June 24, 2026
Data drama hits the cloud
Show HN: Write SaaS apps where users control where their data is stored
A bold app-builder pitch sparks instant replies of “cool, but what does it actually mean?”
TLDR: LinkedRecords says app makers can skip a traditional server and let the database handle who can access what. Commenters weren’t sold: they wanted a plain-English explanation, proof that users really control storage, and stronger real-world demos before buying the hype.
A new project called LinkedRecords arrived with a big promise: build web apps without a traditional back end, and let users decide who can see their data. In plain English, it’s pitching a world where an app can talk straight to the database, while the database itself handles permission rules. The creator also brought charts, tests, and a whole philosophy about making app building simpler. But the crowd? They were much more interested in what was missing than what was measured.
The loudest reaction was basically: “Explain this like I’m five.” One commenter flat-out asked whether user data is just sitting on the company’s servers unencrypted, while another called out the biggest headline claim of all: if this is about users controlling where their data is stored, then where exactly is that feature in the demo? That turned into the main drama of the thread — a classic Show HN moment where the title sounds huge, and the comments demand receipts.
Others were less skeptical and more gently brutal. One person said the project would make way more sense if it showed off real apps, ideally multiple apps using the same data in different ways. Another gave it a nerdy nod of approval, saying the underlying data model is interesting, then immediately side-eyed the benchmark as way too tiny to prove much. And in perfect internet fashion, one commenter chimed in with “I had this idea too,” linking their own project — because no launch thread is complete without a little startup déjà vu and low-key one-upmanship.
Key Points
- •LinkedRecords is presented as a NoSQL database that single-page applications can access directly without backend code.
- •The article provides documentation links for an introduction and a step-by-step getting started guide.
- •Its load test simulates a document-management workload in a multi-tenant environment with three users and measures create, list, and single-document fetch operations.
- •According to the article, createDocument performance is independent of total database size, while fetchDocuments and fetchDocument depend on the number of documents visible to the user rather than all documents in the database.
- •LinkedRecords' authorization model lets the user who inserts a record specify who can read it, and the API is designed around simplicity, flexibility, and decoupling.