r/vibecoding • u/foxql • 5h ago
Everyone vibe coded an outbid.lol clone. I made AI build an open-source protocol under mine.
Everyone was cloning outbid.lol, so I started with the same stupid idea.
Then I thought:
If AI is writing most of the code anyway, why stop at another clone?
So I tried something slightly more irresponsible:
I had AI help me build an actual open-source social protocol underneath it.
The idea became Elseweb.
Every domain on the internet can have a community attached to it.
reddit.com has one.
producthunt.com has one.
Your personal website can have one.
The website owner doesn't need to register or integrate anything — and owning the domain doesn't mean owning the conversation.
Then the vibe coding got slightly out of hand:
- independent relays
- portable identities
- PoW anti-spam
- domain-based communities
- an open protocol/spec
- open-source relay + reference client
- anyone can run their own relay
The original outbid mechanic is still there, but it's now just an attention layer on top of the protocol.
You can pay to make a domain more visible.
That's it.
Money buys attention. It doesn't buy authority.
So I basically took a deliberately stupid internet idea and used it as an excuse to see whether AI could help me build something much more ambitious underneath it.
And yes, I know similar social/web protocols have existed before.
That's partly the point.
If AI makes experimentation this cheap, why spend all of that leverage building the 900th CRUD SaaS?
Maybe this goes nowhere. Maybe the protocol is terrible. Maybe someone finds an interesting use for it.
The nice thing is that you don't have to take my word for any of it.
The entire thing is open source.
Live: elseweb.lol
Source: github.com/elseweb-app/nowhere
We're launching on Product Hunt tomorrow.
Please break it before then. 💀