86 comments

  • bensyverson 16 hours ago
    This idea reads like a joke, but there's something to it.

    One feature request: In addition to high-level milestones, it would be cool if a partially-funded project would generate a public, highly detailed implementation plan.

    Also, IANAL but MIT is still a license with a copyright holder. I don't think saying "it's MIT, we all own it" is defensible. The courts might view all this code as public domain.

    • pjc50 4 hours ago
      I wonder why people are more eager to pool money to pay a corporate-owned computer to build things than to the actual humans who have been building open source for decades? Much of which has ended up in the training set?
      • sanreds 15 minutes ago
        Fablepool spends Anthropic's inference budget and puts the output under MIT, thats not growing Anthropic's moat, its commoditizing it. Anthropic just sells the API calls either way.
      • nullbio 1 hour ago
        Exactly. This screams crowdfunding for AI labs. Who made this? Someone at Anthropic?
      • eptcyka 4 hours ago
        Humans are more expensive.
        • delijati 1 hour ago
          Humans can also use LLM's even a local LLM
      • KeplerBoy 3 hours ago
        LLM output is just very predictable. If you spend 200$ on that /goal you will get some output. It may or may not work perfectly, but there will be a repo with some progress. If you specced the goal well and it is feasible, a decent model will most likely get you decent progress.

        Also who would take on any of these projects for a meager 200$? Most of that stuff is borderline interesting, clearly not interesting enough for the people proposing the things to start working on them themselves.

    • 8note 14 hours ago
      if fable is writing it, courts my declare that its not even public domain? not a copywrightable work
      • plq 6 hours ago
        I don't get this. No I did not write that code but I paid money to eg. Anthropic to buy that code. To me it sounds like I own it just the same.
        • 47282847 5 hours ago
          Ownership is not the same as authorship. Copyright is about authors rights, not owners.

          If you buy a text of me, I cannot sign away my authorship, and there’s certain limitations on what you can do with my text regardless of contract. I can only sell you usage rights - which may or may not be exclusive. If the text I wrote is trivial, neither you nor me can limit when it is reproduced. The effort of collecting data is not sufficient, if the data itself is declared trivial. See rulings about phone books.

          When an AI provider produces data that is deemed not copyrightable, it cannot legally sell you exclusive usage rights. It can give it to you exclusively, but since you cannot yourself claim copyright, the moment you publish it it becomes available for others to use as well. One may argue that an LLM is similar to a phone book, with its entries being “trivial“ and its composition not artistic enough.

          At least that’s the line of argument.

        • 47282847 5 hours ago
          Ownership is not the same as authorship. Copyright is about authors rights, not owners.

          If you buy a text of me, I cannot sign away my authorship, and there’s certain limitations on what you can do with my text regardless of contract.

          • Sharlin 2 hours ago
            (This is correct in many jurisdictions but not in all; for example moral rights are not a thing everywhere.)
        • wongarsu 5 hours ago
          "I paid money to someone to write that code" is exactly the line of argument that would lead to no copyright. There was the famous monkey selfie court case in 2015 that ruled that at least in the US, monkeys can't hold copyright. The same arguments would apply to AI. And since the AI can't create copyrighted works on its own, it can't assign copyright for works it created for hire either

          The other line of argument is the "Claude Code is to coding like a photo camera is to painting". The image is generated automatically, but the input in how you point the camera is enough to still make it a creative work protected by copyright. Under that interpretation, you are not hiring AI, you are using it like a tool

          The US Copyright Office holds the former opinion. I'm sure once this goes to court, lots of companies will vehemently argue the latter. I would not be surprised if we even end up changing the law over this

          • amarant 4 hours ago
            >"I paid money to someone to write that code" is exactly the line of argument that would lead to no copyright.

            That's news to me. I (along with many hundreds of others) was paid to develop Minecraft, candy crush and battlefield, yet last I checked, they all retain their copyright.

            • wongarsu 4 hours ago
              Because you are human, and can thus create copyrighted works, and can assign that copyright when you do work for hire. Monkeys and AIs can't create copyrighted works, so there is nothing to assign when doing it for hire

              The other line of argument avoids that issue by arguing that you personally created the code with the help of a tool (like a compiler or camera), not just commissioned it

              • amarant 2 hours ago
                Sure, but that's not what GP stated at all, unless possibly if they're anthropomorphizing to the point that they refer to Claude as "someone".
                • wongarsu 2 hours ago
                  GP's (or rather GGGP's) statement was "I did not write that code but I paid money". So they claim no authorship. Anthropic is a company, they can't be the author either. So the only one left as author in that reasoning is Claude.

