Fri, Dec 15, 2023Updates to Social Features on Replit
In 2024, we're excited to introduce improvements to our social features on Replit, all centered around making it easier to share and explore code. We learned from our top creators that a cover page's primary value is sharing code and giving other developers something to fork. Additionally, we recognized that viewing applications in an iframe is a suboptimal experience. Often, missing Secrets prevented the program from running as intended. The best way to view someone’s work is to visit the production deployment directly. With this in mind, we’re reimagining cover pages to focus primarily on code consumption. This shift marks a move away from running and viewing program outputs. Instead, we’re making these pages a hub for exploring and understanding code. Starting early next year, when you land on a cover page, it will show the project’s code or README file. They’ll be presented in an intuitive, editor-like environment for more straightforward navigation. When you find a project you want to work with, forking it is straightforward. We’ll set up an identical development environment for you so you can start making changes or running the code immediately.
Fri, Dec 15, 2023Skip the README, let us install for you
If you’ve ever tried to install a complex Python package, you know the pain of scouring the package’s README for the apt install or brew install commands necessary to bring in the system-level dependencies the package needs. This approach can be time-consuming and frustrating, especially when a cascade of errors indicates a missing system dependency — a pain point that isn't always immediately obvious. You can now skip the README and let us install everything for you. Replit will automatically install the system dependencies needed for hundreds of Python packages. When you add a package via the Packages tool or automatically install a package via package guessing, Replit’s Universal Package Manager detects system dependencies needed for these packages. This also extends to packages already in your pyproject.toml file, and adds the relevant system dependencies to your Repl’s replit.nix file. To illustrate the efficiency of this tool, let’s ask Replit AI to help us make a snowman. We’ll try to create a vector graphics image using Python’s pycairo library. To start, create a new Python Repl and select Generate Code with AI. Enter the prompt: “Using Python's pycairo, draw an SVG snowman. The snowman should have three balls of snow, a carrot nose, and two black eyes. Import math if you need it.” The full code is available in this Repl. Before automatic system dependency installation, you would have been greeted with an arcane error message like this, buried among hundreds of lines of output:
Wed, Dec 13, 2023Showcasing Startups on Replit
The fastest way to start, ship, and share The Replit platform isn't just a sandbox; it's a launchpad. There’s a lot to learn from startups building on Replit and how they leverage the platform to monetize and grow. Whether it’s a solo developer bootstrapping their startup on Bounties, or a startup launching their application on Replit Deployments, Replit is the best place to get from idea to software, fast. Here are a few companies building and shipping on Replit today. Lumiwealth The last thing financial traders want to do is spend hours learning how to set up a development environment just to deploy a trading algorithm. Why can’t writing code for a new algorithm be as easy as writing in a Google Doc? These were the questions Robert Grzesik had when starting his company Lumiwealth. With Replit, he could onboard hundreds of students into the real work of developing trading algorithms rather than lose much of his community in the complexity of setting up a development environment.
Mon, Dec 11, 20238 Templates for Businesses on Replit
Whether you’re building an AI support agent for your customers or a web scraper to collect marketing data, chances are somebody has already developed the tool you’re about to build for your team. Increasing developer productivity is a cornerstone of Replit, and we want to give you the tools to elevate your team and business practices quickly. Fork one of the templates below and customize it for your specific requirements. The app you build and deploy can scale with your business and adapt to changing goals, and you can use our AI code assistant to fine-tune it. In this post, we’ll highlight some of the top templates on Replit that can help you automate routine tasks, enhance customer experience, make data-driven decisions, and innovate your marketing and outreach strategies. 1. AI Support Agent Combine your documentation and internal knowledge with GPT-4, and get an agent that walks your users through basic product issues and questions. This template uses OpenAI, Pinecone, and LangChain to vectorize the files you upload and provide context to the AI. Fork the template and follow the instructions in the README.md file to get started building your AI-powered chatbot. In this demo, we embedded Replit documentation, and our agent can answer questions about Replit features and common bugs.
Thu, Dec 7, 2023New and Improved Console
The new Console has been launched for a while, bringing a whole new UI, persisted history of executions, metadata about the runs, and more! Let’s take a tour of where it came from, how it works, and how it was built. Brief history In the past, the Console looked very similar to the Shell and, depending on the Repl configuration, sometimes behaved like one: ...and sometimes did not:
Tue, Dec 5, 2023Company Spotlight: Techjays
Company Overview Techjays, a software development services company based in India and the US, specializes in helping startups and product companies evolve from idea to MVP. As a 100-person firm, Techjays primarily serves small to medium businesses offering IT services and consulting expertise. In the fast-paced world of technology, Techjays faced the challenge of rapidly prototyping and onboarding solutions for their clients. The traditional approach, which involved time-intensive Docker and Kubernetes setups, often delayed the sales process and hampered the efficiency of their development cycle, thereby affecting deal closures and client satisfaction.
