Val Town

Definitions

1. A social website for writing and deploying small programs (called 'vals') that run on the server. Each val is a TypeScript function that gets its own URL endpoint, can run on a schedule, or respond to emails. Vals can import and call other users' vals, creating a social graph of composable server-side functions. Val Town provides built-in SQLite storage, blob storage, and email sending. The platform sits between a serverless function provider and a social coding playground: it's trivial to create an API endpoint, webhook handler, or cron job in a few lines, and other users can fork and remix your code. Val Town represents a return to the simplicity of early web development, where deploying server-side code was as easy as saving a file, combined with modern social coding patterns.

   In plain English: A website where you write small server-side scripts that instantly get their own URL. Like CodePen but for backend code: write a function, get an API endpoint, share it with others.

   Example: I wrote a Val Town script that checks our uptime monitor every 5 minutes and sends me a Slack message if anything is down. Took 10 lines.