Building an Open Source Privacy Messenger with AI as a Solo Founder

A while ago, I decided to answer a simple question:

Could a single developer build a modern messaging platform with the help of AI?

The answer turned out to be yes.

MeetVap is the result of that experiment.

I built it as a solo founder, but I definitely wasn't coding alone. AI became part of my daily workflow. ChatGPT helped me think through architecture, review design decisions, explain unfamiliar technologies, and solve countless small problems. When OpenAI released Codex (GPT-5.5), it became another huge productivity boost, helping implement features, refactor code, and speed up development.