Fri, Dec 1, 2023Advent of Code on Replit
It’s the most wonderful time of the year: Advent of Code! Advent of Code is a month-long programming challenge with a new daily puzzle you can solve in any programming language. For many, Advent of Code is an excuse to learn a new programming language or practice a familiar one. No matter what programming language you choose to tackle the puzzles in, Replit is the easiest way to run your code. Here’s your guide to using Replit for AoC. Why choose Replit for Advent of Code Replit requires no installation or setup to get started with any language. Just select the language template and start coding directly in your browser. It supports most languages, from Python to Haskell, and even esoteric ones like LOLCODE. Execute your code using the Run button, or the built-in Shell. When you’re finished writing your code, check the output of your program quickly in the Console. If you get stuck, you can use the Multiplayer feature to share your code with a friend and ask for help.
Wed, Nov 29, 2023Replit + Weights & Biases: Building a RAG Bot
Guest post by Weights & Biases Weights & Biases (W&B) provides AI developers with powerful tools to build better models faster and is used by almost every top LLM research lab today. To help support internal and external users, W&B built WandBot – a question-answering bot built on the robust llama-index library and the intelligence of OpenAI's GPT-4. By referencing documentation, wandb source code, and code examples, WandBot helps users onboard to W&B faster, and experienced users solve more advanced issues.
Tue, Nov 21, 2023Company Spotlight: Boosty Labs
Boosty Labs' 50+ developers adopts Replit Core to increase collaboration and productivity with AI Boosty Labs, a leading Ukrainian development studio with over 50 developers, has embraced Replit Core, increasing collaboration and productivity with AI. Vitalli Yatskiv, CTO of Boosty Labs, chose Replit for its fast environment setup and collaborative features: "Setting up a development environment on Replit is impressively quick, as Replit eliminates the tedium of dependency installation."
Mon, Nov 20, 2023Transitioning to Replit Core
Last week, we launched Replit Core - a singular membership plan that represents the end-to-end software builder experience. We heard a lot of excitement and questions, so we wanted to clarify Replit’s new membership model and what that means for Replit moving forward. We value our existing community that grew Replit to be the world's largest community of software builders, where anyone can create and learn how to go from idea to software. Along with last week's announcement, we wanted to honor your commitment to us by letting you keep your current monthly price. You will be upgraded to Replit Core for the remainder of your current subscription term. At this time, if you are on auto-renew, the next renewal will be at your current Hacker rate. In addition, members with a monthly Pro plan who would like to upgrade to Replit Core with our promotional pricing can now do so by visiting replit.com/pricing and selecting ‘Switch to yearly payment ($120)’. This will automatically cancel their current plan and switch them to the annual plan at the promotional rate. We’re on a mission to empower the next billion software creators and we’re excited about bringing the best of Replit under a unified membership plan. We firmly believe that $20 per month / $220 per year represents the best value in software development, and we aim to continue building on that value with your feedback in mind. For more information, check out the breakdown. Over the next few months, we will explore enhancements to the Replit workspace, AI, and Deployments improvements. We will pursue partnerships with other platforms to bring Replit members even more value. One of these perks is available today where Replit Core members enjoy a complimentary 4-month subscription to Perplexity Pro. Thanks for being a part of our builder journey as we continue to support yours.
Mon, Nov 20, 2023Builder Profile: Michael Jelly
Michael Jelly is a founder and software developer focusing on productivity apps. His journey as a builder began after a brief stint in corporate consultancy. Mike seized the opportunity during the pandemic to delve into coding, starting with JavaScript and Free Code Camp. “While learning to code, it was super frustrating to set up environments. I'd actually set up a Python environment on two different computers and every time found it super painful and later found out, oh, I had the wrong version.” As a founder, Michael has a knack for identifying bottlenecks in his and others’ productivity and independently developing tools to improve them. MagicFlow emerged from this fascination with personal productivity. Michael initially developed an app to analyze Facebook data, which, while not a commercial success, sparked his interest in data-driven insights. This led to the creation of MagicFlow, a time-tracking app designed to enhance productivity by minimizing context switching and maximizing deep work. “I think if you can accelerate the productivity of the world's most productive people, then you get better science, you get faster-growing startups, you get faster turnover of good ideas to become better.”