                  I don't think that necessarily anthropomorphizes it. We speak of monkeys as authors without calling them human. And really the legally important fact is that there was no human author. You can also treat it like CCTV footage which is generally not under copyright because there is no human author (even though most would hesitate to call the camera the author either)

            • csande17 4 hours ago
              As a human, it is possible for you to create copyrightable works and transfer the copyright to Microsoft in exchange for money. It is not possible for Claude Code to do those things because Claude Code is not a human.
              • amarant 2 hours ago
                Yes, but Claude code is hardly a "someone", so that's not what the comment I replied to was arguing at all.
            • krainboltgreene 4 hours ago
              They retain ownership over that code because you signed a contract saying explicitly that. Did you sign the same thing with Anthropic? Did your company?
              • Sharlin 2 hours ago
                Anthropic isn't a party to such contract either because they (most likely, in the reasonable reading of relevant laws) hold no copyright over the output of their LLM.
        • true_religion 5 hours ago
          In this case, it's more like you paid money to FablePool. FablePool used Claude as a tool, and it delivers the product so they are the owners of the code, and have the MIT copyright assigned to them.
          • Sharlin 2 hours ago
            Nope. Copyright simply doesn't work like that. Unless there's real human creativity involved in the process, they can't just claim copyright to LLM output.
      • Bombthecat 6 hours ago
        That's a problem more and more products in software will face.

        In a few years most saas will have 95 percent or even more AI coded code.

        Could I steal it and put it on git?

      • NewJazz 14 hours ago
        That'll translate across copyright jurisdictions.
      • lwyrup 13 hours ago
        I don’t know, if the design itself is copyrighted you could argue that the AI is just a bunch of hired workers that built it for extremely low wages.

        If I hired a bunch of people to build me a house, and I drafted the architectural plans with the help of a paid architect, neither the architect nor the builders have ownership over the home.

        So if a collection of people design something together maybe that has merit, they collectively paid for Anthropic to build it for them…

        • jonhohle 13 hours ago
          I’m pretty sure copyright office has settled that already. Inly human expression can be copyrighted:

          > As described above, in many circumstances these outputs will be copyrightable in whole or in part—where AI is used as a tool, and where a human has been able to determine the expressive elements they contain. Prompts alone, however, at this stage are unlikely to satisfy those requirements.

          https://www.copyright.gov/ai/Copyright-and-Artificial-Intell...

          • tgma 11 hours ago
            The United States Copyright office. There's a whole world outside the US.

            And even then they can change their mind.

            Does not hurt to backstop with an explicit license.

        • unmole 10 hours ago
          > you could argue that the AI is just a bunch of hired workers that built it for extremely low wages.

          I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such an assertion.

          With apologies to Mr. Charles Babbage.

    • timcobb 13 hours ago
      I think pooling/donating tokens will be a thing. Not sure if like this, but in some format. The Django project, for example, came out and said they don't want your tokens, but I think a lot of people/projects will (do?) want your tokens.
      • fny 13 hours ago
        Why not just give a project money and let them decide how to spend?
        • FearNotDaniel 34 minutes ago
          I guess if you have a subscription with a token allowance that you are not going to use up this week, it’s better to let someone else use those tokens rather than throwing them away. So using the food analogy it’s more like a store giving away unsold sandwiches to the homeless at the end of the day instead of throwing them away.
        • bitmasher9 12 hours ago
          Donating tokens to a software project is a bit like donating food to a hungry person.

          I think it might be beneficial to use blockchain, so that the donor can audit which prompts the token-pool they donated too performed. Perhaps donating tokens can also give you votes on which prompts are entered.

          • chrismorgan 9 hours ago
            It’s a lot more like giving a hungry Hindu a gift card to a specific non-veg restaurant. Maybe they’ll use and enjoy it, maybe they’re vegetarian and will be insulted; either way that restaurant benefits. Especially if the hungry person exceeds the value of the gift card.
          • jagged-chisel 12 hours ago
            It’s more like donating snack cakes to a hungry person.
      • ttb-2134 6 hours ago
        Primeagen predicted this in his latest video. I just didn't think I'll see this today.
      • pitched 13 hours ago
        The good ones all seem to be pointing in the direction of Django. Which, on its own, says a lot about how likely people will care about vibe-coded anything, whether pooled or not.
    • onel 4 hours ago
      This is exactly how I'm building an OS right now. I have a lot of things speced out, and for most of them also create an issue. And I have a friend that just points his claudr code at the repo and tells it to "find the next thing to work on and implement it" I then do the review, verification, etc, but a great way to used unused quota.
    • digdugdirk 11 hours ago
      I've always wanted to figure out how to implement a cooperative source license. Something like, you're allowed to do what you want with it, but any derivative work requires the same license, and X% of any income goes to the cooperative?

      Not sure how it'd work, but there's absolutely a niche for a privacy focused data cooperative out there.

      • Ajedi32 30 minutes ago
        > X% of any income

        Any income from what? The code is free, right? X% of your company's total revenue? Might as well just say "companies can't use this".

        Personally I like the idea of a "free as in freedom but not free as in beer" license. You have to pay for a copy of the software, but after that you're free to use and modify it as you please, and share/sell your modifications under the same license.

        To turn that into a cooperative you could have a company own the code and pay developers in shares of the company for PRs or other contributioins.

    • oofdere 14 hours ago
      yeah it should really be CC0
      • dietr1ch 14 hours ago
        Should it? If it was real world infrastructure, like a bridge it'd be easier to say that it belongs to those who lead the project and those who put down the money
        • SequoiaHope 13 hours ago
          The nice thing about a CC0 work is that it belongs to everybody. The leaders of the project have the same rights to use and modify the software as they do with software they have exclusive copyright over. In fact copyright does not grant the rights holder any new rights they did not have, it only restricts the rights of other people.
        • oofdere 11 hours ago
          it probably already is in the public domain under US law, this just gives it the same status across jurisdictions
    • stogot 12 hours ago
      Highly detailed plan with time for the backers to comment and suggest improvements*
    • fragmede 14 hours ago
      The problem with running open source code is the security aspect, but with Mythos running point, how would you distribute revenue is the real question.

