nowhere: an entire website encoded in a URL
bpierre
100 points
62 comments
April 24, 2026
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Discussion Highlights (20 comments)
Markoff
How it works A URL fragment is the part after #. The HTTP specification prohibits browsers from sending fragments to servers. The server that delivers the page never receives the content, never knows which site you are viewing, and has no way to find out. No content is collected, stored, or logged. The privacy is structural. A site that was never put on a server can never be taken off one. There is no account to suspend, no host to pressure, no platform that can decide your content should not exist. Each copy of the link is a complete copy of the site data. Site creators can encrypt the URL itself with a password. Even possessing the link reveals nothing about what is inside. https://github.com/5t34k/nowhere
toyg
If I understand correctly, when a nowhere URL is pasted in a browser, what happens is: 1. the browser downloads generic JS libraries from the main site 2. these libraries then decode the fragment part, and transform it into the UI If that's correct, someone still has to host or otherwise distribute the libraries - hence why you need the app to use it while offline (it ships the libraries). This is not criticism, I'm just trying to get my head around how it works.
anonymous1e
Where is the URL???? any example/demo.
ajsnigrutin
What's the point? You still have to share the link somewhere, why not just share a block of text (invitation, campaign, whatever) directly instead?
bronxpockfabz
> hosted nowhere > present everywhere > Still here when the internet isn't I'm afraid the OP may not have full understanding of how internet works. This is either some kind of a post irony, or some vibe code fever dream. Either way, I'm deeply confused.
cagenut
similar enough that i'll share, I think i learned this from an HN comment, you can put the code for a page in the url (with obvious limits): this works as a "url" in both chrome and safari: data:text/html, <html contenteditable><head><title>notes</title></head><body><textarea rows=36 cols=140></textarea></body></html>
zane__chen
I don't see any demo. But would this mean encoding the entire dist folder after build step?
hoppp
Could just share a file then?
wateralien
Like this: https://nowhr.xyz/s#yzXyzs8PcDbxyQ_0KbYMzzRNytKNyE0JDM0x8zT2...
foltik
> The internet promised freedom. Platforms delivered permission. > Private through physics. Not through policy. Goodness, LLM really convinced itself this was groundbreaking. You could describe a .html file sitting on your computer with all of the same marketing bluster. Someone has to send it to you all the same, and you might as well not rely on some random internet service to render it??
fainpul
Similar to mdview.io (markdown only, not offline) and a suggestion I made a while back: https://tinyurl.com/mrpas5dc
halfcat
Was this forked from the nocode project? https://github.com/kelseyhightower/nocode
anonymous1e
This is cool and fun, but the sites created by this wouldn't be accessible through search engines as its not hosted anywhere. So, its just like sending your sites link through email/whatsapp or any other channel. I don't know what the real usecase for this idea could be!!!!
ivanjermakov
LLM agent discovered plain text and base64 encoding?
Igor_Wiwi
I am using similar method to share Markdown files as one big URL like this: https://mdview.io/#mdv=N4IgbiBcCMA0IBMCGAXJUTADrhzWOAtgnjgMQ...
oleggromov
If you could only send a text message...
nmoadev
Interesting thought to explore but overblown claims. For the privacy claims to hold, a fundamental conceit is that you trust and use the nowhere app / domain. The source is open, so let’s imagine that you individually can be satisfied. Now, the idea that entire apps can be shared via a link in a Signal chat or a QR code on a flier is a fascinating bit of compression and potential for archiving. Imagine games shared on paper QR codes at a meetup. Oh but here’s the rub, do you trust the arbitrary code you just scanned off of a QR code? TLS has become a proxy for trusted authorship. “Well if it’s really coming my bank then it’s probably safe”
csmantle
This resembles some serverless pastebins. Data is serialized into the fragment part, and client-side JS deserializes them. The only practical difference is that this app sets them as HTML while those set them as text.
d--b
also known as the html file.
Velocifyer
Why don't they just use a data: URI?