Why I Built SnippetsX Instead of Just Using Pastebin

Every time I paired with someone on a bug, we ended up in the same loop — a screenshot of the error, a zipped folder over Slack, or a screen-share where only one person could actually type. None of it felt like the way two developers should work on code together in 2025.

SnippetsX started as a weekend fix for that one annoyance: a browser tab where I could write code, hit run, and hand someone a link that let them see my cursor move in real time. No signup friction, no local setup, no 'can you see my screen' back and forth.

The execution layer turned out to be the hard part, not the collaboration layer. Getting 40+ languages to run safely in isolated containers, fast enough that it doesn't feel like a CI pipeline, took longer than the live-cursor sync did. Live typing over WebSockets is a solved problem; sandboxing untrusted code from strangers on the internet is not.

It's since turned into something I use for technical interviews too — watching a candidate actually think through a problem in a shared editor tells you more in ten minutes than a take-home assignment does in a week.