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Show HN: Deco.cx – realtime TypeScript web editor (deco.cx)

98 points by lucis ↗ HN
Hi, HN. Gui, Lucis, and the deco.cx team here — we're a bunch of Brazilians building an open-source, all-in-one web editor for the modern TypeScript dev. Check out our GitHub at https://github.com/deco-cx/deco and discover more at our site https://deco.cx/.

We built frontend tools at a hyper-growth e-commerce platform for 9 years. Deco.cx is the thing that we wish existed when we were managing hundreds of enterprise-grade React-based websites.

The gist is: JSX, HTMX, TypeScript, Tailwind and Deno. All visually editable in a beautiful, collaborative, REALTIME (!) admin UI. Great for devs, great for content.

In essence, we're a git-based TypeScript-first configuration management system. We take TypeScript code that represents your site, your entities, your UI, and we allow anyone to "save" configuration and content based on those types.

It's great for developers, because you can code directly on the web, or on your machine, and get instant feedback. You "export interface Props" and boom, an automatic form is generated. It's great for the business users, the content editors, because you just press "." (dot) in your keyboard and you go into a visual edit mode for the page you're at right now. Everything the developer exported in TypeScript is editable.

And when you hit "publish", it's already live, with a proper CDN, proper caching, everything already setup and just working. Ready to scale!

But you can't fly blind. We're democratizing pro-level tools for web analytics and observability by bundling in our Pro plan: fully-managed Plausible analytics and HyperDX observability. Check them out — these are great tools on their own, and they shine in the deco.cx platform bundle.

We don't want to be the only answer, we don't claim to be right about anything, we just want to make the friendly and accessible open-source tool that we wish existed when we were junior developers. If you want to participate, please join our discord community at https://deco.cx/discord

on open-source: our admin UI core is not ready for prime time, we're working to open-source it this year. but basically everything else, our integrations, templates and configuration management runtime are all open-source already! take a look at these: https://github.com/deco-cx/deco https://github.com/deco-cx/apps https://github.com/deco-sites/storefront Making the admin UI core extensible and open source is a MAIN OBJECTIVE for this year, so expect news here soon!

Thanks for your support!

34 comments

[ 4.7 ms ] story [ 83.3 ms ] thread
p2hari
oh man, are you folks for real!!! I just checked out the website, git and discord channels (I just joined in) and you are awesome. Open source core and so much more work on git. Bringing partytown to deno etc. etc. I don't see what you have planned on the pipeline, but integrating with other cms out there would be even more cool. Importing content from other cms etc. Great work and wishing you all success and will be using you more in my projects :)
rafaelgcrespo
hey! deco.cx co-founder here :) super glad that you liked it. Yes, we are planning a way to import content from WordPress and other CMS - probably later this year. Right now we are focused on improving the open-source dev experience, and launching deco hub, a better way for the community to build, install and share templates and apps :)
lucis
thanks @p2hari!

the fact that we're open-source makes it easy to create new integrations as well. you can take a look at https://github.com/deco-cx/apps to see how it works.

it's high priority for us to make this even easier and also to incentivize our community to create apps for most CMSes and APIs

gadr90
It's easy to code a loader to get data from any CMS! But we definitely intend to have proper Apps on deco.hub for every major CMS. At the end of the day, we want to satisfy your CMS needs without needing an external API. We're just getting started, would love your feedback on our discord!
gadr90
BTW we're launching on Product Hunt today and we'd LOVE your support!
elliotbnvl
> Deco.cx is the frontend platform that bridges the gap between basic no-code site builders and complex full-code setups

Is it possible to edit a site in both no-code editor and a full-code editor? Once you edit in the full-code editor, is it possible to continue editing in the no-code editor? Are changes from the full-code editor preserved in this case?

The biggest challenge I have found in integrating no-code and full-code lies in preserving changes made in full-code mode when updates are made in no-code mode.

Something something scroll hijacking.

Also, would love to be able to pause the auto-scroll banner highlighting the various features ("Section Library", "No Code Editor", "Full Code Editor", etc.)

Site looks awesome and modern, good stuff! In another life I would be very excited about this platform.

gadr90
> Something something scroll hijacking.

I know, right? I'm also not super proud of that portion of the landing, lol!

> The biggest challenge I have found in integrating no-code and full-code lies in preserving changes made in full-code mode when updates are made in no-code mode.

