Hey! Thanks for the questions and feedback. We have a single project on Vercel to host the Next.js frontend but that's the extent of our usage there, and our usage is mostly static with some SSR to fetch user and public functions.
Hey! If you’re familiar with the term JAMstack, you can think of us as the “A” for API’s. A static site like a blog typically doesn’t need any backend-specific functions but anything that requires a server to run you could use Napkin for. Popular frontend hosting platforms like Netlify and Vercel also have serverless function add-ons that can be attached to your project.
Our goal is to be the “CodePen for backend” and our one-off functions can be used for more than just websites (think mobile apps, IOT devices, etc). We’re excited to build out examples and enable discovery very soon!
That’s great feedback, thanks so much. We want to perfect the editor experience as much as possible. It can’t ever completely replace local, though, so we hope we can release our API in the future for this use case.
Thanks! Replit (and Glitch) are cool but ultimately they didn't pass our sniff test for production use cases. We believe our serverless architecture sets the foundation for the Napkin function to be a LEGO-like block to build complex systems at scale. We also like the idea of a simple isolated unit that can be shared. It's more lightweight, more understandable, and we'll be exploring ways to tackle discovery in the coming months :)
Hey! We're not yet open sourcing our tech during our beta period, but you can watch out for it here: https://github.com/napkinhq. We'll likely have a release for any open source tooling.
cloud9 ide is definitely a pioneer! We see Napkin as a part of the natural evolution in our productivity/dev tools, especially as we adapt to the advent of serverless architecture
That's a good point, I was debating on whether or not to put that there, but I believe it's under fair use policy for journalism. It's a quote and not a statement of endorsement, but I get why it could seem confusing. The purpose of it was to convey the goal of my service, which is to have companies use students as a core part of their mission, which in turn benefits them in the long run as they convert students to real customers when they get into industry. Thanks for the feedback though, I'll have to think it through more.
For fraud, of course if someone is willing to spend the time to crack the system, they probably will. The point is not to stop the one off attacker, because the implications are just you give a discount to an incorrect person (which you can limit by limiting the deal - for ex. 1 year discount).
AI because it's using OCR and some proprietary checks on the second step. It is more intelligent than it looks.
changed to seconds since actual GET request is instant. A student verification process may take a couple minutes depending of the size of their document and how quickly they verify their email.