Draw a Fish

About

Draw a Fish is a delightfully simple web toy: you doodle a fish on a small canvas (facing right, please), press a button, and it joins a shared global aquarium where thousands of other people's fish are already swimming. It is for anyone who wants two minutes of low-stakes creativity, for kids and parents drawing together, and for teachers looking for a cheerful warm-up activity. The site went viral in mid-2025, with mentions in Morning Brew, MetaFilter and Boing Boing, and a Show HN post that drew more than 900 points. Its maker described it as "an exercise in vibe-coding and GCP", built in about a month: a plain HTML5 front end on GitHub Pages, a Node.js back end on Google Cloud, and a small image classifier that screens drawings before they reach the tank, with doubtful ones going to a moderation queue (itself reviewed through a vibe-coded "fish tinder"). The charm is in the community: wobbly stick fish, surprisingly artful clownfish and the occasional shark all share the same water. Highlights: • Quick drawing canvas, then your fish swims off into the shared tank • Community tank with Most Recent, Most Popular and Random views • Feed the fish by dropping food pellets with a click or a long press • Ranking page to vote on other people's fish, sorted by hot, score or date • Create your own named fish tanks, public or private, and share them by link • Optional login with a profile and notifications • Automatic screening plus human moderation keeps the tank family-friendly Draw a Fish is free to play, with no ads seen and no purchase required; logging in is only needed for profiles and custom tanks. It runs in any modern browser on desktop or mobile, with touch controls on phones and tablets.

Reviews