I had zero coding knowledge. Here is "RetroTube", a 2010 YouTube sandbox prototype I built using AI!

Gg ff — Mon, 25 May 2026 08:49:34 +0000

Hey everyone! I want to share a passion project I’ve been working on called RetroTube. I am a total rookie and started this project with absolutely zero coding knowledge. I used AI to help bootstrap an interactive 2010-era YouTube theme browser prototype!

This is a 100% free sandbox project made purely for fun, learning, and classic internet nostalgia. There are no ads, no clickbaits, and no illegal streaming stuff. It's just a digital playground.

Because it is a static prototype hosted as a single HTML file on Netlify, it doesn't use a server database. Instead, I had a cool feature built in:

💾 Data Persistence via JSON: Everything you create saves in your browser memory. You can use Export State (JSON) to copy your sandbox data to a text block, and use Import State (JSON) to reload it or share your layout with others!

🎨 What works right now:

You can change custom channel colors, upload a custom logo, and create custom view modes.

You can paste a YouTube URL to automatically pull and populate a creator channel’s name, video lists, and description! You can even create custom creator posts.

⚠️ What is a Work-In-Progress (WIP):

The Video Player: Directly playing full YouTube URLs inside the video player isn't working perfectly yet. Right now, only importing a direct .mp4 file link works for the video player.

🤝 I'm looking for helper developers & mods!
Because I am a beginner, I want to take this to the next step. I want to build a feature for a Plugin/Addon Option so other developers can build custom addon codes for RetroTube. My goal is to let people submit their website addons on my Discord, and I will manually update the site by re-uploading the new HTML file to Netlify!

I also need trusted people to help me moderate my new Discord server to keep it safe and fun since I am running this completely alone And leave comments if someone have interset for retrotube!.

You can check out RetroTube on Netlify here: https://retro-tube-sandbox.netlify.app/

If you want to build an addon, help vote on what feature we should code next, or become a moderator, please join my server!
https://discord.gg/Qws6m6K

Would love to get any feedback from real web devs on how I can improve the player embed! Thanks!

DEV Community: Gg ff

I had zero coding knowledge. Here is "RetroTube", a 2010 YouTube sandbox prototype I built using AI!