Supabase-compatible API so that you don't have to make significant changes to your frontend.

It's designed to be a stepping stone for further migration, letting you switch database and storage providers and eventually move to a bespoke backend architecture without Supabase lock-in (at which point you can also remove Replacebase!)

Would love your thoughts: https://github.com/specific-dev/replacebase

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47154281

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> But those things are exactly things that LLMs already solve, especially for vibecoders who don't even know what the code is doing. For them it'd be so much better if the LLM just went with the standard SQL setup rather than Supabase/RLS.

This is precisely the approach we are taking for Specific (https://specific.dev). We believe you can move just as fast as you can with Supabase (whether you're a developer or not) if you just let coding agents code. What they are missing is the infrastructure parts, which we provide, like a private Postgres database that a backend can be built around (and which can't just be publicly exposed).

And I think that opens up a very interesting question about quality. If the human never touches the code, then "good code" gets replaced with "good specs" instead, and I don't think anybody knows what constitutes good specs in that context right now!

Also in case somebody wants to try a spec-as-source tool, we'd love feedback: https://specific.dev

We have gone the all-specs route for now because it gives us an opportunity to try build that DX that you mention (which will be critical), without having to adapt to existing codebases that are no covered by specs.

Pricing is still to be determined. I imagine we will charge for infra usage (processing, storage, etc) in line with other providers like Supabase. We will also charge per-seat for developing inside Specific, which will likely be a fixed price with some token usage limit.

As for what's part of the beta, we currently offer hosting for the API and processing of requests, as well as a database to back it. We are planning on expanding that to support more use cases like background jobs, cron jobs, and object storage.

We don't offer built-in authentication and aren't planning to at this point. That's because we think there are much better providers (like Auth0, Clerk, WorkOS) that you can easily integrate in your Specific app by just specifying it!

That's the main difference to something like Supabase. We provide the infra automatically for your app to do what you need it to, but aren't opinionated around user-facing aspects like authentication. We also have the opportunity to be quite a bit more flexible. Building integrations with external APIs on Supabase for example often requires writing edge functions. In Specific, you can simply make it part of your specification.

As for who it's for, we are targeting technical people who might know how to build backends in code, but we believe it can be done more productively through specs. The specs remove the need for boilerplate code and more closely match the business requirements of the system. One common example of this amongst our users is building third-party integrations. That can require a lot of boilerplate code and libraries to achieve. In Specific, it can be as easy as linking out to API docs.

> If Specific regenerates code from the spec each time (which I'm not sure it does), there's the potential for different code each time even for parts of the spec that haven't changed

It doesn't. When the spec changes, the coding agent takes the diff and turns it into the equivalent change to the codebase. The tests also run each time so that the coding agent does cause a regression as part of this. Although as you say, test suites are often incomplete. We are aiming to make it easier to build complete test suites in Specific than in regular code though because they are a part of the spec and the agent can you help write them as well.

We haven't done much yet in this area but I'm quite excited about how to evolve the codebase over time. I think we have an advantage in that a system evolving also means the specs are evolving and growing. We can maintain a loose mapping behind the scenes between specs and code for the coding agent, to give it the right context and keep code changes localised even as a system grows large. We can also refactor incrementally as we go as given that it becomes the job of the coding agent, instead of a human that might put it off.

Good point! We should do that :)

> My two cents: in my experience with integrations there are many issues that you can't control yourself because third-party APIs are buggy, incomplete, etc

Yes, I have actually spent a large portion of my career building such integrations and Specific has grown out of that. In my experience, working with specifications makes it much easier to focus on the behaviour of the API you are integrating with, instead of the code architecture or boilerplate behind your integration.

Curious to hear more about the entity relationship definition. The schema for the entities and relationships is naturally an important part of it but how do you define the logic needed around them? For example integrations with external APIs

Specific is a platform for building backend APIs and services entirely through natural-language specifications and tests, without writing code. We then automatically turn your specs into a working system and deploy it for you, along with any infrastructure needed.

We know a lot of developers who have already adopted spec-driven development to focus on high-level design and let coding agents take care of implementation. We are attempting to take this even further by making the specs themselves the source of truth. Of course, we can’t blindly trust coding agents to follow the spec, so we also support adding tests that will run to ensure the system behaves as expected and to avoid regressions.

There is so much ground to cover, so we are focusing on a smaller set of initial features that in our experience should cover a large portion of backends:

- An HTTP server for each project. Authentication can be added by simply stating in the spec how you want to protect your endpoint.

- A database automatically spun up and schema configured if the spec indicates persistence is needed.

- External APIs can be called. You can even link out to API docs in your specs.

You currently can’t see the generated code, but we are working on enabling it. Of course, we don’t claim any ownership of the generated code and will gladly let you export it and continue building elsewhere.

Specific is free to try and we are really eager to hear your feedback on it!

Try it here: https://app.specific.dev

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45595760

Points: 29

# Comments: 14

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45551731

Points: 3

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