Startup Ideas Bank

Great idea, poor execution; your vision needs a serious reality check.

AI roast score: 65/100 (C)

The idea

Stripping JavaScript for offline viewing is cute, but you’re betting users care enough to pay for it. Spoiler: they don’t. #Caution

In the founder's own words

tamnd/kage — Shadow any website for offline viewing, with the JavaScript stripped out

kage





kage (影, "shadow") clones a website into a folder you can browse offline, with every script stripped out. It opens each page in real headless Chrome, waits for the page to settle, snapshots the DOM a human would have seen, then deletes all the JavaScript and pulls the CSS, images, and fonts down to local paths. What lands on disk looks like the live site and runs no code.

Install • Quick start • Commands • Clone • Pack • Double-click app • Native window • How it works

You already know the problem. You hit "Save As" on a page you want to keep, and six months later you open it to find a blank screen, a spinner that never stops, or a copy that still tries to phone home to an analytics server that no longer exists. The page was never really yours. It was a thin client for someone else's JavaScript.

kage takes the other road. It drives a real browser, lets the page finish doing whatever it does, grabs the finished result, and then rips every script out of it. No tracking, no network calls, no surprises. Just .html files you can open straight off disk, hand to a friend, or pack into a single file and forget about for a decade.

Full docs and guides live at kage.tamnd.com .

Install

go install github.com/tamnd/kage/cmd/kage@latest

Prefer a prebuilt binary? Grab an archive, a .deb / .rpm / .apk , or a checksum from releases . Or skip installing Chrome yourself and use the container image, which bundles Chromium:

docker run --rm -v " $PWD /out:/out " ghcr.io/tamnd/kage clone paulgraham.com

kage drives a real browser, so it needs Chrome or Chromium on the host. It finds a system install on its own; point it somewhere specific with --chrome or the KAGE_CHROME environment variable. The container needs nothing extra.

Shell completion ships in the box: kage completion bash|zsh|fish|powershell .

Quick start

Let's mirror Paul Graham's essays so you can read them on a plane, on a laptop with no wifi, or in the year 2050 after the site has finally changed its design:

# 1. Clone the site into $HOME/data/kage/paulgraham.com/
kage clone paulgraham.com

# 2. Read it back offline in your browser
kage serve $HOME /data/kage/paulgraham.com
# open http://127.0.0.1:8800

That's the whole loop. Every essay, every image, every stylesheet, frozen on your disk and runnable with zero network. The next two steps are optional but nice: collapse the whole thing into one file, and pop it open in its own window.

# 3. Squeeze the mirror into a single shareable file
kage pack paulgraham.com # -> paulgraham.com.zim
kage open paulgraham.com.zim

# 4. Or into one executable that *is* the site
kage pack paulgraham.com --format binary -o paulgraham
./paulgr

The roast

While the concept of saving websites offline without the clutter of JavaScript is intriguing, you're entering a niche that’s less compelling than you think. The problem you're solving—ineffective saving of web pages—has been tackled by existing solutions like Pocket and SimplyBook.me, which offer user-friendly experiences without the technical hassle. Furthermore, your reliance on a solo team (q13=solo) and no initial funding (q14=no_funding) means you're attempting to climb a mountain with no gear. The execution seems far from ready for market.

Red flags

Verdict

Reassess the market need and gather a team before risking your time and energy on this idea.

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