Vibe-Coding

I’ve Started “Vibe Coding” and I’m Not Sure How I Feel About It

By now you’ve probably heard of Claude Code. If not, what have you been doing?

To better understand just how cooked (a term the kids use these days) I am, I decided to download the Claude for Mac app and spin up a project using Claude Code.

The idea was simple: an AI crypto news aggregation platform. I’ve always wanted to build something like this, so I thought Claude Code might make light work of it.

I wasn’t disappointed.

Why I Always Start but Never Finish a Project

The problem I have with starting side projects is that I can never be bothered to write the same foundational features over and over again:

  • An authentication system
  • A notification system
  • An admin panel
  • And all the other standard plumbing

I often have ideas for projects, but once the reality sets in — how much time it actually takes to build a scalable, usable, and secure application — I quickly lose interest.

Between work and family life, my time is limited.

I used to rely on a bespoke framework that scaffolded a lot of this functionality for me. Unfortunately, with a new JavaScript framework seemingly released every other day, that framework eventually became outdated and difficult to maintain.

So the question became: could I use Claude Code to quickly scaffold a project that I could later take over and finish properly?

The short answer: yes.

I honestly can’t believe how good Claude Code is. It far surpassed my expectations.

That said, I do want to add a caveat: I suspect a large part of Claude Code’s success came down to the prompting. I can’t say this with absolute certainty, but I imagine a developer with 10+ years of experience will get far more out of it than someone who has never deployed a full end-to-end web application.

How Long Did It Take?

Across three evenings — in roughly two-hour sessions — Claude Code produced a fully functioning website.

Version 1 included:

  • Role-based authentication
  • News aggregation
  • AI integration to generate summaries of aggregated articles
  • A comment system
  • Upvote/downvote functionality
  • Tagging
  • Bookmarking
  • And much more

It was genuinely impressive. I wasn’t sure what to expect going in, but it easily exceeded my expectations.

Is This Really “Vibe Coding”?

I’ve heard plenty of horror stories about people “vibe coding” their way into insecure or poorly designed applications. Because of that, I’ve been careful to review every commit Claude produces and make sure it doesn’t have free rein to do whatever it wants.

To be honest, that’s part of the reason I’m not sure I can really call this vibe coding.

The term often seems reserved for people who are building applications without any prior development experience. At the very least, I have experience writing and deploying end-to-end web applications, which means I can give Claude the right context and sanity-check what it produces.

Maybe that’s the real takeaway: AI can dramatically accelerate development — but only if you already understand what “good” looks like.