<story><title>Show HN: Reflame – Deploy your React web apps in milliseconds</title><url>https://reflame.app/?source=show-hn-launch</url><text>Hi HN! I&amp;#x27;ve been working on Reflame since I quit my job at Brex last year, excited to finally open it up for everybody to try out! Here&amp;#x27;s a demo: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.youtube.com&amp;#x2F;watch?v=SohUnrjiIxk&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.youtube.com&amp;#x2F;watch?v=SohUnrjiIxk&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;Reflame deploys client-rendered React web apps instantly, to previews and to production.&lt;p&gt;In concrete wall-clock terms, deploys generally take:&lt;p&gt;- ~50-500ms from our VSCode extension&lt;p&gt;- ~500-3000ms from our GitHub app&lt;p&gt;(Jump to this comment (&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=33134082&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=33134082&lt;/a&gt;) for what makes Reflame so fast)&lt;p&gt;The Reflame GitHub App automatically deploys default branches to production, and other branches to previews. If you&amp;#x27;ve used Netlify&amp;#x2F;Vercel&amp;#x27;s GitHub apps, you should feel right at home. The difference is it’s multiple orders of magnitudes faster. Fast enough that &lt;i&gt;you&amp;#x27;ll probably never see an in-progress deploy on GitHub ever again&lt;/i&gt;, only ready-to-go preview&amp;#x2F;production links.&lt;p&gt;No more having to babysit builds or having to context switch to and from other tasks before being able to see our changes deployed in previews or production. Previewing, sharing, and even shipping, can now become part of the so-called inner loop, giving us the superpower to stay in flow state for much longer.&lt;p&gt;The Reflame VSCode extension is yet another order of magnitude faster than even the GitHub App. It was designed to offer an experience that can rival local development workflows in both speed and ergonomics, while addressing many of local dev&amp;#x27;s limitations around collaboration and production-parity. Every time we make a change (e.g. by saving a file), the extension will deploy that change (in ~50-500ms) to a &amp;quot;Live Preview&amp;quot;, and will immediately update the app in our browsers to reflect that change.&lt;p&gt;Live Previews can operate in one of two modes:&lt;p&gt;- Development mode delivers updates through React Fast Refresh, offering the familiar state-preserving instant feedback loop we know and love from local development workflows.&lt;p&gt;- Production mode delivers updates by triggering a full browser reload on every change, and in exchange for this extra bit of friction, we get to develop against a byte-identical version of the fully optimized production deployment that customers will see once we ship, with a tighter feedback loop than was ever possible before.&lt;p&gt;Live Previews deliver updates over the internet, meaning we can effortlessly test out our changes on multiple devices simultaneously, and show our changes to anyone in the world, just by sharing a Live Preview link, all while having our updates reflected automatically across all connected devices in real-time (with live reload or React Fast Refresh &lt;i&gt;over the internet&lt;/i&gt;).&lt;p&gt;Being able to ship quickly is valuable on its own, but Reflame&amp;#x27;s true north star has always been to enable customers to ship quickly &lt;i&gt;with confidence&lt;/i&gt;.&lt;p&gt;One way Reflame helps customers ship with more confidence today is by making previews with full production-parity available at every step of the development process. Previews in Reflame are accessible at the exact same URL customers will use to access the production deployment, instead of at a different subdomain for each preview (i.e. every preview is accessed through &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;reflame.app&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;reflame.app&lt;/a&gt; instead of at &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;some-branch-of-reflamedotapp.reflame-previews.dev&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;some-branch-of-reflamedotapp.reflame-previews.dev&lt;/a&gt;). Behind the scenes, this is implemented using session cookies that our CDN will check to determine which version of the app to serve.&lt;p&gt;This is only the tip of the iceberg. We have some really exciting prototypes around testing and typechecking that we&amp;#x27;ve been exploring that could allow us to ship with even more confidence &lt;i&gt;without ever slowing us down&lt;/i&gt;.&lt;p&gt;If any of this sounds interesting for the apps you&amp;#x27;re building or planning to build (taking into account this comment (&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=33134092&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=33134092&lt;/a&gt;) below describing what Reflame is not well suited for), please sign up and give it a try!&lt;p&gt;I can&amp;#x27;t wait to see what you’ll build with it! :)</text></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>solardev</author><text>This sounds really interesting and is a problem we were trying to solve just this week with Vercel!&lt;p&gt;However, I am having a hard time following what it&amp;#x27;s actually doing under the hood. Aside from a single video, might you be willing to share some more details on the product page about how it works? I can&amp;#x27;t tell what it&amp;#x27;s doing, and I&amp;#x27;m not inclined to randomly sign up for something without even having a high-level understanding...&lt;p&gt;Like when I push to Github, I understand that Vercel pulls the repo and does a yarn install and yarn build or whatever -- the same buildchain I use locally, just on their servers. Same with CircleCI.&lt;p&gt;Is that also what Reflame is doing? If so, what&amp;#x27;s it doing differently that makes it faster? If not, how does it deal with node_modules installation and are there are any caveats there, like how does it deal with resolutions, lockfiles, private repos, etc.?&lt;p&gt;Or am I completely misunderstanding...? Is this some sort of content diffing engine &amp;#x2F; hot reloader instead of a faster build pipeline? I&amp;#x27;m not really sure I&amp;#x27;m following, sorry :(&lt;p&gt;Just trying to understand what your product actually is and how it works :)</text></comment>