      Which market is even left after since the sasspocaloypse?

      • galaxyLogic 13 hours ago
        Maybe the financiers of a project just need it, they need it working, not to generate revenue for them?
    • aaron695 5 hours ago
      [dead]
  • parliament32 15 hours ago
    I love how even the "demo build" doesn't work. https://fablepool.com/projects/7

    Rather, it did work at milestone 14, but then regressed at milestone 15, where it changed the link from a wikimedia image to a nonexistent file in /assets (despite still having the "Photo via Wikimedia Commons" caption).

    edit: they removed it :^)

    • CobrastanJorji 15 hours ago
      If you check "DEPLOYMENT.md," there is a lengthy list of deployment instructions for the app, and it includes creating an assets folder and putting an image of Claude Shannon in it. There are also other instructions, like "please make a favicon." So I think that bit is valid, the AI is simply farming out work to the human agent.

      My question, though, is why the "Live, public build log" only showing up to milestone 3, but the artifacts go up to milestone 15? And there are different index.html pages in the artifacts list, one for milestone 14 and one for milestone 15? Are there different conceptions of "milestone" in here? What's up with that?

    • matthewbarras 13 hours ago
      yeah.. deployment.md had instructions to stick a photo there, but rather than explain I just got rid. gonna work on a few examples and fund them so people can see it actually work
  • andai 4 hours ago
    I wrote this to a friend in 2022:

    Here's an idea: reverse kickstarter

    1. people post ideas

    2. good ideas go viral

    3. people pledge actual money to encourage someone to step forward and build it

    4. interested creators make kickstarter type videos explaining their proposal for making the thing

    5A. people vote on which proposal to accept, or maybe

    5B. each backer can select a project to support

    ---

    Here steps 4 and 5 are replaced by Claude.

    Cool idea!

    • andai 2 hours ago
      It also occurs to me now that the Claude version has about 3 fewer zeros at the end of the funding target.

      That seems to massively lower the bar for people investing.

    • addandsubtract 3 hours ago
      Shouldn't we still have people in the loop for selecting/proposing the best implementation (plan)? Vibe coding an entire solution from a prompt still doesn't feel like the optimal way to write software.
      • halJordan 3 hours ago
        At some point you have to say "Is not having it better than having it?" Where's your dude, today, who's gonna code this? If it were gone happen, it wouldve.
        • e-clinton 3 hours ago
          We are not there yet... and Fable makes me feel like it will be a while before we get there.
    • m00dy 3 hours ago
      not with prompts but "loops" maybe.
    • MagicMoonlight 4 hours ago
      [dead]
  • realty_geek 50 minutes ago
    Would love to see non-technical audiences think like this.

    For years I've been trying to get estate agents to support an open-source real estate website builder. The pitch is obvious: instead of each agent paying thousands for a bespoke site, pool resources, fund the features you all need, and everyone benefits.

    Getting non-technical people to commit to something abstract before it exists is nearly impossible though. Hope a model like FablePool can change that.

    For the website builder, the open-source product is already there: https://github.com/etewiah/property_web_builder. It just needs momentum.

  • GodelNumbering 15 hours ago
    "Solve Garbage Collection in C# for HFT · $10.00 raised of est. $200.00 target"

    This can't be serious.

    Broader point I am making is, what differentiates genuine ideas from the token burn? What happens when the pool exhausts but the task is not done?

    • asp_hornet 12 hours ago
      From my 10 years in the .net, it seemed C# devs will pretty much do anything to avoid using the right tool for the job or solving the immediate problem at hand.
      • MattGaiser 7 hours ago
        C# and Java devs are anecdotally the only kind of dev to think of themselves primarily by language.

        Most other devs don’t talk about language in a driest few sentences intro.

    • bethekidyouwant 14 hours ago
      You keep putting money into the slot and pulling the lever
      • jimkleiber 13 hours ago
        But at least collectively pulling it :-)
        • nhinck2 7 hours ago
          While standing around in a circle
      • fragmede 14 hours ago
        Real question is, how do you get press for this site after this falls off HN?
    • WorkerBee28474 9 hours ago
      It's already solved (by humans) for Java, which can now be used for HFT. It seems like it's possible to do for C#.
      • pjc50 4 hours ago
        Yes, this is the "LMAX Disruptor": https://lmax-exchange.github.io/disruptor/user-guide/index.h...

        You can write only-stack-alloc or limited-alloc C#, and Microsoft have put a lot of work into it (Span etc); it's just a bit unidiomatic.

        Mind you, the last time I had contact with HFT it was inside an FPGA context..

