This is the story of a rent-a-workshop called Lovable, a programmer
who cloned it with Claude, and how Keith took it one giant step further —
onto iPhone, iPad and Mac — running on models that cost
nothing.
Dad — the blue button marked “The Hub” takes you to the whole project, out in the open, for free.
$0B
Lovable's valuation — August 2026
$0/mo
What Petrable costs to run. Forever.
0 free brains
AI models taking turns, invisibly
0 devices
iPhone · iPad · Mac — one codebase
Act oneThe rented workshop
Lovable is a wonderful machine: describe what you want in plain words and a real,
working website or app appears in minutes. Everyone from students to two-thirds of the Fortune 500
uses it. In August 2026 it raised $400 million and was valued at
$13.3 billion
— double its value in eight months.
The catch
You don't own the workshop — you rent it
Build one thing and you're spending credits. Credits run out, and — by Lovable's own
rules — unused credits expire. Keep your apps live and they live on their cloud.
Stop paying and you drop back to scraps. It's a treadmill with a beautiful surface: the more
you create, the more the meter runs.
Along comes a programmer, Riley Brown. You already know what Claude is, Dad —
Riley used it as his assistant to build the same kind of workshop as an app you hold in your hand,
wrote it all down, and gave the plans away free to the world (that's called open source —
more on that below). One catch: his machine still ran on Claude's paid key. Cheaper than
renting — but the meter still ticked.
The starting line
Rilable — the open gift
MIT licensed. Free to take, free to change. But every job still needed a paid AI key at its heart.
Act threeKeith takes it further
I took that open gift apart and rebuilt its heart — the brand, the name, the icon,
every screenshot, the tests, and an entirely new Mac app. What you're looking at wasn't
assembled from a kit: it was built from scratch, screen by screen, with my AI pair-programmer —
Petrable.
🔁
The engine nobody else has (to our knowledge)
Instead of one paid brain, Petrable has seven free ones — and they take turns so
smoothly the user never sees it happen. If one is busy, the next picks up. That invisible
rotation is the invention here: most people shouldn't have to choose models —
it's confusing. So we chose for you.
Google Gemini Pro — default (Google DeepMind)GroqNVIDIAGitHubOpenRouterCerebrasCloudflare
There is a model picker for
tinkerers — but for nearly everyone, Google's Pro model — Google DeepMind's AI division — is simply the right answer.
And it keeps up on its own. The routing logic is a
self-evolving, self-improving algorithm: as new free models are released and the
technology shifts, the chain adapts by itself — written so Petrable grows with the
future instead of falling behind it. No updates to install; it moves as the landscape
moves.
📱
iPhone · iPad · Mac
It's a native Apple app three times over: your iPhone, your Mac, and yes — it could be set up
on your iPad to play with. (You won't want to. You'll just press the button and watch it work.)
And when Petrable builds an iOS app, it installs straight onto the phone
over the air — tap a link, and it's on the home screen. To the best of our knowledge,
Lovable builds websites and web apps only; we do those too — plus native iPhone installs.
Your short-story landing page and a real app? Both.
You can even speak the idea instead of typing it. Say:
“Build me a website landing page announcing the release of my short story”
— and minutes later, a real, working link exists.
🎙️You say an ideaplain words or voice
🧠Seven free brains rotateinvisible to you
🔗A live app returnsweb link or install on iPhone
💷The meter reads zerono subscription, ever
When the pros are in the room
Built the way testers and release managers respect
Somewhere out there I'll be in the thick of Google's testers, quality assurance engineers and
technical program managers — people who live on release schedules and bug lists. When someone
wonders whether I know what it means to be an app builder, I'll pull out my phone:
they'll see it's written in Swift, they'll see the test results, and they'll know
I know what it's like to be under pressure chasing bugs before the next release deadline.
This project is the proof — to that level of detail.
The code, the blueprint diary and the test results — free to read, free to copy, free to improve.
The world it lives inWhat “open source” actually means
Think of GitHub as the world's biggest public workshop shelf — a place where
people put their blueprints so anyone can pick them up. (It's owned by Microsoft, by the way — they
bought it because they realised this sharing thing wasn't going away; it was winning.)
📜
MIT — a permission slip
The MIT licence is the friendly one: take my code, use it, change it, sell things
built with it — just keep my name on it. Almost no strings. That's the legal gift Riley gave,
and the one we pass along.
remix 🌀
Remix culture is the point
Take an idea and make it your own — an original, or a clone with fewer features, or more,
or sideways. This is not cheating; it's encouraged. Somebody's small idea becomes
somebody else's foundation, and on that foundation…
🏛️
…billion-dollar companies rise
Android is built on shared code. So is Meta's React, Google's Chromium — and half the
internet. Even Lovable stands on open models. Shared code isn't the enemy of big business;
it's the soil it grows in. Petrable is a small entry in that same long story.
The fair questionWill they come after us?
