Show HN: Bodge.app – μFaaS for hacked-together personal tools and small projects

4 points by azdle 3 hours ago

This is a little side project I've been working on for the last few months. It's a service hosting Lua scripts behind static HTTP endpoints. It's something I've built to scratch my own itch and now I'm launching a free public beta to see if it's something that anyone else also finds useful.

My first professional job was for a company building an industrial IoT platform who's most unique feature was their Lua-based scripting platform. I ended up loving Lua so much that at my next job, at SmartThings, I ended up being the main instigator who made the Lua-based Edge Drivers happen when we were forced to sunset the old Groovy-based DTHs, writing the initial PoC, laying out the architecture, and writing the core of the system.

This is basically my take on an old service that folded in 2017 called webscript.io, another tool that got me loving Lua. I used that service a whole bunch both for personal projects and little tools at work. I was really sad when it went down and I genuinely don't think a single week had gone by where I hadn't wished that it still existed. So, I finally decided that I needed to build my own version of it.

</backstory>

The whole idea behind Bodge is that it should be as simple as possible to hack something together. I've always had a bunch of small side projects that I want to do that aren't worth the overhead required to actually put them together & keep them maintained. So, I built Bodge as a way to make each individual project less work whenever inspiration strikes. So far I've built:

* A current-time API for some hacked-together IoT devices: https://time.bodge.app/

* A script for my wife that checks her commute time and emails her before it's about to get bad.

* An email notification to myself if my Matrix server goes down.

* A 'randomly choose a thing' page. https://rand.bodge.app/choose?head&tails

* A "work" phone number voicemail, where the script converts the webhook into an alert to myself.

* An email notification any time a new version is released for a few semi-public self-hosted services.

* Scrapers for a few companies' job listings that notify me whenever a new job is posted matching some filters.

* A WebPush server that I eventually want to use for custom notifications to myself.

* And just for fun, an SVG hit counter: https://hits.bodge.link/

Scripts can be as simple as:

  return "Hello, world!"

Or as complicated as you're willing to make them within the confines of a single Lua file.

Currently I provide Lua modules for: making HTTP requests, handling json, sending alerts to yourself, simple string/string key/value storage, cross-script mutexes, and a few other basic things.

Accounts are free, but you don't even need to make one to just play around with writing scripts. There's a demo on the homepage that lets you run real scripts for yourself, though with a few extra limitations.

I'd love to hear what anyone thinks!