      • joe_the_user 7 hours ago
        I think assumption of the gp is that while Fable might be impressive, even Fable would take a bit more (sarcastically meaning a lot more) than $200 of tokens to solve this quite serious problem.
    • kevin_thibedeau 14 hours ago
      The sarcastic solution is to use C# bindings to a non-GC language. Put all available memory under control of a pool allocator and enjoy the perf gain.
      • edoceo 13 hours ago
        Similar solution worked for ASP back in 1999. ASP/VBS was terrible slow at string building and Response.Write. Build it in the fast code and then output.
    • pmarreck 9 hours ago
      lol saw that one too

      "A thorough written survey of why .NET garbage collection causes latency spikes in HFT contexts"

      i'm like, dude, just rewrite in Zig if you want that control back, not all of your compute goodies will come from Redmond

    • matthewbarras 13 hours ago
      market decides - just like kickstarter
    • fragmede 14 hours ago
      It indicates the level of trust people have in the platform, and the combination of the product-platform behavior. If someone with the wherewithal to solve garbage collection for C# for HFT could actually describe why GC in C# was a problem, they wouldn't be asking for $10. But for $10, for something something you're dimly aware of is a problem? I'd throw $10 at some nonsense I read on the Internet.

      > What happens when the pool exhausts but the task is not done?

      Have a stupider LLM aggregate similar questions.

  • sigmar 11 hours ago
    I'd love to see Anthropic (or someone with mythos access) create a cybersecurity version of this. So that I could create a pool that says "find security concerns in this github repo." Then the report from mythos gets sent to the code/project maintainer and revealed to the public (that paid for it) at the 90 day mark.
    • guessmyname 6 hours ago
      For your information, a group of Mythos-approved users at Apple, Google, Microsoft, and several other Project Glasswing partners have already been doing this for the past few months. We just can’t share many details publicly yet.
      • sigmar 28 minutes ago
        Who foots the bill?
    • sublinear 11 hours ago
      The target codebase cannot improve beyond the point that the reports are incorrect and a waste of money.

      There is also the question of whether humans can waste so much time reviewing AI code that the vulnerability is not patched before it is exploited. Another one is whether when the human is removed from the loop that the codebase becomes more vulnerable in some other ways.

    • stevefan1999 11 hours ago
      sounds like FableBugBounty
  • TrueGeek 16 hours ago
    So the completed sample was estimated at $0.35, actually cost $0.52, but spend $0.55

    This bot is almost as bad as I am at estimating projects.

    • MeetingsBrowser 15 hours ago
      > Build a completely greenroom, open source AWS

      > est. total target $516.00

      Lol

      • NewJazz 13 hours ago
        Is green room a word? I've heard clean room. And green field. Is it just an amalgamation?
        • krisoft 13 hours ago
          It is. But doesn’t fit with the rest of the sentence.

          “In a television studio, theatre or concert hall, the room where performers await their entrance.” https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/green_room

        • stkdump 11 hours ago
          Maybe a green field clean room implementation :)
        • beepbooptheory 13 hours ago
          Its where the band can hang out before the show.
        • wahnfrieden 13 hours ago
          author mistook the word
      • pitched 15 hours ago
        A lot of AWS is built on open-source. This is obviously ignoring hardware costs. I don’t know if it is all that ridiculous anymore. These models are very good at wiring together open-source systems. The world is crazy right now…
        • thayne 12 hours ago
          AWS has over 200 services, so that's a little over $2 per service. Yeah, a lot of it is built on OSS, but there is a ton of it, and there is also a lot of work involved in building the APIs and web UI, and making it scalable , secure, and resilient.

          Now, you might be able to make a version of some small subset of aws services that runs works ok for a small scale for with relatively simple needs, for that many tokens, but I don't think that's what they were going for.

          • NewJazz 8 hours ago
            IAM for example is in house and integrates with every service. Sometimes in deep ways.
            • pitched 31 minutes ago
              I’m on your side in that I would never take a contract to actually do this, but…

              If we swapped out the IAM backend for something extremely simple like just private keys (one per allowed service or JWT-style list all services in the key), then we could have something that looks/feels pretty similar. With a 2$ token spend.

              Not at all the same but it would look/feel pretty close.

          • pitched 37 minutes ago
            > you might be able to make a version of some small subset of aws services that runs works ok

            lol, you’ve got that goblet of koolaid with me! Equal parts horrifying and interesting that it might not be impossible

        • awestroke 12 hours ago
          The hard parts are not based on OSS
          • mystifyingpoi 9 hours ago
            Exactly. It's like someone saying, that EC2 is OpenStack. Well, yes, but actually no :)
            • reverius42 7 hours ago
              But, like, on paper it is, and on paper is where the prompt lives.
        • solumunus 11 hours ago
          You’re getting lost buddy it’s definitely ridiculous.
        • LastTrain 14 hours ago
          You, my friend, have drunk from the goblet of koolaid.
          • DonHopkins 5 hours ago
            Careful dude, that's not a goblet of koolaid, it's a bottle of Amazon Delivery Driver Urine!!!
          • pitched 13 hours ago
            lol but at least in comes in a nice cup then
        • artisin 14 hours ago
          lolz. build aws. no mistakes.
        • white_dragon88 12 hours ago
          [dead]
    • pitched 15 hours ago
      Did it not charge anything for the estimation itself? I wonder what model they’re using for that
  • fuddle 16 hours ago
    I feel like using Fable in the name is a mistake, who knows how long that model will be around.
    • an0malous 15 hours ago
      You could call it aiproductsexchange.com
      • andrewstuart2 15 hours ago
        Bold move leaving out the dash between words a la experts-exchange lol.
        • fragmede 14 hours ago
          thatsthejoke.jpg

          expertsexchange.com was a site from the before times.

