The "indie apps" phenomenon has always selected for applications that are relatively simple in scope. If you're doing something that has a large scope, you either need a team large enough to start a business, or you need to go open source and take advantage of community contributions (either directly or by integrating yourself into a larger system that allows your particular application to have a narrower scope). However, simple applications are generally pretty easy to implement with AI, making it hard to justify paying for them.
Theoretically, there should be a gap of applications that are too niche to start a business off of and, prior to AI, too complex for an individual to write on their own, which is probably where any future for indie apps lies. I don't know of any examples of that sort of software though, does anyone know any?
The "indie apps" phenomenon has always selected for applications that are relatively simple in scope. If you're doing something that has a large scope, you either need a team large enough to start a business, or you need to go open source and take advantage of community contributions (either directly or by integrating yourself into a larger system that allows your particular application to have a narrower scope). However, simple applications are generally pretty easy to implement with AI, making it hard to justify paying for them.
Theoretically, there should be a gap of applications that are too niche to start a business off of and, prior to AI, too complex for an individual to write on their own, which is probably where any future for indie apps lies. I don't know of any examples of that sort of software though, does anyone know any?
This guy cloned Photoshop and apparently it works. First commit Sep 29, 2026. https://github.com/storytold/photocraft https://github.com/storytold/photocraft/commits/main/?after=...
Applications built using deterministic code to work might just not be a thing people need to pay for anymore.
Maybe work relating to training ML can still have value? The compute cost and time involved in it add to the moat.
I'm kind of proud of how popular this thread became, even though some parts collected some downvotes.
Key takeaways: People don't like subscriptions for on-device apps, and people really don't like telemetry.