# Build brief — a focused alternative to Feedspace

> **Verdict:** Partly, if you narrow it · **Buildability:** 49/100 · **Category:** Testimonials
> **Source:** https://www.canitbevibecoded.com/feedspace
> Independent editorial assessment from Can It Be Vibe Coded? Not affiliated with, endorsed by, or derived from Feedspace. Verify current pricing and capabilities before acting.

## Context

**Feedspace** — Collects text, video and audio reviews, imports existing ones, embeds them anywhere. It currently costs $29/mo.

The form, the queue, the wall and the embed widget are a focused implementation, as the two tools here show. What is not: 150+ sources with 120+ on auto-sync, on an extraction engine Feedspace owns in-house, and widgets that fill themselves from curation rules. Only collecting written reviews through your own form? Build it. Want the ones you have elsewhere kept current? Don't.

This brief describes a focused, single-operator replacement for the part of Feedspace that is genuinely reproducible. It is deliberately narrower than the product it replaces, and it says so in writing. Build the useful core; do not pretend to have rebuilt the rest.

## What you are building

A public form collects a written, video or audio review, you approve it, and saved filters decide which approved reviews appear on each embeddable widget and hosted wall page.

- Collect, moderate, and embed short customer quotes with consent.
- A responsive interface with real empty, loading, success, and error states.

## Requirements

### Functional

- A small always-on host.
- Somewhere to keep uploaded video and audio.
- Ffmpeg to convert recordings into a web-playable file.

### Non-functional

- Accessibility: semantic markup, labelled controls, visible focus, and reduced-motion support.
- Security: server-side secrets, validated input, and no credentials in the client bundle.
- Reliability: retries with backoff on external calls, and a clear failure state when a provider is down.
- Portability: the operator can export their data and leave without losing it.

## Implementation brief

Build me a testimonial system for my own site where the wall keeps itself up to date. Requirements:

- Python 3 with FastAPI, SQLite via sqlite3, Jinja2 for server-rendered HTML, and local disk for
  uploads. Single process, no Docker, no signup flow, no tenants. It serves one site: mine.
- Collection page: a shareable link taking a star rating, a written quote, and optionally a video
  or audio take recorded in the browser. Ask for name, role, company and a photo, let me mark which
  of those are required, and stop recordings at three minutes.
- Re-encode recordings to MP4 with a thumbnail in a worker off the request path, keeping the
  original. If ffmpeg is absent, store the upload and flag it rather than failing the submission.
- Moderation screen at /inbox behind an .env password: newest first, approve or bin, plus free-text
  labels I can attach to a review.
- Now the part I actually care about. A display is either a hand-picked list or a saved filter. A
  filter can require a minimum rating, a media type, a photo on the reviewer, a job title, a named
  company, one of my labels, a phrase that must appear, and a phrase that must not.
- When a review is approved, every filter it satisfies picks it up immediately, with no republish
  step. Each display shows whether it is filtered or hand-picked and how many reviews it resolves to.
- Let me override a filtered display by pinning up to three reviews to the front of it.
- Embedding: a one-line script tag plus an empty div. Attach a shadow root and inject markup the
  server already rendered, so the host theme cannot restyle it and the quotes sit in the response.
- Three presentations: a masonry grid, a swipeable row, and a slow vertical ticker. Theme, accent
  and radius come off data- attributes.
- A standalone wall at /wall with my logo, a call to action, and Review plus AggregateRating
  structured data emitted from the same query that renders the cards.
- A score badge: rounded average and total count, recalculated whenever a review is approved or removed.
- Public endpoints get a per-IP throttle and an invisible decoy field, since anything with a form
  attracts bots.
- README covering the embed snippet, the .env keys, and running it behind nginx with a TLS cert.
- Not building: fetching reviews I already have on Google, Trustpilot, G2, Yelp or an app store, or
  polling them for new ones. That is a parser per platform plus someone maintaining them, which is
  not a focused implementation. Teammates and outbound review-request email are out too.

## Delivery standard

- Inspect the repository first, then write a short implementation plan before writing code.
- Deliver the smallest complete end-to-end workflow first; every primary control must work against persisted data.
- Use real validation and storage; never substitute fake dashboards, decorative controls, hard-coded success states, or mock integrations.
- Include responsive layouts plus genuine empty, loading, success, validation, and failure states.
- Keep secrets server-side in environment variables, provide .env.example, and never commit credentials or user data.
- Add structured logs around every external call and return actionable errors without leaking sensitive details.
- Write unit tests for the core logic and one automated test of the main user journey.
- Finish with a README covering setup, architecture, data location, backups, tests, deployment, and known limitations.

## Acceptance criteria

- [ ] A clean install starts the app using only the README and .env.example.
- [ ] The primary journey works from first visit through saved result, reload, edit, export, and deletion where applicable.
- [ ] Invalid input, missing configuration, provider failure, and an empty database each have a usable state.
- [ ] The interface works at 390px and 1440px, is keyboard navigable, and shows visible focus on every control.
- [ ] Tests, type checking, linting, and a production build all pass with no ignored failures.
- [ ] No part of the interface implies a live integration, security guarantee, or scale capability that was not actually built and verified.

## Non-goals

Do not build these, and do not claim to have replaced them:

- 150+ review sources with 120+ on auto-sync, on an extraction engine Feedspace owns and runs in-house.
- The upkeep · sources change and keeping the fetching working is someone else's job.
- Rule-based curation · matching new reviews join a widget or wall page by themselves, so the embed never goes stale.
- In-browser video and audio recording that works on mobile without an app, and the media pipeline behind it.
- Aggregate rating badges that stay accurate because the auto-syncs keep feeding them.

## What you still own after launch

- Run migrations, backups, restores, and dependency updates.
- Test the critical journey after every model, API, or hosting change.
- Monitor failures and fix the edge cases a first prompt will miss.
- Maintain every third-party integration as APIs and OAuth rules change.

## Risk

**Operational risk.** The code is achievable; dependable data, integrations, and ongoing operations are the real cost.

Editorial confidence in this assessment: medium. No reviewed project implementation is linked yet.

## Existing alternatives

Before building, compare these checked options:

- [Shosay](https://shosay.com/) — Unlimited text, video and audio proof, imports, walls and 25-plus widgets; the bill is zero, the tiny Powered by pill is not

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