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Show HN: FablePool – pool money behind a prompt, and Fable builds it in public (https://fablepool.com)

380 points by matthewbarras about 11 hours ago | 192 comments | View on ycombinator

bensyverson about 10 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.

parliament32 about 9 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 :^)

sigmar about 5 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.

GodelNumbering about 9 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?

thefounder 4 minutes ago |

This is DOA. It looks like a cyber operations so thankfully fable to refuse to work on anything there or better just bankrupt to funding members while delivering slop(on purpose to doge their cyber operations )

TrueGeek about 10 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.

fuddle about 10 hours ago |

I feel like using Fable in the name is a mistake, who knows how long that model will be around.

thih9 36 minutes ago |

> Rust Rewritten PostgreSQL

https://fablepool.com/projects/53

rickcarlino about 7 hours ago |

We have entered the GoFundMe era of vibe coding.

xpct about 10 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.

yreg about 6 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.

itintheory about 9 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.

brikym about 9 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.

undefined about 4 hours ago |

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razorbeamz about 6 hours ago |

This will be an excellent demonstration of what AI is incapable of.

undefined about 8 hours ago |

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jorl17 about 7 hours ago |

This is genius! I can already see improved versions of this idea making it big.

emsign 20 minutes ago |

"Build Grand Theft Auto 7" I like that here are my 0.25c

jrpt about 8 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.

a-dub about 5 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

childintime about 1 hour 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.

xyzsparetimexyz about 10 hours ago |

Fantastic idea for a rug pull

efficax about 8 hours ago |

it's remarkable how easy it is to identify websites built with the "frontend-design" skill in Claude

johnnyApplePRNG about 7 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.

hirako2000 about 5 hours ago |

> Make Fable 6

$1.00 raised of est. $205.00 target

Humans shouldn't provide estimates.

raincole about 9 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.)

nine_k about 10 hours ago |

[flagged]

keyle about 10 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 about 8 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 about 7 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.

undefined about 7 hours ago |

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akch about 6 hours ago |

Can built project really have MIT license? Considering MIT license still holds copyright but AI generated code cannot by copyrighted?

____tom____ about 5 hours ago |

I'd fund "clone fablepool" for $5. Should be plenty.

thatxliner about 8 hours ago |

"Make Fable 6

kbr_ about 6 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?

827a about 6 hours ago |

Really fun idea that is simultaneously deeply embarrassing for Anthropic.

stonesy88 about 9 hours ago |

Brilliant idea! We need consensus protocols for voting on phases. Similar to the "twitch" plays Pokemon phenomenom.

qainsights about 7 hours ago |

I got an idea similar to this where the user can donate their tokens instead of dollars.

adv0r about 6 hours ago |

same but different than this https://github.com/adv0r/tokens-for-good

3adk1a about 9 hours ago |

Everything turns into a computer game and entertainment.

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

jgord about 3 hours ago |

Do we need a cryptocurrency for trading / donating LLM compute tokens ?

0xferruccio about 9 hours ago |

This is a genius idea, I love it!!

Yokohiii about 7 hours ago |

Could anyone post a project to turn that site into phub for LLMs?

chrisss395 about 8 hours ago |

This strikes me as crowd-funded prompt caching, but with humans in the loop.

evanwolf about 10 hours ago |

Kinda fun but the approach today is strictly oneshot. Waiting for agentswithwallets to post.

kasince2k about 9 hours ago |

attach github to this. this is the new way to do opensource i guess

Eridrus about 10 hours ago |

Hell yeah, $516 for a complete AWS replacement, I'm in lol!

danpalmer about 8 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.

ValentineC about 8 hours ago |

Has anything been successfully built?

ProofHouse about 8 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!

throwthrowuknow about 9 hours ago |

Like DeFi but for agencies.

jayhickey about 5 hours ago |

Oh

skeledrew about 10 hours ago |

Is this the new open source?

Tostino about 5 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.

suddenlybananas about 10 hours ago |

https://fablepool.com/projects/7 It didn't even put a picture in!

sourcegrift about 5 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

nailer about 6 hours ago |

It seems weird that you would have about 3% of your revenue taken away by card providers you should just accept USDC.

digitaltrees about 8 hours ago |

Awesome idea.

mannanj about 7 hours ago |

Have any successful funds?

Uptrenda about 8 hours ago |

It would work if an engineer steered the pools. But doing this autonomously is a pipe dream.

alchemist1e9 about 9 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 about 10 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 about 10 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 about 8 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.

morpheos137 about 7 hours ago |

Lol good place for multiple eyes to view how limited "ai" is.

justbuilding 19 minutes ago |

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PixComicOS about 5 hours ago |

[flagged]

ins199 about 6 hours ago |

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Lupara about 10 hours ago |

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undefined about 3 hours ago |

undefined

ilaffedhrd about 7 hours ago |

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niggischiggi about 6 hours ago |

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orliesaurus about 9 hours ago |

Ok who wants to pool up to build GTA 7? /s

MattyLinky about 10 hours ago |

This is such a good idea. Hell yeah

JohnMakin about 9 hours ago |

"I want an open source AWS" with $500 budget made me guffaw