          • andrewstuart2 11 hours ago
            I wondered if it was intentional, but thought I would double down on it in case people missed it.

            Was the dashless domain really a site (or the site) at one point?

        • akman 14 hours ago
          always have a backup plan (:
      • tartoran 13 hours ago
        Without the sex change in them : AIProductMarket.com, AIProductHub.com, AIProductMarketplace.com, AIToolMarket.com, AIToolsHub.com
        • slopinthebag 10 hours ago
          That misses the point entirely....
    • CobrastanJorji 15 hours ago
      I don't think using the name Fable is wrong, but I think a pool of Fables should be called a Grimm, or possibly an Aesop.
      • SauntSolaire 13 hours ago
        Perhaps Grimoire?

        "A grimoire is a textbook of magic and sorcery. Traditionally, it contains instructions for casting spells, performing divination, creating magical objects like talismans, and summoning supernatural entities such as angels or spirits."

        Seems to fit.

    • vlovich123 16 hours ago
      It's how they name classes of models, presumably this implies something about the relative quantization / size of model, not about the specific performance. E.g. Fabel 5 will be better than Opus 5, better than Sonnet 5, etc. The 5 is the version number of the particular iteration / training run at this class of model.
      • pseudocoup 15 hours ago
        I think they mean: I feel like using [Sonnet/Opus/Fable] in the name [URL] is a mistake, who knows how long that model will be around
    • aaronbrethorst 16 hours ago
    • comboy 14 hours ago
      But it sounds like FableFool so it has that going for it.
    • fragmede 14 hours ago
      Even if that product disappears, OpenAI will never Anthropic forget it.
  • DannyBee 1 hour ago
    Mixed in with all these aspirational positive things is some sad person trying to get a better Microsoft Teams client.

    https://fablepool.com/projects/76

  • rickcarlino 13 hours ago
    We have entered the GoFundMe era of vibe coding.
    • matthewbarras 13 hours ago
      goVibeMe
      • Bombthecat 4 hours ago
        No
      • fragmede 13 hours ago
        shit, that was the quickest $23 I went and bought a a domain name for.
        • weird-eye-issue 11 hours ago
          Interesting way to waste $23
          • fragmede 5 hours ago
            Some people have a drinking budget, I have a domain name budget. A couple years back, my friends threw a domain name transfer party, like a secret Santa where you got to surprise someone with a domain name you got for them.
        • cwnyth 13 hours ago
          Beat me to it by minutes.
          • fragmede 3 hours ago
            You don't list contact info on your profile page to contact you with, but I'd love someone (other than Fable/a bot) to work on this with, and you're clearly a like minded individual, so reach out
            • cwnyth 10 minutes ago
              I sent you an email.
        • Shorel 9 hours ago
          Good call.
  • khernandezrt 1 hour ago
    This is such a great idea. I often have things that im sure i dont have money for but maybe others would support it.
  • xpct 16 hours ago
    Before putting in money to this small anonymous website, I'd love to hear about the people behind the project. There's a single mention of 'Barras Industries', but not much mention about them online, or what else they've worked on.
    • matthewbarras 13 hours ago
      fair comment! i'll add a link but we're at barrasindustries.com
    • inoreip 15 hours ago
      [dead]
  • mypastself 4 hours ago
    Sounds like great idea, but can’t seem to find some key info: which “public ledger” is used here? A blockchain? If so, there would need to be a massive fee overhead. If not, then how are we not relying on trust?

    Also, is there some kind of ownership structure based on investment?

  • itintheory 14 hours ago
    They should have called this "WishingWell". I'm wishing them well, but some of these projects are so over the top pie-in-the-sky silly, and funded with $0.25.
  • Yaqub_W 1 hour ago
    How about letting humans participate, not just LLMs.
  • yreg 12 hours ago
    Almost all of the examples on the website are ridiculous, which in turn makes your project look bad.

    Imho you should wipe them, populate it with some realistic small scale ideas and be much more strict in review, at least for now.

    • nailer 12 hours ago
      The first one I saw was local first memory for AI, which seemed entirely reasonable.
  • brikym 15 hours ago
    I think the bottleneck is testing. I want to build a replacement for Zwift, a virtual gym game for bike trainers and treadmills, but testing it could be difficult without a real person on real hardware. How does the LLM know about the hardware protocols and stuff like that.
  • jorl17 13 hours ago
    This is genius! I can already see improved versions of this idea making it big.
    • bottlepalm 10 hours ago
      Same, there is massive potential here for groups in the public guiding agents and having skin in the game with their own money.
  • thih9 7 hours ago
    > Rust Rewritten PostgreSQL

    https://fablepool.com/projects/53

  • razorbeamz 12 hours ago
    This will be an excellent demonstration of what AI is incapable of.
    • kilroy123 2 hours ago
      I agree, but I do find it interesting to see what people want built and wish for.
  • jrpt 14 hours ago
    Seems similar to open source bounties, which have been tried in the past and never succeeded.

    We've seen something like 20+ years of different attempts of voluntary donations to fund open source, and it never worked. Companies barely fund anything voluntarily.

