“Gisthost 💯 matches the vibe.” — me

Intro

Do you like to vibe-code little webapps and prototypes?

  • ✅ You want source control
  • ❌ But not ready to proudly pin it to the top your GitHub profile
  • ✅ You want to share and collaborate
  • ❌ Without a pile of tooling and overhead

💡 You want a Gist… but have rendered as a webpage?

🙋‍♂️ Yep, that’s me.

The 1-file webapp

I often build single-file webapps for vibe coding: HTML, CSS, and JS all in one file, low complexity.

  • Locally: python -m http.server → done
  • Or just open the file directly if it’s self-contained and CORS-friendly 🤞

But… that’s a single-player game. image

Simon Willison built exactly what I needed 🙌

On January 1st, Simon Willison announced the revival of a long-dormant project: gistpreview, now reborn as
👉 https://gisthost.github.io

Classic Simon: simple, deployable, understandable. A tiny tool with massive leverage.

My use case

I was trying to show another GC web team how Open.Canada.ca data can power dynamic pages elsewhere, instead of manually duplicating content across sites.

I see this all the time:

  • Same content, multiple places, hand coded in html tables,
  • Not technically duplicate content… since none of the versions match.

So instead of spending time writing a long email about “the art of the possible,” vibe-coding working examples is a much more satisfying use of time . A prototype has gotta be worth at least twice as much as the 1,000 word picture — especially with 2026 tools

With Codex + GPT-5.2, this came together in 2–3 iterations from a rough prompt.


3way

The sharing problem (solved)

I needed something that:

  • Just worked
  • Would work on locked-down Gov Laptops
  • Had zero “works on my machine” issues
  • Was fine for a one-off prototype

Gisthost nailed it.

I pushed the HTML to a GitHub Gist, dropped the ID into Gisthost, and instantly had a live, shareable prototype.

👉 https://gisthost.github.io/?bc9155ba65152401df5af0a1206be5ac

Gisthost might be the vibe🔝🆙 your vibe coding needs.

A quick nod to Simon

Simon Willison is a legend in open source and data circles:

  • Django co-founder
  • Top-ranked Hacker News blogger in 2025
  • GitHub Star
  • Creator of Datasette

One of the most valuable techniques I ever learned came from him:

GitScraping

A ridiculously powerful pattern for:

  • Tracking external data
  • Detecting change
  • Auto-archiving results in Git

I’ve been using it for 6–7 years, and I still use it constantly.

If it’s not in your toolbox yet, it might be the best 5-minute investment you make in 2026.


—

HTML tools / 1-file webapps

Turns out Simon’s been thinking about this too. He calls them HTML tools:

“HTML applications that combine HTML, JavaScript, and CSS in a single file to provide useful functionality.”

He’s published 150+ of them at
👉 https://tools.simonwillison.net
All open source, Apache-2.0 licensed.

Great minds vibe alike? 😄