Open-source knock-offs, honestly labelled

pezzotto.ai

A street stall of vibecoded clones of closed-source apps — and the workshop that makes them.

GlossaryWhat is a pezzotto?

pezzotto /pe'tsɔt.to/ — noun, Neapolitan.
1. A counterfeit. The bootleg CD on a blanket outside the station, the handbag with one extra letter in the logo.
2. A patch; something stitched together from pieces (pezzi) that mostly works.
3. (here) A vibecoded, open-source reconstruction of a closed-source app.
See also: 'o bancariello, the stall; 'a fraveca, the works (as in pare 'a fraveca 'e San Pietro, the job that never ends); 'o guaglione, the shop boy who hands you the goods.

Every popular closed-source app now has a dozen clones built in an afternoon with a coding agent. Most are abandoned. Some are excellent. None of them are labelled.

pezzotto.ai takes the joke seriously. We catalog the knock-offs, grade how convincing they are, tell you which ones are still alive, and publish the harness we use to make our own — openly, with the name of the original right on the price tag.

StructureThree pieces of the same stall

01

'O bancariello the catalog

A curated index of vibecoded clones of closed-source apps. Each entry names the original, links the clone, records license, stack and feature coverage, tracks whether it is still maintained, and gives it a pezzotto grade.

  • One JSON file per stall: catalog/clones.json
  • Human-reviewed. No bots adding themselves.
  • Re-checked periodically: dead clones get marked, not deleted.
02

'A fraveca the harness

A harness that drives a coding agent from a closed-source target to a working clone. It writes the spec from public behaviour, builds, grades the result against the spec, and produces the catalog entry as a by-product.

  • spec — reverse a feature map from docs, screenshots, public behaviour
  • build — drive the agent, one feature at a time
  • grade — score coverage and fidelity
  • stall — emit the catalog entry
03

'O guaglione the launcher

The pezzotto.ai launcher hands you the goods: a small cross-platform installer and launcher for open-source apps, including the knock-offs on this blanket. Browse by topic, install with one click, launch, remove. Rust and egui, no account, works offline once the catalog is cached.

'O bancarielloWhat's on the blanket

RatingThe pezzotto grade

Fidelity is judged the way you'd judge a bag at the market: from how far away does it still fool you? The grade covers looks and behaviour, not code quality. Code quality gets its own fields.

A Indistinguishable at arm's length. You could hand it to a user of the original.
B Convincing from three metres. Core flows match; details drift.
C Recognisable from across the street. The shape is right, half the features are missing.
D You'd have to be told. A landing page and a dream.

ContributeAdd a clone to the stall

  1. Fork pezzottoai/pezzottoai.github.io.
  2. Append an entry to catalog/clones.json. Any clone qualifies, yours or someone else's, as long as it is open source and the original is closed source.
  3. Open a pull request. A human checks the repo actually runs, then grades it.
{
  "id": "example-notes",
  "target":  { "name": "Original App", "url": "https://original.example", "category": "notes" },
  "clone":   { "name": "Pezzotto Notes", "repo": "https://github.com/someone/pezzotto-notes",
               "license": "MIT", "stack": ["sveltekit", "sqlite"] },
  "coverage": ["editor", "sync", "sharing"],
  "missing":  ["mobile app", "offline"],
  "status":   "alive",
  "grade":    "B",
  "verified": "desk",
  "release":  "v0.3.0 (2026-10-20)",
  "vibecoded_with": "claude-code",
  "added":    "2026-10-30",
  "checked":  "2026-10-30",
  "notes":    "Single-user only; sync is a cron job and a prayer."
}

Fields: status is alive (commits in the last 90 days), stale (90 days to a year) or abandoned. grade follows the scale above. verified is run once someone at the stall has actually run the clone, desk while the grade rests on docs, screenshots and the project's own parity numbers. vibecoded_with names the agent or tool the clone was mostly built with, if known.