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22 Comments

Ask for early feedback: Script management platform

Hi IndieHackers community👋
I'm currently working on a new project, and want to ask for early feedback. Do you have a few minutes to share your thoughts?

So, working as a dev for a few years now, I've often faced the need to quickly write and deploy scripts to perform a bunch of tasks: data extraction, manipulation, API translation, computation, ... But it's not easy to find a place to host them 🏠

For sure, spinning up a new server is not a big deal (or, sometimes, it can be), but spinning up a server for a single script is sometimes overkill. I know AWS lambda, Azure functions exist, but they are sometimes hard to manage, and tools like Heroku can be expensive 💸💸

That's why I want to build a tool, which I named jotcode (https://jotcode.io), that helps people to quickly write down some scripts and run them immediately, without having to care about the hosting platform 🚀

Of course, it's still under progress but I would like to know:

  • Is this something you could use?
  • If yes, what do you think about our beta?

If you are interested in following the progress of jotcode, just follow my profile. I'll keep you posted 😉

  1. 4

    Consider your target market. Devs will not spend much and the TAM is small.

    1. 2

      I disagree about the TAM. It's true that devs don't like to spend money, but companies spend incredible amounts on compute resources, which is what this is.

      My instinct is to nail a niche that makes a developer more productive, and they'll happily get out the company credit card when they use it at work.

      Great job getting something launched! As to the site itself, the first thing that comes to my mind is the security implications– the types of scripts you're describing all need privileged access. I'd need to feel very confident that this was a safe place to store API Keys, database passwords, etc.

      1. 2

        I agree about the security implications. In theory I can see this being a service I might use. On the other for $5 a month I can get a Digital Ocean VM....

        1. 1

          Thanks for adding this. I think this clearly highlights the security needs for our tool.
          In terms of money, our tool would probably cost around 10€/month for the smallest plan, coming with:

          • the possibility to run API endpoints
          • the possibility to define CRON scripts
          • a slick interface
            That would allow you to do whatever you can do on a VM without the sysadmin work ;)
      2. 1

        Thanks for the comment. That's a good point indeed. I'm actually targeting those developers or IT workers making high-value, but small-sized scripts working in large enterprises. In that scenario, computer security and privacy is indeed a must. I'll make sure to focus on that

    2. 1

      Sure, thanks for sharing your thoughts.
      My goal is indeed not to make something very expensive. I'm mostly targeting the people that write scripts for their job, but don't make it their daily work (I mean, if you are a full stack developer and currently own servers, you probably won't need it). In terms of pricing, the entry price would be around 9.99€ a month, which would probably be the most common plan for non-power-users. Do you think this could make sense?

  2. 2

    I like it!

    I think I am somehow your target group.

    How I am doing it normally:

    • AWS Lambda
    • Locally

    The benefit of your approach -> Make AWS basically easier. Lambda is a bit much of course for executing a simple node script.

    One thing to remember is that many people in organizations need to execute scripts in certain environments (VPCs). But for a simple execution I think it could be useful.

    However I don't see the main different to executing the script locally.

    If it is a long running process or migration I tend to simply do it on my machine because Lambda will run into a timeout. Is this also supported?

    Maybe a good approach would be to have all scripts saved on your platform as well - similar to Github just that you can execute it directly.

    1. 1

      Hey. You are doing exactly the task we are wanting to make simpler. We aim to simplify the life of people running ad hoc scripts on their machine, on virtual machines or on lambda by giving them an environment where they can code, store and execute their scripts (one off, periodically as a Cron, or in response of an http call).

      If you will be interested in the future, don't hesitate to drop me your email at [email protected] or to sign up into the application to try it ;)

  3. 2

    Great idea actually. In my experience Heroku is also a lot more centered around web apps and running a simple ‘worker’ script can actually be quite cumbersome. I would use it and the usp would not be costs!

    1. 1

      Looks like we got the same experience. I really like environments such as Heroku, AWS lambdas, ... but, when they introduced the possibility to do everything, scripting became more difficult.

  4. 2

    I think this is a great idea - the trick is going to be nailing all the different integrations and deployment envs. There's no limit to the number of configs and complexities that engineers encounter.

    I'm interested in this though. What's your MVP feature list look like?