<story><title>Show HN: Reflame – Deploy your React web apps in milliseconds</title><url>https://reflame.app/?source=show-hn-launch</url><text>Hi HN! I&amp;#x27;ve been working on Reflame since I quit my job at Brex last year, excited to finally open it up for everybody to try out! Here&amp;#x27;s a demo: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.youtube.com&amp;#x2F;watch?v=SohUnrjiIxk&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.youtube.com&amp;#x2F;watch?v=SohUnrjiIxk&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;Reflame deploys client-rendered React web apps instantly, to previews and to production.&lt;p&gt;In concrete wall-clock terms, deploys generally take:&lt;p&gt;- ~50-500ms from our VSCode extension&lt;p&gt;- ~500-3000ms from our GitHub app&lt;p&gt;(Jump to this comment (&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=33134082&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=33134082&lt;/a&gt;) for what makes Reflame so fast)&lt;p&gt;The Reflame GitHub App automatically deploys default branches to production, and other branches to previews. If you&amp;#x27;ve used Netlify&amp;#x2F;Vercel&amp;#x27;s GitHub apps, you should feel right at home. The difference is it’s multiple orders of magnitudes faster. Fast enough that &lt;i&gt;you&amp;#x27;ll probably never see an in-progress deploy on GitHub ever again&lt;/i&gt;, only ready-to-go preview&amp;#x2F;production links.&lt;p&gt;No more having to babysit builds or having to context switch to and from other tasks before being able to see our changes deployed in previews or production. Previewing, sharing, and even shipping, can now become part of the so-called inner loop, giving us the superpower to stay in flow state for much longer.&lt;p&gt;The Reflame VSCode extension is yet another order of magnitude faster than even the GitHub App. It was designed to offer an experience that can rival local development workflows in both speed and ergonomics, while addressing many of local dev&amp;#x27;s limitations around collaboration and production-parity. Every time we make a change (e.g. by saving a file), the extension will deploy that change (in ~50-500ms) to a &amp;quot;Live Preview&amp;quot;, and will immediately update the app in our browsers to reflect that change.&lt;p&gt;Live Previews can operate in one of two modes:&lt;p&gt;- Development mode delivers updates through React Fast Refresh, offering the familiar state-preserving instant feedback loop we know and love from local development workflows.&lt;p&gt;- Production mode delivers updates by triggering a full browser reload on every change, and in exchange for this extra bit of friction, we get to develop against a byte-identical version of the fully optimized production deployment that customers will see once we ship, with a tighter feedback loop than was ever possible before.&lt;p&gt;Live Previews deliver updates over the internet, meaning we can effortlessly test out our changes on multiple devices simultaneously, and show our changes to anyone in the world, just by sharing a Live Preview link, all while having our updates reflected automatically across all connected devices in real-time (with live reload or React Fast Refresh &lt;i&gt;over the internet&lt;/i&gt;).&lt;p&gt;Being able to ship quickly is valuable on its own, but Reflame&amp;#x27;s true north star has always been to enable customers to ship quickly &lt;i&gt;with confidence&lt;/i&gt;.&lt;p&gt;One way Reflame helps customers ship with more confidence today is by making previews with full production-parity available at every step of the development process. Previews in Reflame are accessible at the exact same URL customers will use to access the production deployment, instead of at a different subdomain for each preview (i.e. every preview is accessed through &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;reflame.app&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;reflame.app&lt;/a&gt; instead of at &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;some-branch-of-reflamedotapp.reflame-previews.dev&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;some-branch-of-reflamedotapp.reflame-previews.dev&lt;/a&gt;). Behind the scenes, this is implemented using session cookies that our CDN will check to determine which version of the app to serve.&lt;p&gt;This is only the tip of the iceberg. We have some really exciting prototypes around testing and typechecking that we&amp;#x27;ve been exploring that could allow us to ship with even more confidence &lt;i&gt;without ever slowing us down&lt;/i&gt;.&lt;p&gt;If any of this sounds interesting for the apps you&amp;#x27;re building or planning to build (taking into account this comment (&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=33134092&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=33134092&lt;/a&gt;) below describing what Reflame is not well suited for), please sign up and give it a try!&lt;p&gt;I can&amp;#x27;t wait to see what you’ll build with it! :)</text></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>lewisl9029</author><text>(posting some extras as comments since the original post is already way too long)&lt;p&gt;What&amp;#x27;s the pricing going to be like?&lt;p&gt;Pricing is still very much a work in progress. Feedback from early customers will play a major factor here. Here&amp;#x27;s my current thinking:&lt;p&gt;Reflame should be free to use for individuals deploying apps that live on the default *.reflame.dev subdomains. Deploying apps to custom domains will probably require a monthly fee, which will enable custom domains on all apps of the user (i.e. there won&amp;#x27;t be an additional fee for having more than 1 app with custom domains). For organizations, there will be a simple monthly fee per member, for any number of apps with custom domains in that org.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m planning to avoid usage-based pricing for the deployment side of Reflame if at all possible, because I don’t think it leads to a good alignment of incentives. I don&amp;#x27;t want to financially disincentivize customers from deploying as often as they want (within reasonable limits to protect against DoS), and I really don&amp;#x27;t want to be financially disincentivized to make customers&amp;#x27; deploys faster over time. Every usage-based CI platform out there benefits financially from our builds getting slower, so have no financial incentive to build anything to make them faster. I believe usage-based pricing for CI and the diametrically opposed incentives it introduced has been a huge driver of stagnation in the industry.</text></comment>