Fork Lab

Hi, I'm Carter. I fork a lot of apps on GitHub. Problem: most of them are phone apps or need a server, and GitHub Pages only serves plain web pages. It looked at my forks and said "absolutely not."

So Tab and I built tiny pretend versions that actually work right here in your browser. No servers, no accounts, nothing leaves your phone. The neighbors are fake, the bots are scripted, and the timelines are full of made-up people with strong opinions about toast.

These are fan-made demos, not the real apps. Each page links to my fork and to the original project, so the real creators get the credit.

The demos

Choose one from the menu and its page opens right away.

Or pick from the full list:

• bitchat: Mesh chat with three fake neighbors who relay your messages and talk back.
• Misskey: A fediverse timeline with notes, emoji reactions and renotes.
• Feditext: A Mastodon-style home timeline with boosts, favourites and content warnings.
• Kilo Code: Ask for code and a very confident script hands you a snippet. No AI involved, just vibes.
• TalkBack: A screen reader trainer: move through items and see what a screen reader would say.
• GrapheneOS Camera, Messaging, PDF Viewer and App Store: Four mini demos with a menu to pick one: a camera shutter, a text thread, a tiny document viewer and a pretend app store where you can install Sock Finder.
• Hugging Face Chat UI: A chat window with a scripted bot that has a lot of feelings about sandwiches.
• OldTwitter: A retro tweet timeline with tweeting, likes and retweets.

How they work

Every demo is one small page of plain HTML and JavaScript with fake data built in. Messages and posts you add show up at the end of each list. Reload the page and everything resets, like it never happened. Very relaxing.