The manifesto

The Orb Manifesto.

Solve one problem this weekend

The idea

An Orb is a tiny packaged application that:

Solves one specific problem
Takes hours (not weeks) to build
Ships as a ready-to-use binary
Lives on GitHub for anyone to download
Gets built with AI providing support

Think of them as micro-products—small enough to build quickly, useful enough to share.

Why "Orbs"

The name suggests something small, self-contained, and complete.
Like a marble or a sphere—simple geometry, no unnecessary complexity.

The process

Identify a pain point

Something annoying in your daily workflow

Design minimal solution

What's the smallest thing that would help?

Build with AI

Leverage AI for unfamiliar tech stacks

Ship it

Package, release, move on

Kick off an Orb, let AI grind through the details, you do the creative part.

Philosophy

Orbs embrace:

Speed over perfection

Ship it, iterate if needed

Focus over features

One job, done well

Sharing over hoarding

If it helped you, share it

Learning over expertise

Build in languages you don't know yet

Anti-patterns

Orbs are NOT:

Large, complex applications
Commercial products (they're free)
Platforms or frameworks
Anything requiring ongoing maintenance

If it needs a roadmap, it's not an Orb.

Building your own Orbs

The barrier is low. Got an idea? Spend an evening with AI. See what happens. Maybe you'll ship something useful. Maybe you'll learn a new stack. Either way, you win.

300+ Orbs
2.1 hours average
100% open source
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