Fri, Nov 17, 2023Builder Profile: Steve Moraco
Steve Moraco is a professional photographer by trade. A few months ago, he built an app based on an iOS shortcut using drag-and-drop tools on his phone. As someone who only took a few programming classes over 10 years ago, he knew he needed help turning his next idea into an actual product people could use. As he puts it: "I don't think I would ever be able to complete a project like this without Replit. I started not knowing anything about web development or even git for that matter." Steve first started by using AI to build working apps in Replit and published his process as a free YouTube tutorial. Then, he learned about Replit’s native AI tools. Using Replit AI to generate code and Replit Deployments for hosting, Steve quickly built and launched DATA into a successful startup business. DATA is a digital assistant that you can text or email to delegate tasks. It uses a combination of large language models, text files for memory, and Apple Shortcuts. Recently, Steve also built a web interface hosted on Replit Deployments to let users interact with AI through text and voice commands. DATA allows anyone to use AI right on their phones the same way they interact with people: by just texting, calling, or emailing.
Thu, Nov 16, 2023Builder Profile: Marwan Elwaraki and Salwa Al-Alami
Meet Marwan and Salwa, the London-based couple behind Sweet Dreams, an app designed for diabetic patients and their families to manage health collaboratively. Marwan, an iOS developer, and Salwa, a product manager, encountered a challenge when Marwan's younger brother was diagnosed with diabetes. Because his brother lived in Qatar with the rest of his family, it was difficult for Marwan to stay updated on his brother’s blood sugar level. First-party apps available at the time did not meet Marwan's requirements for keeping an eye on his brother's health data effectively. This gap led them to create an application that would give both the patient and their family a larger insight into the health data, ensuring that critical alerts related to blood sugar levels were not missed. Marwan first heard about Replit through Twitter, and started to explore the platform. He also encouraged Salwa to use Replit to learn to code. Marwan quickly built an MVP of Sweet Dreams, beginning with a simple Telegram integration. After confirming his idea, he moved on to building a full iOS app. By using Replit’s import tool to install libraries quickly, he’s able to focus on the app's functionality, such as real-time blood sugar monitoring and custom notifications, vital features that could mean the difference between stability and an emergency for a patient with diabetes.
Wed, Nov 15, 2023Showcasing Startups on Replit
The fastest way to start, ship, and share The Replit platform isn't just a sandbox; it's a launchpad. There’s a lot to learn from startups building on Replit and how they leverage the platform to monetize and grow. Whether it’s a solo developer bootstrapping their startup on Bounties, or a startup launching their application on Replit Deployments, Replit is the best place to go from idea to software, fast. Here are a few companies building and shipping on Replit today. Pitches.ai For many startup founders, raising capital is a painful but essential part of their startup journey. Starting a pitch deck from a blank slate adds another daunting, time-consuming task to a long list of responsibilities. That’s why Keane Angle built Pitches.ai, a pitch deck editor that uses GPT-4 and hours of knowledge from 200+ pitch decks that raised $3B+ to help founders generate compelling pitches for investors and customers.
Wed, Nov 15, 2023Builder Profile: Andrew Davison
Andrew Davison is an entrepreneur and automation expert who uses Replit and AI to build tools that streamline his and his clients’ work. Andrew is a new coder with an abundance of ideas. He works with clients through his consulting agency, Luhhu, tends to a community of automation entrepreneurs, and is learning to code. He’s been able to turn his numerous ideas into products with the help of AI and Replit. “My journey into building was to ask ChatGPT how to build and launch an app and it suggested Replit, Python, Flask, and SQLite... and that's how my preferred tech stack was born!“ For someone so focused on optimization and automation, Replit has been an ideal tool for Andrew. For him, Replit has “removed the need for multiple tools to get started…everything is there and it's been super intuitive to use. I've been able to build small programs to automate some aspects of my business admin, as well as publishing full-blown apps from scratch.” One of Andrew’s earliest projects on Replit was Export My Base, a tool that connects to Airtable to export all the tables from a base in one go - a feature Airtable doesn’t currently offer, despite its utility for most users. With Export My Base, Andrew wanted a simple, but useful tool to get started. Andrew’s seemingly simple tool had a real audience, and with Replit he was able to take Export My Base “from idea, to build, to launch and now to sold, all within 2 months.” “I headed over to ChatGPT and started with ‘I'd like to build an app in Replit that connects to the Airtable API and downloads all tables from an Airtable’ and went from there. About 40 hours later…I had a working app which I was later able to sell.”