    I'm taking the opposite approach with Supported Source (https://supso.org/) which is this: actually force companies to pay to use the project. Sell commercial licenses. Make it mandatory to using your software commercially. This approach works much, much better than voluntary donations.

    • tgma 14 hours ago
      I think there's a categorical difference between paying for long term maintenance voluntarily vs paying for something to exist. The latter works much better as the value prop is clear and you can scratch an itch. Kickstarter is similar.
    • fragmede 13 hours ago
      Sooo.. what projects are most highly requested?
  • xyzsparetimexyz 16 hours ago
    Fantastic idea for a rug pull
    • Bombthecat 4 hours ago
      Yeah, already several thousands in it
  • opengears 6 hours ago
    Why are there no reverse engineering projects listed? These would make the most sense actually. Or future features of MacOS, Apple hardware designs (as Apple would not be able to patent them then)
  • Davidzheng 1 hour ago
    can I put open math problems on this site too with bounties
  • a-dub 11 hours ago

      i built a turbofan
      https://app.confbuild.com/p/z459
      
      now I want to build a complete Airbus as detailed as possible with give budget
  • efficax 14 hours ago
    it's remarkable how easy it is to identify websites built with the "frontend-design" skill in Claude
    • zzleeper 14 hours ago
      I managed to write one that at least didnt had the font and colors (using 4.5)

      Yesterday, I prompted Fable to improve the frontend to make it look different from Claude style, gave detailed examples etc. 15 minutes and $32 dollars (!) later (used cursor lol) it gave me the shittiest more claudiest website ever, basically ignoring everything I asked

  • johnnyApplePRNG 13 hours ago
    Excellent idea, I see a few issues though.

    First, your server is struggling. It took about 20+ seconds to respond just now, FYI.

    Second, it's not obvious to me that I can get my money back if something doesn't pan out / get approved by a certain date from the homepage alone. That might make people hesitant to put anything in if they think it might get locked in there forever if the site dies / you take it down / etc.

  • nine_k 16 hours ago
    [flagged]
    • bcjordan 15 hours ago
      This was a pre-LLM YC startup AssemblyMade which was basically this
    • tptacek 15 hours ago
      I don't understand how that would not be a complete joke even if tokens were 2 orders of magnitude more expensive than they are.
    • skeledrew 16 hours ago
      Not affordable, unless the devs are in somewhere like Vietnam. And there's still no way they can build as fast. And still, at that price point, quality would be highly questionable. So yh this doesn't survive beyond the joke stage.
      • nine_k 16 hours ago
        The mention of quality puts it firmly into the joke territory, indeed.
    • electronsoup 16 hours ago
      If you put that behind an API, you could sell the service much like the AI providers
      • satvikpendem 16 hours ago
        And then get sued for fraud and go under, like Builder.ai
        • fragmede 15 hours ago
          What if, and I know this is utterly batshit insane to suggest, but what if we don't lie about what we're doing?
    • sailingparrot 16 hours ago
      Thats called Kickstarter
      • digitaltrees 14 hours ago
        Sort of but in reverse.

        If users posted ideas, voted on them and then other people built them then that would be the same. But kickstarter is the producer posting an idea for presale

    • digitaltrees 14 hours ago
      I wonder why that didn’t happen on kick starter. Product hunt was kind of this. It’s actually interesting. Why didn’t this ever happen?
      • eob 14 hours ago
        I think because you don't know /which/ developer you're going to get.

        One interesting aspect of LLMs is that each one, weights frozen, can be thought of as a single developer whose work you have already evaluated.

        The cost of finding, evaluating, and negotiating with a new human is tremenous.

    • a1o 15 hours ago
      It can work for students as a grant
    • cortesoft 15 hours ago
      how expensive do you think tokens are, and/or how cheap do you think a developer is?
    • dboreham 15 hours ago
      Fable will actually finish the job.
  • raincole 15 hours ago
    Man, I really hope this kind of effort could be put into auditing the security situation of open source projects (via Mythos or not.)
  • keyle 16 hours ago
    This is literally an idea by the primegean on his YouTube under predictions. Self prophecy really with his reach but credit where it's due?
  • madprops 13 hours ago
    I forgot to fully describe the prompt since I already described it a bit on the title of the submission, which might be a problem. I hope the title of the submission itself is included alongside the prompt when giving instructions to the AI.
  • danielrmay 13 hours ago
    This is actually kinda exciting. I threw in an open-source idea I've been playing with, and paid $25. I hope it comes back up soon or I'm going to have to put Fable on building a replacement.
  • hirako2000 11 hours ago
    > Make Fable 6

    $1.00 raised of est. $205.00 target

    Humans shouldn't provide estimates.

  • akch 12 hours ago
    Can built project really have MIT license? Considering MIT license still holds copyright but AI generated code cannot by copyrighted?
  • childintime 7 hours ago
    The end of GitHub as we know it is near?

    Why do open source collaboration? Why not a single product developer getting crowd paid to add features, solve bugs, using AI. So many businesses will see their moat wiped out.

    On the macro level capitalism is winner-takes-all and Musk is the only one seriously playing the game. End game: own everything, including payments, and governments come begging and will protect him from citizen revolt. Supervillain/overlord territory.

