Show HN: I built a social media management tool in 3 weeks with Claude and Codex

JanSchu

I wanted to test how far AI coding tools could take a production project. Not a prototype. A social media management platform with 12 first-party API integrations, multi-tenant auth, encrypted credential storage, background job processing, approval workflows, and a unified inbox. The scope would normally keep a solo developer busy for the better part of a year. I shipped it in 3 weeks. Before writing any code, I spent time on detailed specs, an architecture doc, and a style guide. All public: https://github.com/brightbeanxyz/brightbean-studio/tree/main... I broke the specs into tasks that could run in parallel across multiple agents versus tasks with dependencies that had to merge first. This planning step was the whole game. Without it, the agents produce a mess. I used Opus 4.6 (Claude Code) for planning and building the first pass of backend and UI. Opus holds large context better and makes architectural decisions across files more reliably. Then I used Codex 5.3 to challenge every implementation, surface security issues, and catch bugs. Token spend was roughly even between the two. Where AI coding worked well: Django models, views, serializers, standard CRUD. Provider modules for well-documented APIs like Facebook and LinkedIn. Tailwind layouts and HTMX interactions. Test generation. Cross-file refactoring, where Opus was particularly good at cascading changes across models, views, and templates when I restructured the permission system. Where it fell apart: TikTok's Content Posting API has poor docs and an unusual two-step upload flow. Both tools generated wrong code confidently, over and over. Multi-tenant permission logic produced code that worked for a single workspace but leaked data across tenants in multi-workspace setups. These bugs passed tests, which is what made them dangerous. OAuth edge cases like token refresh, revoked permissions, and platform-specific error codes all needed manual work. Happy path was fine, defensive code was not. Background task orchestration (retry logic, rate-limit backoff, error handling) also required writing by hand. One thing I underestimated: Without dedicated UI designs, getting a consistent UX was brutal. All the functionality was there, but screens were unintuitive and some flows weren't reachable through the UI at all. 80% of features worked in 20% of the time. The remaining 80% went to polish and making the experience actually usable. The project is open source under AGPL-3.0. 12 platform integrations, all first-party APIs. Django 5.x + HTMX + Alpine.js + Tailwind CSS 4 + PostgreSQL. No Redis. Docker Compose deploy, 4 containers. Ask me anything about the spec-driven approach, platform API quirks, or how I split work between the two models.

FireInsight

I am genuinely in the "target market" for a tool such as this, but having evaluated one previously I found the quality and self-hosting experience to be pretty bad, and that a proprietary freemium product was still a better experience. I'm hesitant to even take a look at this project due to the whole "vibe coded in 3 weeks" thing, though. Hearing that says to me that this is not serious or battle-tested and might go unmaintained or such. Do you think these are valid concerns to have?

ms7892

Woah! I was looking for something like this from a long time

themonsu

Does it work with multiple social accounts? E.g. if I have 100 customers whose social medias I manage for content posting.

nottorp

Is it in Rust too?

throwatdem12311

Why does it matter how long it took you to make it?

domo__knows

Legitimately cool project OP. As a Django developer working in the social space I'm sure I'll be referencing your workflows.

xnx

Isn't automated posting forbidden by most platforms, and will risk getting any account banned?

ipaddr

I was hoping this was the opposite of a creators platform - a social media users platform. Download all social media to one place (stories/posts) where you can view on your own schedule. Is there anything like that out there?

banbangtuth

Just curious. Why Python? Why not say, Go or TypeScript? Yes you can make TypeScript server rendered too without React stuffs.

alexdobrenko

has there been any final word on whether social platforms are throttling posts that come from platforms like this?

pbiggar

Can you add support for UpScrolled? https://upscrolled.com/en/

kuba-orlik

I don't get it. The app is about social media, but its website is smth about YouTube Intelligence API for AI Agents. Not sute what to make of it

criddell

Nice! A bot-built tool for posting content mostly generated by other bots and engaged with by bots. I don't mean to belittle the cool tool you made, I'm just grumpy about the loss of what the social network could have been and what we got when it morphed into social media.

slopinthebag

AI generated README, AI generated code, and the creator can't even be bothered to write comments without generating them with AI (which btw goes against the rules of this site). How is this being upvoted - did the creator use his own tool to bot this submission?

cistseljak

good luck with your endeavors.

canarias_mate

Multi-tenant bugs slipping through tests is the scariest part of shipping fast with AI codegen. We've been working on Autonoma ( https://www.getautonoma.com/ ) for exactly this, AI agents that do E2E testing by navigating your app like a real user and catching the stuff unit tests miss.

michaelavina

I think it’s great work!