What is “Vibe Coding” Anyway?
Last weekend, my wife and I put together our ideas for a SaaS platform, and I went to work—or rather, I went to Cline with a rotating cast of AI models from Gemini and Anthropic. I’ve been “vibe coding” for a week now on a project that I think will be a good product, but this post is about my experience with vibe coding itself, not the product.
For those unfamiliar, “vibe coding” is what some call the process of developing applications primarily through AI assistance, where you direct the AI rather than writing the code yourself. In the world of advanced AI LLMs from different vendors, developers and even non-developers are using tools like Cursor, Cline, and just ChatGPT/Claude to create applications.
My Background as a Developer
As an experienced developer, most of my expertise is in PHP, JavaScript, and I have some experience in other languages. I’ve written two different SaaS platforms in the past with mixed success. In each case, I was just the technical founder writing the code while the other founders were the investors.
These were complex systems with payment solutions, scheduling, and project management features. Each took me many months to get to a product that I would even suggest go live for potential customers to use.
The Current Project: AI Takes the Wheel
The platform I’m building now is written in React for the frontend and Node.js as the backend—frameworks I’m not really familiar with. After just one week, I have a good MVP of an application that, at the rate I’m going, could be ready for some testing in a week and maybe a launch in another week after that.
Do you know what’s insane? I have not written a single line of code. The whole application is AI-written.
Challenges Along the Way
Has it been easy? Hell no.
AIs can hallucinate and can get in loops. You have to choose the right model, and with Cline, it can get expensive if you’re using the paid models for everything. So it helps to have a basic understanding of things to assist the AI, especially knowing when it’s not being consistent with the structure of the application.
I’ve noticed that non-developers using these tools often run into problems because they don’t understand the basic concepts of software architecture, scaling, SQL injections, and other items that a seasoned developer understands. So their great applications come crumbling down.
That said, I’m not suggesting it can’t work. I’ve watched videos of people who have a basic understanding of software development launch successful applications using AI assistance.
What’s Coming Next
As I go through this process, I’ll try to document the journey itself—what has gone right and what has gone wrong. I’ll share as many tips as I can that I’m learning from others or just learning the hard way.
I won’t be marketing the product here, as that’s not what this blog is about. I may mention products I use along the way, but I’m not sponsored by them, nor will I push you to one tool or another. I’ll just give you my feedback and thoughts as I move along.
So buckle up for the ride! I’m excited to share this journey of building with AI rather than just my own coding skills.