  • thatxliner 14 hours ago
    "Make Fable 6
  • stonesy88 15 hours ago
    Brilliant idea! We need consensus protocols for voting on phases. Similar to the "twitch" plays Pokemon phenomenom.
    • kasince2k 14 hours ago
      anyone who donates gets to vote (?)
  • 3adk1a 15 hours ago
    Everything turns into a computer game and entertainment.

    Maybe add a "Build a worm that shuts down all Anthropic data centers."

    • pitched 15 hours ago
      This, unfortunately, gets flagged for cyber and you would need to be on the unlocked Mythos.
  • ____tom____ 11 hours ago
    I'd fund "clone fablepool" for $5. Should be plenty.
  • kbr_ 12 hours ago
    This is precisely what I thought the other day. TBH my idea is slightly better.

    But I stopped after asking Claude about it. It categorically told me that the moment you fund a model, you are legally liable for its actions.

    How to get around it?

    • ffsm8 12 hours ago
      I doubt that's legally decided yet. There hasn't been precedent as it hasn't been challenged yet.

      I mean Claude will tell you because anthropic made it tell you that, doesn't mean it's true.

      GoFundMe and indigogo aren't responsible for the actions of the funded projects either, hence it's unlikely that any judge would decide that the liability would go to the platform if it can show it's doing it's best effort in moderation wrt illegal content

      If you mean just throw it together and then don't moderate at all then .. yeah, you'll be held liable. But that's not because of the person paying the prompt, it's because moderating illegal content is the responsibility of the platform provider.

  • qainsights 13 hours ago
    I got an idea similar to this where the user can donate their tokens instead of dollars.
  • 827a 12 hours ago
    Really fun idea that is simultaneously deeply embarrassing for Anthropic.
  • 0xferruccio 15 hours ago
    This is a genius idea, I love it!!
  • adv0r 12 hours ago
    same but different than this https://github.com/adv0r/tokens-for-good
  • evanwolf 16 hours ago
    Kinda fun but the approach today is strictly oneshot. Waiting for agentswithwallets to post.
  • chrisss395 14 hours ago
    This strikes me as crowd-funded prompt caching, but with humans in the loop.
  • Yokohiii 13 hours ago
    Could anyone post a project to turn that site into phub for LLMs?
  • kasince2k 14 hours ago
    attach github to this. this is the new way to do opensource i guess
    • matthewbarras 13 hours ago
      that's the plan! funded projects will spin up a repo
  • Eridrus 16 hours ago
    Hell yeah, $516 for a complete AWS replacement, I'm in lol!
    • ____tom____ 15 hours ago
      Reminds of the four college kids that were going to clone Facebook. Turns out it's hard than it looks, if you have never tried it.
      • ThunderSizzle 12 hours ago
        The coding isn't the hard part. It's the people and networking. Facebook's only moat is HOA boards that think private communication behind Facebook groups somehow equates to public messaging a community...

        In other words, once people got on it, it was too late.

    • selcuka 14 hours ago
      If you look at the milestones it's a small subset of AWS features, but yeah, the estimate is still off.
    • MeetingsBrowser 15 hours ago
      I wonder how the estimates are being created.

      I doubt an LLM would estimate an AWS rewrite to cost $500.

  • danpalmer 13 hours ago
    "Build a completely greenroom, open source AWS" – $700

    This is engineering theatre (pun intended).

    The amount of hubris here is exceptional, the author doesn't even know that it's "clean room" rather than "green room". What does it even mean to build an open source AWS? There are many open source IaaS/PaaS components. Is the author suggesting any hardware design, because that's a critical component.

    The only possible result of this is an AWS fanfic. An art project that looks vaguely like a cloud provider on the surface if you squint, but with zero substance to it.

    And this criticism has nothing to do with AI. You'd get the same spending 100x that budget on any engineering team.

  • jgord 9 hours ago
    Do we need a cryptocurrency for trading / donating LLM compute tokens ?
  • ValentineC 14 hours ago
    Has anything been successfully built?
    • asdfasgasdgasdg 14 hours ago
      Fable’s been out for like a day and this site seems more recent.
    • matthewbarras 13 hours ago
      fablepool didn't exist 24 hours ago .. so not yet
  • thefounder 6 hours ago
    This is DOA. Claude will refuse to work on anything there or better just bankrupt the funding members while delivering slop(on purpose to doge their cyber operations )
  • ShinyLeftPad 5 hours ago
    A heads up, since LLM is not itself responsible for any wrong it does, its operators are, and you are that guy.
  • emsign 6 hours ago
    "Build Grand Theft Auto 7" I like that here are my 0.25c
  • ProofHouse 13 hours ago
    Made something very close to this, but not model specific. Ill try to shape it up tonight and tmr and drop it, would be cool to colab!
    • matthewbarras 13 hours ago
      full disclosure, it's model specific because the domain was available + bandwagon
  • throwthrowuknow 15 hours ago
    Like DeFi but for agencies.
  • skeledrew 16 hours ago
    Is this the new open source?
    • hirako2000 10 hours ago
      At least it recognizes that energy deserves funding, ideally beforehand. Yet it would be harder to sell if a human asked for payment, even if delivery was guaranteed.
  • suddenlybananas 16 hours ago
    https://fablepool.com/projects/7 It didn't even put a picture in!
  • jayhickey 11 hours ago
    Oh
  • Tostino 11 hours ago
    I could see something like this working if you actually had a assigned human developer(s) to assist the task. There are few interesting tasks that can actually be completed in one (or few) shot and have anything usable.
  • sourcegrift 11 hours ago
    I need an X11/Wayland successor that has the simplicity of X11 but can be used assl a drop in replacement for Wayland
    • hirako2000 10 hours ago
      Isn't wayland a protocol? A drop in would carry the complexity.
  • digitaltrees 14 hours ago
    Awesome idea.
  • nailer 12 hours ago
    It seems weird that you would have about 3% of your revenue taken away by card providers you should just accept USDC.
  • mannanj 13 hours ago
    Have any successful funds?
  • Uptrenda 14 hours ago
    It would work if an engineer steered the pools. But doing this autonomously is a pipe dream.
    • matthewbarras 13 hours ago
      there's a job going if you fancy it... pool steersman
      • contingencies 11 hours ago
        We have a saying in Australia: "Up shit creek without a paddle."
  • alchemist1e9 15 hours ago
    Cypherpunks will be proud once there is a version of this cryptocurrency funded to providers receiving the cryptocurrency.