    1. 1

      Thanks for the compliment. At the moment, we want to focus on JavaScript, but did a large effort of development to allow you to install any kind of npm package you want, as well as supporting environment variables through what we call "package sets".

      In terms of features, I think we mostly have everything we need for a first MVP launch. I'd just like to focus on being sure it's very straightforward on how to create your first script.

  5. 2

    I think you are about to underprice your tool. I'm confident there are thousands of devs in the same situation who don't want to go through hassle with servers. If this painpoint cost you time and money - it is costing time and money for others. This means you can profit from that.

    Fastest way to get your 20 customers is through 1-1 chats, not announcements. Can help you with that, just drop me a DM.

    1. 1

      That's exactly my goal. Of course, I don't want to ask for thousands of dollars, but, if this saves you hours every day, I'm pretty sure that whatever company would not hesitate to pay a couple of bucks every for that.

      I'm interested in your suggestion about 1-1 chats. I'll drop you a DM :)

  6. 1

    I think serverless covers my needs.

  7. 1

    I would potentially use this, but I would have to know which languages and what kind of scripts you support!

    Bash? Python? Can I webscrape? Can I use powershell? If Bash, which flavor?

    I think that would be very important landing page (or about page) information which I would like to know before giving you an email.

    1. 2

      Indeed, that's something I'll definitely have to add to the landing page.
      At the moment, I just put a placeholder to link to the app, but I'll have to come out with a real one, with some good explanation, and your comment is giving me some good tracks. Thanks for that

      At the moment, it's only Javascript
      Would it be a need for you to support other languages, or, do you think it's enough to have one commonly used (here JS)?

      Webscraping is definitely I think. We'll need to support that too. We do currently support installing packages, but puppeteer has a dependency on a binary we don't support at the moment. I'll check how can we solve that.

      1. 1

        I mean as long as its clear I don't see anything wrong with JS only.

        However, for webscraping you are probably going to need Python ;)

        Keep me posted and good luck!

  8. 1

    This was posted in the Landing Page Feedback group, but there is really not much of a landing page, so I'm not going to comment on that.

    As for the business itself, there is definitely a market here for hobbyists and tinkerers who want an online 24/7 environment to deploy their utility scripts on. Look at Repl, which I pay $7 a month for, and gives me some really simple and easy environments to play around on. I've deployed monitoring scripts, discord bots, and even used my Repl boxes as little microservice containers, etc. I think your product is more aimed at hobbyists.

    1. 1

      Oops, sorry if this wasn't the right group.
      Initially, I put a landing page to have feedback on the app and website. Do you think I should change it?

      You're completely right about the tool. It really aims to be like Repl, but supporting hoppy + professional use as well.

  9. 1

    Hi Alexis,

    I was just about to check in, however there is a problem with the signup:

    signup:1 Access to XMLHttpRequest at 'https://backend.jotcode.io/auth/signup' from origin 'https://app.jotcode.io' has been blocked by CORS policy

    Nonetheless, briefly my thoughts. I myself have been a frontend developer for more than 15 years. In your example I see JavaScript code. So I'll go into my workflow as a frontend developer.

    When I want to test small scripts, for example to see if a function does what I expect, I often use the development tools from the browser. Just open any page, open the dev tools and type the script into the console.

    If I have more complex scripts that I want to share with colleagues, I use tools like jsfiddle.net or codepen.io.

    For scripts that manipulate data, I run them directly on my computer, because I have dependencies to other files like CSV files.

    Since I can't test your tools, I don't know which problems it could solve. Let me know when you have fixed the bug. Maybe your tool is more for other languages, then I hope that I can give you inspiration with the two tools mentioned above. :-)

    1. 1

      Hello, and thank you very much for your message,

      I'm sorry that it didn't work at the time you tried (we just upgraded the server so, we had a small downtime). If you have a few minutes left, don't hesitate to retry now, as this should work.

      Indeed, for the language, JS may indicate that we are processing frontend content. Here, we want to focus on backend: simple contact form processing backend, simple periodic data extraction tool, simple API manipulation, ... : I mean: all the kind of scripts you may run on your computer, but don't want to, because you would have to keep it on for days.

      Tools like codepen were for me a good source of inspiration for making codejot, but I feel they lack the hosting possibility, if you see what I mean.

      I don't know if that makes sense to you

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