adventures in vibecoding

plus: ideas of little projects to try if you want to get a sense of what it can do

I made this using AI ‘vibecoding’ and I am very pleased with myself

Last week, I talked about ‘AI arbitrage’

And how the only way round it really is to get to know what AI can do for yourself. Where, I think probably the easiest way to do that is to try it out.

Here is a great section of a Cal Newport podcast, where he goes through a Reddit thread of people trying to work out what large language models are actually useful for, apart from coding. His answer is: not that much. I found it super interesting though that Cal Newport, a professor of computer science, takes it as a given that large language models have made meaningful change in computer programming. And I loved Jasmine Sun’s description of her vibecoding experiences here.

So I decided to give a go to this ‘vibecoding’ everyone has been talking about. I went into Claude and asked it to help me with three tasks:

1. creating something that will let me download paywalled Substack articles (THAT I’VE PAID FOR) to read offline, because something I dislike about Substack is that I have to be online to read¹. I want to just be able to read articles like a magazine, sitting in an easy chair, with nothing to disturb me or distract me.

2. creating a small task manager which lets me pick three tasks from a list and then only see those tasks as I’m working through them. And that will pick a random task from my list and allot it to me.

3. creating a button that will pick a random email from my inbox and open it.

Why all this interest in randomness? well, I probably have some ADHD traits, let’s say, starting and decision-making is often hard. For years and years I’ve used a random number generator or even DICE on my list of to-dos and my email inbox so I can just pick something. Once it’s picked, I get started on it rather than spending ages trying to prioritise. This AA Milne poem about the shipwrecked sailor who can’t decide what to do first and so does nothing at all IT ME and I recognised it as soon as I read this age about six.

accurate illustration of me without a random number generator or a pair of dice

and my results

Right. Number 1 was a total bust. Because of how images are stored on Substack, I could not make a thing that would effectively download entire articles so for paywalled articles if I want to read them offline I’m back to my previous strategy of printing as a pdf and saving that to my Kobo. But the others really really worked!

My tinyboard is looking great!

I’ve even added in some right-click buttons to do extra things with the cards.

And this button!

It was a multi-hour project but INCREDIBLY SATISFYING. And I now have a little button that looks like this which picks a random email for me from my gmail account.

If this isn’t something you want, I imagine it makes little sense that I do. But… maybe there are things that you want that might not make any sense to anyone else?

personal software products

These randomiser buttons in particular are really quite idiosyncratic things to want. I found it unbelievably interesting that this podcast says that basically everyone starting out wants to make a task manager because all of our brains are so idiosyncratic, the way we manage ourselves is unique not uniform, we all want something that fits to us not the other way round.

It made me imagine a future where there is software that is so individual that it really only fits one person perfectly. Like a dress made just for you. I find this a fascinating idea and I keep thinking about it.

For centuries industrialisation has moved us all toward more and more standardised products. One size fits all. But now AI coding gives the possibility that even those of us without coding skill could have some highly personal products just for us.

It also really gave me a feeling of mastery and as the young people say - agency! After my vibecoding sessions I was looking around my house looking for things to fix or improve. Of course, houses aren’t made of code in the same way and AI isn’t always so helpful in fixing it. But nonetheless, it really was quite an exciting feeling.

So, if you want to give it a go yourself, here are some rules and then suggestions. Where can a total beginner who is a person with eg an arts degree start with vibecoding?