You'd be right to ask: if it looks like a $13.3 billion product, why doesn't
that billionaire knock on the door? In plain English — here's why not to worry:
The short answer: no
Nobody owns the idea of "describe an app in words and get an app." Ideas like that
belong to everyone — that's why a dozen companies race in the same lane. Lovable didn't invent
the concept either; they executed it brilliantly.
Our code is legally gifted. The base is MIT — using it exactly as intended. We changed
the name, the icon, the colours, the design language, the entire engine: Petrable is ours.
The clever bit is ours too. To our knowledge, nobody else ships an algorithm that
silently cycles free models so the user never notices the hand-offs. That's an invention, not a copy.
(Plain-English reasoning, not legal advice — but as far
as anyone knows, there's nothing here for anyone to come after.)
Head-to-headLovable vs Petrable
Same superpower — describe it, get an app. Different philosophy about who should own it.
Lovable
The $13.3 billion incumbent
Cost: free tier with daily scraps, then a monthly subscription + credits that expire
Models: their managed AI — fast, polished, chosen by them
Where it runs: their cloud, their hosting, their auth — end-to-end handled
Lock-in: stop paying → back to the free scraps; your apps live on their platform
Cost:$0/month to run. Forever. No credits, no meter
Models: seven free brains rotating invisibly — Gemini Pro as the default brain
Where it runs:your iPhone, iPad and Mac — native apps, your keys
Lock-in: none — it's MIT; take the whole thing and walk
Teams: built for one owner (that's the honest single-user design)
Output: web apps and native iOS apps you can install over-the-air
Who wins? Both — for different people. Lovable wins if you're a company
that wants everything managed and billed monthly. Petrable wins if you'd rather own than rent.
Who it's forThe same people — minus the bill
Lovable sells to founders, students, product managers, designers and marketers —
they even run a student-discount page. Petrable wants exactly that crowd, because those are
the people who have more ideas than money.
University studentsTeenagers with an ideaFoundersTeachers & classroomsSmall clubs & side projectsAnyone doing data analysis or a websiteNon-programmers
Dad's idea, built
The university tour
Last weekend you said: “take it to universities.” That's exactly right — a student with
a laptop (or just a phone) can now build what used to take a team and a budget. This whole thing
began as an idea you encouraged, Dad — an inheritance of thinking, now sitting in your hands.
And no, software developers aren't the target audience — that's deliberate. The average
person shouldn't need to understand models and settings; they should press one button.
🐾🐾🐾🐾🐾🐾
Petra + able = Petrable
Named after two of our favourite things: Petra and software. 🐾
Lovable — from love.
Petrable — from Petra.
Step backThere's a bigger plan here
This isn't a one-off gift — it's one move in a multi-pronged plan to get the
brand out there. Give away the free stuff, show what we can do, and let the work speak:
people will see my posts on GitHub, Reddit, Discord and other places where I get promoted
as a software builder. The giveaway is the marketing.
Gradus Apply · Relo CRM · Sermo VoiceThese three are ours alone — behind closed doors and still getting updates, as we speak. You know them, Dad. An enterprise app is a journey, not a weekend.
Petrable — the public oneReleased free & open, as the flagship: it demonstrates exactly what KAF World Digital can build.
Where you'll see itGitHub · Reddit · Discord · wherever builders gather — promoted as the work of a software builder, not an ad agency.
The honest originWhy Petrable really exists
Here's the truth of it — we needed this ourselves first. Our work runs on AI models,
and every week we were burning through the Codex credits early, because the smart model —
the “Superintelligence” tier — drinks resources when you're building all day. A tool that
stops when the credits stop is a tool that stops your work.
The backup that became the gift
So I went looking for a backup: I found OpenCode and its free models — and budget
pricing tiers underneath — so the work could always keep running in the background,
no matter what. In that quest for free models that would always be there, I found the pieces
to build this. I feel fortunate that my own work can continue — so this is me giving
back for that: an app built from the same need, handed out free, so nobody else's work has
to stop at a paywall either.
“How did you learn all this?”The hard-to-articulate journey
People ask: how do you know all this? Fair question — because the software
development journey is genuinely hard to put into words: the frustration, the confusion, the bug
that only appears when you look at it. (There’s an old joke: a program does exactly what you
say — never what you mean. Half the job is learning to say it better; the other half
is pretending that’s normal.)
But here’s the pleasing part: harness all of that chaos, focus it, and pair it with an
AI assistant — and it flips. Frustration becomes flow. We sit down, point the whole mess at an
idea, and produce genuinely cool stuff in a short amount of time.
Now I don’t have to explain the journey — I can just show it. Press a button, watch
an idea become software in minutes, and you understand exactly what I do. It was never that I
learned it recently; it’s that it’s finally easy to show people. This whole
presentation is the answer to a question I could never quite answer before.
Why give it awayThis is the giving-back part
The AI providers offer free models to get builders in the door — they practically
encouraged this. So: we use their generosity, and in return, this is me giving back —
a complete, working, free tool and the full diary of how it was made, handed to anyone who wants it.
PetrableFree & open — released to the world
Three quiet siblingsRelo CRM · Gradus Apply · Sermo Voice — behind closed doors, getting updates as we speak
