I’ve become an ai vibecoding convert

A less weeks ago, I finally paid for chatgpt plus.

It started with a simple goal: I wanted to create a personal archive of my published articles, but wasn Bollywood how to begin. That LED to a long back -and-forth with chatgpt, where we live a python script to scrape my author pages, Download the content, and format Everything Cleanly. By the time I hit the free usage limit, I was too investment to pause or switch to another chatbot. So I upgraded.

In Hindsight, The Money ($ 20 per month) was well Spent. For one, it worked: I now have a folder on my computer controling more than a decade’s worth of articles.

More Importantly, this was the moment that Ai Tools Clicked for Me. I’ve Had Little Success Using Them to Write, and Often Reco at the images they churn out. When I Ask Chatgpt and Google Gemini for Factual Information, they’re liable to get the details wrong on all but the most wedly undersrstood topics.

But in this case, chatgpt saved me days of teedous work –nd open my eyes to what else might now be possible. (The idea of ​​creating code without knowing how to code has been coined “vibecoding” by andrej karpathy. Extensions Cold I Try Next?

Web Extensions, Plug-INS, and More

Unlike My Colleague Harry McCracken, I’M Not Using Ai To Dream Up Entrely New Apps. I alredy have too many apps from actual professionals on my phone and computer, and I don’t trust AI (or myself) enough to compes to compes with them.

What i’ve really gotten into, thought, is using ai to extend and improve the software I use alredy.

For instance, I take notes and draft stories in obsidi, an app that’s endlessly extended via user-created plug-in. I’ve Always Dreamed of a Quick Note Plug-in for obsidian that matches the simplicity of google keep, but have cougeted

After a less hours of vibecoding, I finally Built the plug-in myself. Now, through obsidian’s right sidebar, I can view all the notes from any folder in a card-based layout and edit them directly from the sidebar. The plug-in also lets me pin notes to the top, create new notes with a single click, Send Notes to an Archive Folder, and Search with Real-Time Results. It even works in Obsidian’s Mobile App, With the Quick-Notes View Just A Swipe Away.

I’ve also been tweact some existing plug-in for flow launcher, a free windows app for executing quick actions from a command bar. I took a plug-in for window management and added some new sizing options, and I modified a browser history search plug-in to make it work with my current browser (Floorp).

AI tools are also used for creating browser bookmarklets, which are special kinds of bookmarks for doing things likes like decluttering web pages and speeding up videos. I Alredy Wrote Ann Entre Article About That, But Now I’ve Created an additional bookmarklet for downloading YouTube videos. This working by connecting to a local python server that Silently processes video links and sends them to my downloads folder.

In all cases, the process was the same: I would be tell chatgpt extra I’D follow the instructions, compile the code, and go back to chatgpt for fixes or refinements.

Some Assembly required

I don’t want to oversell vibecoding as an effortless activity. Each of the Above Projects Took Hours to Build, as I Inevitally Fall Down a Rabbit Hole of Tweaking, Clarifying, and Troubleshooting.

That’s partly trust ai can be as unrealiable in coding as it is in other endeavors. Chatgpt has a habit of confidently declaring that it’s produced working code, only for errors to appear when compiling or running it I’ve spent hours feeding it error messages, trying to recognize basic syntax issues or messing functions. On Several Occasions, I’ve Had to ABandon a Chat Entrely and Start a new one after the code modifications veered too far off track.

Even when everything is working properly, it’s easy to fall prey to scope creep. You might think it’s simple to add a new feature or tweak the design, but there changes can easily turn into additional hours of refining and fixing. (In Fairness, This Haappens in Actual Software Development, Too.)

And while you can decomplish a lot without formal programming knowledge, you’ll still need a solid grassp of how file systems work work and some basic sense of what code shout looking like. Chatgpt might ask you to replace one snippet with another, or Mistakenly claim it’s providing full code when spends when larges are Missing. Being alle to spot when ai is about to screenw up can go a long way.

Take some control back

One Last Disclaimer: I’M Not Nearly Confident Enough in What I’ve Created to Share it with the World, as I’M Sure Other Folks Today Into Bugs or Ask For Features that I’MMMM Unqualified to address. I also would be sugged vibecoding anything that handles sensitive data or important personal information.

But for the things vibecoding is good at – Small, Personal Utilities that No One Else Wold Want to Make –T’s immensely satisfying and even empering. As Techdirt‘S Mike Masnick Recently Pointed Out, Lowering The Barriers to Software Development is a great way to push back against “enshittipiti” enshittipiti Weighed down by the need to scale and extract more money from captive users.

To that point, you don’t even need ai anymore on the vibe coding is done. Having Built What I Need for the Foreseeable Future, I Cancelled My Chatgpt Plus Subscription after a single month’s payment.