God, YES! We've been working in this problem in one way or another for at least 10 years, and we also failed many times in solving that conciliation. We _think_ we have reached a good tradeoff now: _everything is on git_. So when you're using our web editor, you are basically using a "remote computer" (actually a Cloudflare Durable) to edit your files, just as if you cloned it on your local machine. When you're happy with changes, you "publish" it - which generates a commit for you. This way we can have developers and content creators happy, both sharing the same history.

> Site looks awesome and modern, good stuff! In another life I would be very excited about this platform.

Thank you! It's been a crazy one and a half year building this and we're now a team of 30 people all over Brazil. We thank you for the recognition!

orphea
The page has extremely poor performance. Simply scrolling or moving the mouse cursor around loads Ryzen 7900 to 30% (it's a 12-core CPU!) Everything stutters.
gadr90
Hi Orphea! Guilty as charged we kinda rushed this landing page for our TechCrunch announcement and haven't been able to come back to optimize it. I haven't heard of stuttering before now, but maybe something quirky is happening with your combination of browser/OS/CPU. If you could let us know which browser and OS you're on, we'd be very grateful! Thanks in advance!
orphea
Oops, sorry, I was going to tell that! Windows 10 / Edge 123
gadr90
Thank you! We need to start testing way more on Windows. Will do!
edave64
Mac mini M2 user with safari here: The website causes 10-20% CPU load doing absolutely nothing. The spotlight effect also doesn't seem to work as intended. As long as the mouse is moving, the spotlight just barely moves in its direction. Then, when the mouse stays still, it suddenly jumps towards it. It makes the website seem a lot more laggy than it probably would be.

On chrome, the spotlight effect looks better, but we are up to 50% CPU usage.

gadr90
This is most likely the culprit! Will take care of it. Thanks for the detailed feedback <3
julienreszka
The homepage has terrible performance not a good first impression
gadr90
Hi, Julie! We're aware the current LP is not showcasing our focus on performance... but time is scarce in a tiny startup and we've spent it all optimizing the frontends of our customers :) we're going to improve that soon! Thanks for pointing it out. Looking forward for more feedback!
atonse
I can't even scroll through this site to read what the product is.
gadr90
Oh, that's terrible! Can you let me know your browser/OS combination? Seems like we've found a terrible performance bug for some combination that's quite common here in HN!
atonse
Using Safari 17.4.1 (macOS Sonoma 14.4.1).

Good luck with figuring it out, and hopefully the launch smoothes out a bit.

gadr90
Thanks! Engineer capybaras are investigating as we speak :)
khaosdoctor
This is AWESOME! I’ve been looking to find something like this for my pages for ages.

The Deno core using TypeScript is the ABSOLUTE BEST mix ever. Loved the work you guys are doing. Hope you continue to disrupt even more!

lucis
Thanks @haosdoctor, you get what we feel!

deco.cx has a great sweet spot for personal pages and portfolios. Free deployment with a *.deco.site domain and an easy-to-use CMS are a great combo.

Feel free to reach us if you need any help at https://deco.cx/discord

gadr90
Thanks, Doctor! I was trying to use Deno in my previous company but they wouldn’t let me… so here we are :D

I’m looking forward to open-sourcing the admin UI soon and see what insane extensions people come up with on top of our stack!

n3storm
What does it mean pricing for "pageviews"? thanks in advance
gadr90
Hi n3storm! It means we account for how many pageviews your website is serving each month and we charge a variable amount based on that. That way you only pay for what you use. In the * asterisk, we end up defining a pageview as having a maximum of 10 requests, and you pay proportionally over that. In our experience, considering our SSR-first architecture and the fact that assets are immutably cached at the border, we've found most sites use less than 10 reqs per pageview.
riffic
I would absolutely never launch something on the dot cx TLD it just reminds me of a certain something.
aitchnyu
I assumed headless meant "api only, without ui". Feels like the Nth time I've seen this paradox.
lucis
It's a popular trend with e-commerce (our main field), which usually means not using the proprietary frontend framework that e-commerce platforms offer (Shopify, Magento...)

But deco itself it's not headless, it has all the body parts. You can use it as a headless CMS if you want to.

_akhe
This looks amazing, like a modern take on Dreamweaver or something. The low code IDE may soon return! The ability to switch between no-code/code is great for teaching people to code. Dreamweaver (and MySpace profiles) basically taught me CSS.
lucis
Exactly, and we were Dreamweaver users!

Do you remember the Developer Toolbox addon? It has been on my mind for a while and we want to implement something like that, maybe with help from AI.

- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5xnIygDSss (couldn't find one in English)