Comment by elitan
1 day ago
For those who can't wait for PG18 or need full instance isolation: I built Velo, which does instant branching using ZFS snapshots instead of reflinks.
Works with any PG version today. Each branch is a fully isolated PostgreSQL container with its own port. ~2-5 seconds for a 100GB database.
https://github.com/elitan/velo
Main difference from PG18's approach: you get complete server isolation (useful for testing migrations, different PG configs, etc.) rather than databases sharing one instance.
Despite all of the complaints in other comments about the use of Claude Code, it looks interesting and I appreciated the video demo you put on the GitHub page.
Agentic coding detractors: "If AI is so great, where all the thriving new open source projects to prove it?"
Also agentic coding detractors: "How dare you use AI to help build a new open source project."
I'm joking and haven't read the comments you're referring to, but whether or not AI was involved is irrelevant per se. If anyone finds themselves having a gut reaction to "AI", just mentally replace it with "an intern" or "a guy from Fiverr". Either way, the buck stops with whomever is taking ownership of the project.
If the code/architecture is buggy or unsafe, call that out. If there's a specific reason to believe no one with sufficient expertise reviewed and signed off on the implementation, call that out. Otherwise, why complain that someone donated their time and expertise to give you something useful for free?
For real. For someone to even understand why this tool is useful and functions as intended, they need to have some deeper understanding of software development. Who cares if the implementation was done with AI. With Claude Code, I rarely write code by hand these days, yet my brain hurts more than ever from all the actual problem solving I’m able to drill into with all the programming cruft out of the way. I did it by hand for 15 years, and I don’t feel bad at all for handing that part over.
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> If anyone finds themselves having a gut reaction to "AI", just mentally replace it with "an intern" or "a guy from Fiverr"
It’s not the guy from Fiverr anyone is annoyed with. It’s the tech CEOs who beat everyone over the head with:
- ”the future will be a-guy-from-Fiverr-native”
- ”we are mandating that 80% of our employees incorporate a-guy-from-Fiverr into their daily workflow by year end”
And everyone pretends this is serious.
Then there are people who are pulling off cool demo stunts that amount to duct taping fireworks to a lawn mower but they post about it on X doing their best Steve Jobs thought leader impersonation.
And again everyone pretends like this is serious.
The annoyance is like that friend you tell about this great new song, and they’re excited, but only because it’s something they can to tell other people and look cool. Not because they’re into music.
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thanks for sharing its interesting approach. I am not sure why people are complaining most of the software is written with the help of agents these days.
It’s rampant. Launch anything these days and it’s bombarded with “vibe-coded” comments.
The issue of quality makes sense since it’s so easy to build these days, but when the product is open-source, these vibe coded comments make no sense. Users can literally go read the code or my favorite? Repomix it, pop it into AI Studio, and ask Gemini what this person has built, what value it brings, and does it solve the problem I have?
For vibe coded proprietary apps, you can’t do that so the comments are sort of justified.
Does it work with other dbs theoretically?
Hell yeah. I’ve been meaning to prototype this exact thing but with btrfs.
interesting, you have a link?
[flagged]
You, is an interesting word to use given that you plagiarized it.
Do you have a link to the original?
Plagiarized from what? Happy to address if you can point to what you're referring to.
I think they may be jumping on the "shit on AI assisted project" bandwagon. I am by no means reaching for ai tools at every turn, but to suggest its plagiarized is laughable.
Don't worry about these trolls.
Please share the instant Postgres clones tool this copied! I'd love to try it
You mean you told Claude a bunch of details and it built it for you?
Mind you, I'm not saying it's bad per se. But shouldn't we be open and honest about this?
I wonder if this is the new normal. Somebody says "I built Xyz" but then you realize it's vibe coded.
Let's say there is an architect and he also owns a construction company. This architect, then designs a building and gets it built from of his employees and contractors.
In such cases the person says, I have built this building. People who found companies, say they have built companies. It's commonly accepted in our society.
So even if Claude built for it for GP, as long as GP designed it, paid for tools (Claude) to build it, also tested it to make sure that it works, I personally think, he has right to say he has built it.
If you don't like it, you are not required to use it.
I agree that it's ultimately about the product.
But here's the problem. Five years ago, when someone on here said, "I wrote this non-trivial software", the implication was that a highly motivated and competent software engineer put a lot of effort into making sure that the project meets a reasonable standard of quality and will probably put some effort into maintaining the project.
Today, it does not necessarily imply that. We just don't know.
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The architect knows what it is doing. And the workers are professionals with supervisors to check that the work is done properly.
Every single commit is Claude. No human expert involved. Would you trust your company database to an 25 dollars vibe session? Would you live in a 5 dollars building? Is there any difference from hand tailored suit, constructed to your measurements, and a 5 dollars t-shirt? Some people don't want to live in a five dollars world.
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That's a lot of ifs.
That has to be the worst analogy I have read in a while, and I’m HN that says something.
Asking someone to build a house - and then saying I built it - is "very misleading" to put it nicely.
When you order a website on upwork - you didn't build it. You bought it.
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No, it's more like the architect has a cousin who is like "I totally got this bro" and builds the building for them.
