Hacker News: nezaj

New comment by nezaj in "Instant 1.0, a backend for AI-coded apps"

nezaj — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 20:23:53 +0000

Always been able to host it! We’ve had docker compose instructions since open sourcing.

Instant has evolved quite a bit in the last 18 months. With all the new functionality self-hosting has become a bit more fiddly.

This PR is aimed at making the process for self-hosting even easier.

New comment by nezaj in "Instant 1.0, a backend for AI-coded apps"

nezaj — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 21:12:06 +0000

You can use `db.subscribeQuery` on the server to react to react to changes. We plan to add webhooks soon to make this even easier. And yes eventually we'd love to support SDKs in other languages too!

New comment by nezaj in "Instant 1.0, a backend for AI-coded apps"

nezaj — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 15:59:09 +0000

I think Stopa has a great answer here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47711803

You can certainly use Instant without AI! We indexed on making the API easy to understand so projects built with Instant are easy to maintain. We also invested in our AX experience since we saw more folks coming to us when trying to build apps with AI

New comment by nezaj in "Instant 1.0, a backend for AI-coded apps"

nezaj — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 15:55:34 +0000

We use LWW on the attribute level which greatly reduces conflicts. There are certainly cases where you'll need a different CRDT but this works great for a lot of use cases.

Including Figma! https://www.figma.com/blog/how-figmas-multiplayer-technology...

New comment by nezaj in "Instant 1.0, a backend for AI-coded apps"

nezaj — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 15:49:40 +0000

We've been around long enough that the LLMs already natively know how to use us!

If you give them a little bit of context they can use the platform fully.

New comment by nezaj in "Instant 1.0, a backend for AI-coded apps"

nezaj — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 15:04:34 +0000

PR in progress!

https://github.com/instantdb/instant/pull/2495

New comment by nezaj in "Instant 1.0, a backend for AI-coded apps"

nezaj — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 15:02:57 +0000

You can! Everything is open source and we have instructions on running the server with docker.

Working on making this even easier for folks https://github.com/instantdb/instant/pull/2495

New comment by nezaj in "Instant 1.0, a backend for AI-coded apps"

nezaj — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 15:01:25 +0000

Appreciate it! We thought it was a nice touch too and a fun way to highlight the power of Instant!

Realizing we didn’t highlight this as a use case — but you can use our ephemeral app feature (it’s free) to easily add your own interactive demos into essays!

New comment by nezaj in "Instant 1.0, a backend for AI-coded apps"

nezaj — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 14:59:15 +0000

Thank you!

New comment by nezaj in "Instant 1.0, a backend for AI-coded apps"

nezaj — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 14:58:44 +0000

We’re 100% open source and have instructions for getting the server up and running via docker

We’re also working on a PR to make it even easier to deploy

https://github.com/instantdb/instant/pull/2495

New comment by nezaj in "Instant 1.0, a backend for AI-coded apps"

nezaj — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 02:47:15 +0000

Thank you for the deep feedback Moose!

Agreed lots of opportunity for simplification. There’s so much context in this space.

When talking about why sync we mention optimistic updates, multiplayer, and offline mode. To motivate the complexity of sync we talk about websockets, optimistic queues, and IndexedDB. To explain how we work we talk about triples, datalog, and CTEs.

We try to give a clean interface so devs don’t need to worry about this complexity, but yea it’s been an ongoing iteration to make both easier and transparent to understand!

New comment by nezaj in "Instant 1.0, a backend for AI-coded apps"

nezaj — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 02:27:54 +0000

Thank you! Awesome work with Zero, been a fan of you since listening to your episode on the local first podcast!

New comment by nezaj in "Instant 1.0, a backend for AI-coded apps"

nezaj — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 01:56:32 +0000

Thank you!

New comment by nezaj in "Instant 1.0, a backend for AI-coded apps"

nezaj — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 01:36:21 +0000

Thank you!

We last updated our website when open sourced back in August 2024 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41322281

Back then most folks weren't building full-on apps with AI yet.

Since then we've seen a large number of people find us through content on creating apps with AI. We felt our previous messaging didn't speak to that and we thought it was time for a refresh.

We also invested a lot to make the agent experience with Instant a delight!

New comment by nezaj in "Instant 1.0, a backend for AI-coded apps"

nezaj — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 01:30:40 +0000

We think this is an evolution :)

Stopa also gave an answer here! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47711866

New comment by nezaj in "Instant 1.0, a backend for AI-coded apps"

nezaj — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 01:27:52 +0000

Not at the moment but something that we've started exploring!

Our thinking was to first get the DX/AX + feature set solid with Instant and then let folks bring their own Postgres

New comment by nezaj in "Instant 1.0, a backend for AI-coded apps"

nezaj — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 01:26:14 +0000

You can think of this as the number of devs. So if you're working on an app as a team you all can use the dashboard and CLI tools to manage the app.

No limit on number of end users for what you build

New comment by nezaj in "Instant 1.0, a backend for AI-coded apps"

nezaj — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 22:57:24 +0000

Stopa answers this here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47711254

But pairing Instant with Vercel works great too! We have a tutorial on how you can build an app with Instant and deploy it to vercel here

https://www.instantdb.com/tutorial

New comment by nezaj in "Instant 1.0, a backend for AI-coded apps"

nezaj — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 22:53:20 +0000

You can! The skill lives here

https://github.com/instantdb/skills

New comment by nezaj in "Instant 1.0, a backend for AI-coded apps"

nezaj — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 22:48:53 +0000

We built Instant to optimize for two things:

We wanted to make a tool that (a) would make it easy to build delightful apps, and that (b) builders would find easy to use.

This got us into making things that touch both local-first and AI.

On the local-first side, we took on problems like offline-mode, real-time, and optimisitc updates.

On the AI side, we built a multi-tenant abstraction, so you can spin up as many apps as you like, and focused on great DX/AX so agents found Instant easy to use too.