    Or maybe there is? or a version where only those funding have access to the results.

  • johnwheeler 16 hours ago
    This is a good idea and for features and modifications you can make it so whoever chips in the most money gets more votes.

    This is one of those ideas that sounds bad on paper (Like people renting out their houses. But if implemented correctly could get some traction.

  • colesantiago 16 hours ago
    This is a fantastic idea.

    There are lots of projects, software that shouldn't be SaaS subscriptions that Fable can build in public that can be free for everyone and also OSS.

  • anonym29 14 hours ago
    Neat project idea, but truly ruined by requiring a google sign-in both to submit new projects and to donate to projects. Dead service to me until that's gone.

    Remember, Google aids and abets militaries of governments that the UN has found to be committing genocide.

    Weird how people seem to forget this.

    • thunky 14 hours ago
      > Dead service to me until that's gone.

      Lets just hope the project is able to soldier on without you.

    • matthewbarras 13 hours ago
      Google was just the easiest to implement first. Was planning Github next - or would you prefer smth else?
      • anonym29 7 hours ago
        My first choice would be non-SSO. Let me pick a username (or email address) and a password.

        Btw, thanks for the response. Not sure why you got downvoted for it, but you have my gratitude for being one of few devs who are sincerely responsive to these types of concerns.

  • morpheos137 13 hours ago
    Lol good place for multiple eyes to view how limited "ai" is.
  • j_gonzalez 4 hours ago
    [flagged]
  • PixComicOS 11 hours ago
    [flagged]
  • justbuilding 6 hours ago
    [dead]
  • Lupara 16 hours ago
    [dead]
  • ins199 12 hours ago
    [dead]
  • pwnie 5 hours ago
    [dead]
    • flexagoon 5 hours ago
      > Essentially $20 for unlimited GPT 5.5 agents entirely deployed in the cloud.

      How does it make sense financially for you?

      • pwnie 2 hours ago
        It doesn't. I can't necessarily disclose how I'm automating this. The entire promise is that it just works. Again, just try it. I think the fact that it just works out of the box without an email speaks for itself. Feel free to make unlimited trials. I could care less atm. I'm still working on the site and it requires a couple restarts so some tasks may be interrupted. Just turn on auto-loop and it'll resume where it left off :)
      • chronicler 5 hours ago
        yeah what is this guy yapping about
        • pwnie 2 hours ago
          Why don't you just try it instead of commenting? Ive updated the trial per account to 15.

          Edit: The site is currently broken so bad timing but probably check in later if you wanna try it :)

  • ilaffedhrd 13 hours ago
    [dead]
  • orliesaurus 15 hours ago
    Ok who wants to pool up to build GTA 7? /s
  • niggischiggi 12 hours ago
    [dead]
  • MattyLinky 16 hours ago
    This is such a good idea. Hell yeah
  • JohnMakin 15 hours ago
    "I want an open source AWS" with $500 budget made me guffaw
    • LearnYouALisp 15 hours ago
      "I have a turbofan model, pls build an Airbus" sounds about right
      • theYipster 13 hours ago
        All for $670 :)

        In all seriousness, I would probably throw $10 at a project to design and implement a modern turbofan FADEC + all of the certification artifacts.

      • JohnMakin 13 hours ago
        I got downvoted probably for tone which is my bad but what I’m laughing at is this person doesnt seem to understand why people pay for aws, it’s certainly not the laughably bad console or the buggy control plane. it’s the reliability guarantees granted by their massive physical infrastructure that was meant to replace sysadmin’s running racks in a closet and wrangling terrible ansible/chef playbooks.

        this literally already exists if you’re willing to maintain your own physical infra, and has for a long time - nothing aws does is that innovative software wise. maybe their managed k8s eliminates a ton of pain, but I dont know. it’s the reliability guarantee + support + not having to maintain physical servers. if youre willing to shirk all that and do it yourself why would you want aws? lol

        tldr; was laughing at the xy vibe of the ask

    • squidsoup 15 hours ago
      OpenStack already exists