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What an outrageously bad analogy. Everyone involved in that building put their professional reputations and licenses on the line. If that building collapses, the people involved will lose their livelihoods and be held criminally liable.
Meanwhile this vibe coded nonsense is provided “AS IS”, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED. We don’t even know if he read it before committing and pushing.
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It is the new normal, whether you are against it or not.
If someone used AI, it is a good discussion to see whether they should explicitly disclose it, but people have been using assisted tools, from auto-complete, text expanders, IDE refactoring tools, for a while - and you wouldn't make a comment that they didn't build it. The lines are becoming more blurry over time, but it is ridiculous to claim that someone didn't build something if they used AI tools.
Do you take issue with companies stating that they (the company) built something, instead of stating that their employees built something? Should the architects and senior developers disclaim any credit, because the majority of tickets were completed by junior and mid-level developers?
Do you take issue with a CNC machinist stating that they made something, rather than stating that they did the CAD and CAM work but that it was the CNC machine that made the part?
Non-zero delegation doesn’t mean that the person(s) doing the delegating have put zero effort into making something, so I don’t think that delegation makes it dishonest to say that you made something. But perhaps you disagree. Or, maybe you think the use of AI means that the person using AI isn’t putting any constructive effort into what was made — but then I’d say that you’re likely way overestimating the ability of LLMs.
Could we please avoid the strawmen? Nowhere have I claimed that they didn't put work into this. Nowhere did I say that delegation is bad. I'd like to encourage a discussion, but then please counter the opinion that I gave, not a made-up one that I neither stated nor actually hold.
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There was a recent wave of such comment on the rust subreddit - exactly in this shape "Oh you mean you built this with AI". This is highly toxic, lead to no discussion, and is literally drove by some dark thought from the commentator. I really hope HN will not jump on this bandwagon and will focus instead on creating cool stuff.
Everybody in the industry is vibecoding right now - the things that stick are due to sufficient quality being pushed on it. Having a pessimistic / judgmental surface reaction to everything as being "ai slop" is not something that I'm going to look forward in my behavior.
>This is highly toxic, lead to no discussion
Why good faith is a requirement for commenting but not for submissions? I would argue the good faith assumption should be disproportionately more important for submissions given the 1 to many relationship. You're not lying, it indeed is toxic and rapidly spreading. I'm glad this is the case.
Most came here for the discussion and enlightenment to be bombarded by heavily biased, low effort marketing bullshit. Presenting something that has no value to anyone besides the builder is the opposite of good faith. This submissions bury and neglect useful discussion, difficult to claim they are harmless and just not useful.
Not everyone in the industry is vibe coding, that is simply not true. but that's not the point I want to make. You don't need to be defensive about your generative tools usage, it is ok to use whatever, nobody cares. Just be ready to maintain your position and defend your ideals. Nothing is more frustrating then giving honest attention to a problem, considering someone else perspective, to just then realize it was just words words words spewed by slop machine. Nobody would give a second thought if that was disclosed. You are responsible for your craft. The moment you delegate that responsibility into the thrash you belong. If the slop machine is so great, why in hell would I need you to ask it to help me? Nonsensical.
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> Everybody in the industry is vibecoding right now
no ‘everybody’ is not. a lot of us are using zero LLMs and continuing to build (quality) software just fine
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Huh? It says so right in the README.
https://github.com/elitan/velo/blame/12712e26b18d0935bfb6c6e...
And are we really doing this? Do we need to admit how every line of code was produced? Why? Are you expecting to see "built with the influence of Stackoverflow answers" or "google searches" on every single piece of software ever? It's an exercise of pointlessness.
Indeed. There is a difference between "I have learnes by reading a lot of SO" and "I have copied the contents of this file verbatim from SO". Using Claude is very close to the latter without saying it.
I think you need to start with the following statement:
> We would like to acknowledge the open source people, who are the traditional custodians of this code. We pay our respects to the stack overflow elders, past, present, and future, who call this place, the code and libraries that $program sits upon, their work. We are proud to continue their tradition of coming together and growing as a community. We thank the search engine for their stewardship and support, and we look forward to strengthening our ties as we continue our relationship of mutual respect and understanding
Then if you would kindly say that a Brazilian invented the airplane that would be good too. If you don’t do this you should be cancelled for your heinous crime.
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Not sure why this is downvoted. For a critical tool like DB cloning, I‘d very much appreciate if it was hand written. Simply because it means it’s also hand reviewed at least once (by definition).
We wouldn’t have called it reviewed in the old world, but in the AI coding world we’re now in it makes me realise that yes, it is a form of reviewing.
I use Claude a lot btw. But I wouldn’t trust it on mission critical stuff.
It's being downvoted because the commenter is asking for something that is already in the readme. Furthermore, it's ironic that the person raising such an issue is performing the same mistake as they are calling out - neglecting to read something they didn't write.
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Eh, DB branching is mostly only necessary for testing - locally, in CI or quick rollbacks on a shared dev instance.
Or at least I cannot come up with a usecase for prod.
From that perspective, it feels like it'd be a perfect usecase to embrace the LLM guided development jank
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If you don’t read code you execute someone is going to steal everything on your file system one day
why does it matter?